After knocking off Texas A&M in College Station a week ago, the Georgia Bulldogs were licking their chops. Awaiting the NCAA tournament hopefuls was a pair of home games against opponents sitting 12th and 13th in the 14-team SEC.
Two losses later, Georgia’s season suddenly is in danger of coming off the rails.
After falling to Auburn this past Saturday, the Bulldogs looked even worse in losing to South Carolina 64-58 on Tuesday night at Stegeman Coliseum. So instead of making up ground at home against two of the league’s lower-tier teams, Georgia (16-9 7-6 SEC) heads back out on the road to Alabama on Saturday in full-blown desperation mode.
“We made it harder on ourselves,” Georgia coach Mark Fox said. “We’ve got no one to blame but the person in the mirror. We can still accomplish what we set out to do. We just made it much harder. We can use our health as an excuse, which would be a cop-out. We’ve got to grow up.”
The Bulldogs were playing without starting point guard J.J. Frazier, who suffered an orbital fracture against Auburn. Starting forward Juwan Parker (Achilles) also missed his ninth straight game.
But that wasn’t enough to explain the abysmal effort against the Gamecocks (13-12, 4-9), who were also playing short-handed. Shortly before the game, South Carolina announced that starting forward Demetrius Henry and freshman guard Shamiek Sheppard were suspended for the remainder of the regular season for “conduct detrimental to the team.” The Gamecocks also played their third straight game without guard Marcus Stroman due to an illness.
“We ain’t gonna have any excuses or blame it on injuries,” said Charles Mann, who led the Bulldogs with 17 points. “We’re just not playing well. We just don’t want it. Don’t have the desire, the heart; we’re not hungry. We’re just not playing like we know we should be playing.”
That definitely seemed to be the case early on as the Bulldogs fell behind 41-23 by halftime. Georgia went through a six-minute scoreless stretch early in the game. In the midst of it all, senior forward Nemanja Djurisic got whistled for his second foul. He was assessed a third foul when he got called for a technical after throwing the ball down in disgust. He sat the rest of the half, played only 23 minutes on the night and finished with five points.
“They had a much greater determination to do the dirty work to start the game,” Fox said. “And so we dug ourselves an immense hole. We let frustration get the best of us and played uphill all night.”
Georgia played much more determined in the second half and a 28-10 run got them back into the game. Yante Maten’s two free throws with 4:31 to play tied the game at 51.
But Georgia could never grab the lead. Kenny Paul Geno missed two foul shots at the 3:23 mark and South Carolina made two 3s and had a put-back down the stretch to push back ahead and close the game at the foul line. The Gamecocks made 13 of 14 free throws.
Tyrone Johnson and Duane Notice made seven 3-pointers between them and led the Gamecocks with 17 points apiece.
“So proud of them,” South Carolina coach Frank Martin said. “Just really happy for our guys.”
The Bulldogs were feeling decidedly different.
“Horrible, man, just horrible,” guard Kenny Gaines said. “That’s the best way I can explain it.”
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