ATHENS – With temperatures plummeting outside, the heat on Georgia’s basketball season is about to crank up significantly.
Tom Crean’s undefeated Bulldogs (5-0) will play host to Cincinnati in a prime-time matchup Saturday night at Stegeman Coliseum (8 p.m., SEC Network). No offense to Georgia’s previous opponents, but the Bearcats (2-3) represent a significant upgrade in talent and toughness.
They’ve already played No. 12 Tennessee on the road (losing 65-56 on Dec. 12), as well as Xavier and South Florida. Their wins have come against solid squads from Furman and Lipscomb.
“We’re trying to get across to (the players) how good Cincinnati is,” Crean said Friday. “We have not faced anybody like this at all yet.”
Georgia’s toughest opponents to date have been its past two, Montana and Samford. Against Samford on Dec. 12, the Bulldogs trailed almost the entire game before pulling out a 79-75 victory.
Georgia was playing without leading rebounder and second-leading scorer Toumani Camara (lower-body injury) in that game. Crean said they are “hopeful” that Camara will be able to play after a light week of work interspersed with final exams. Camara is averaging 14.3 points and 8.0 rebounds per game and is coming off a career-high 15 points and 17 rebounds in the 63-50 win over the Grizzlies.
The Bulldogs desperately could use the 6-foot-8 forward’s talents in a contest in which they are going to be out-sized at many positions, especially on the front line.
“They’ve played a tough schedule,” Crean said. “They’re battle-tested, there’s no doubt about that. The differences are they’re by far the most physical and biggest team we’ve seen. They have big, strong physical guards and wings. They’re going to come in and try to be incredibly aggressive and physical with us. They’re big inside and score a lot at the rim.”
That’s something the Bulldogs have done a lot of, too. They’ve been getting layups, slam dunks and close-range bank shots off dribble-penetration by point guard Sahvir Wheeler and by playing fast. But Georgia continues to struggle with outside shooting, entering Saturday’s game making 27.6 percent from behind the arc as a team. The Bulldogs are also turning over the ball at a 17.4 per-game clip.
But Georgia also has been playing somewhat fast and loose early on in the schedule. The Bulldogs always knew the schedule was going to ramp up at the end of the calendar year. After the Bearcats, Georgia will close 2020 against Northeastern on Tuesday and then Mississippi State in the SEC opener Dec. 30.
Saturday’s game is the second meeting between the Bulldogs and the Bearcats. Cincinnati won the other matchup 57-51 at Stegeman on Dec. 2, 2011.
But Crean is quite familiar with Bearcats basketball. He used to have some wars with Cincinnati and former coach Bob Huggins when they were each battling for Conference USA supremacy in the early 2000s.
“We had great battles with Cincinnati, just phenomenal battles,” Crean said. “You had to absolutely be locked in to execution and togetherness. And if you didn’t come with a high-level of toughness and didn’t have your hard hat packed, it was going to be a problem. And that’s still what I see in Cincinnati.”
There’s much to be gained for the Bulldogs. They’re 5-0 for the first time since 2001, and win over Cincinnati would propel UGA to its best start since the 1982-83 season. That’s the first and last Georgia team to play in the Final Four.
Featuring eight newcomers and three graduate transfers, the Bulldogs are eager to see how they stack up.
“We’re super excited,” junior Tye Fagan said. “We’re super excited just to have another opportunity to play basketball, the game we love to play. The way things are going now, everything’s not promised, every day is not promised. So, it’s just another opportunity to play the game we love and go out and get better. And that’s what we intend to do.”
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