ATHENS — Georgia basketball’s mental-toughness tour continues Wednesday night when the Bulldogs venture south to Tallahassee to take on the Florida State Seminoles.
The Bulldogs (3-3) will tip off against the Seminoles (4-1) at the Donald L. Tucker Center at 9:15 p.m. Wednesday as part of the first annual ACC-SEC Challenge. Georgia’s game is among the last four ACC-SEC matchups in which all 14 teams from both conferences went head-to-head the past two days.
The conference-dictated initiative falls perfectly in line with the scheduling philosophy that Georgia coach Mike White brought into his second season with the Bulldogs. He has made no bones about wanting to ramp up the competition. Though his squad is a young team of multiple recently assembled parts, White emphasized from the get-go his belief that the path to quick and unvarnished improvement was going to be for the Bulldogs to test themselves to the fullest on a day-to-day basis ahead of conference play.
The FSU game is the third of four that Georgia will play against ACC opponents in a three-week span. The Bulldogs have played Wake Forest and Miami, and they’ll play host to archrival Georgia Tech on Dec. 5 at Stegeman Coliseum. Georgia opened the season in Las Vegas against Pac-12 power Oregon and took on Providence in the Bahamas Championship earlier this month.
While that has done little to enhance Georgia’s won-loss record, White is confident it will be beneficial in the long run.
“Our guys know that,” White said. “We talked about our schedule leading into the tip-off of the season. We told our guys that we wanted to give them an opportunity to play that tough schedule to give them opportunities for postseason potential, but also for growth and development.”
Even some of the non-marquee games the Bulldogs have played have been against tough competition. Georgia had to fight hard for Friday’s 78-69 win over Winthrop, and it got all it could handle from North Carolina Central on the way to a 64-54 victory.
So far, the Bulldogs’ best victory was 80-77 at home over Wake Forest on Nov. 10. But they’ve been competitive in pretty much every game, losing by 11 to Oregon and Miami and by seven to Providence in what was a one-possession game until the final seconds.
Meanwhile, FSU represents Georgia first true road game on an opponents’ home court. So this will be new ground.
“We’ve got to have some poise,” White said. “We’ve got to respond. We’re going to have some adversities. How do we respond to those adversities? We’ve got to play with some confidence. We’re going to have some fun. It’s basketball. It’s a game, and these guys will be fired up for the opportunity.”
Indeed, the Bulldogs have been an entertaining team to watch. While they can be sloppy with the ball and out of sync at times, they’re certainly not bashful about shooting and love to run.
A mishmash of freshmen, transfers and four scholarship returnees, Georgia is led by Niagara transfer Noah Thomasson, who has scored 43 points in the past two outings and is averaging a team-best 14.3 points overall. Senior Jabri Abdur-Rahim has made himself into an offensive threat, scoring 13.3 points per game, and freshmen guards Silas Demary and Blue Cain and forward Dylan James each are making major contributions as rotation regulars.
“We compete,” Thomasson said. “We don’t really look at the scoreboard; we just play until the game is over. We’ve hung in there with those teams. … I’m excited for this team. I think we’re growing, we’re learning and we’re starting to figure out how to play with each other, really.”
The Bulldogs are having to grow up in a hurry. Georgia is the nation’s only “power conference” team to face four other power-conference foes in its first five outings. At the moment, 13 of the Bulldogs’ 31 opponents this season – or 41.9% – are included in the most recent “bracketology” project by ESPN.
FSU fits that profile. Coached by Leonard Hamilton, the Seminoles (4-1) are coming off a 77-71 overtime upset of No. 18 Colorado in the championship game of the Sunshine Slam on Nov. 21 in Daytona Beach, Florida. They’re led by Jamir Watkins, a former Virginia Commonwealth teammate of Georgia’s Jalen DeLoach, who is pacing FSU in scoring (14.2 ppg), rebounding (6.0 rpg) and assists (4.4 apg).
Georgia hasn’t played FSU in Tallahassee in two days short of 42 years, when the Bulldogs won 70-67. The Seminoles lead the overall series 19-10.
There are some significant connections between the two programs. FSU is the alma mater of former Georgia coach Hugh Durham, who led the Seminoles to the Final Four as head coach in 1972. Durham also would lead the Bulldogs to the 1983 Final Four.
One of Durham’s players on that team was Richard Corhen. Corhen’s son, Cameron Corhen, is a 6-10 sophomore center for the Seminoles who’s averaging 10.8 points and 3.8 rebounds.
But Wednesday’s night’s meeting is not about historical connections. It’s another rung in Georgia’s climb back to basketball relevance.
“It’s a tough place to play, comparable to an SEC road game,” White said. “So, another good opportunity for us to learn, to grow and hopefully play well enough to have a chance at the end.”
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