ATHENS – Stegeman Coliseum looks great. The black ceiling pops. The new configuration that moved UGA’s students into prime seating locations made sense and was long past due. Georgia’s home bench being switched to the horseshoe end and leaving the visitors to face all the second-half distractions down on the other end was another good move.
Now if the Bulldogs can just learn how to win.
Oh, they did Friday night, and it should stand up all year as a quality victory as it came over Wake Forest, a storied ACC program. But it shouldn’t have been nearly as hard as Georgia made it.
The Bulldogs were up by 13 points with less than 7 minutes to play, by 8 with two minutes to go and 5 inside the final minute. Yet it took a missed 3-pointer at the buzzer by Wake’s Cameron Hildreth for Georgia to walk out an 80-77 winner.
“I thought our mentality changed,” Georgia second-year coach Mike White said. “… We lost our tempo down the stretch when they kept chipping away at that score. We were almost shell-shocked by their play late. But there’s a lot to learn from and unfortunately we’ve got to clip it up and show them.”
Nevertheless, there were many encouraging signs. That starts with the 80 points, which was just two short of the highest total the Bulldogs registered last season. Noah Thomasson, graduate transfer from Niagara, led Georgia with 21 points, 5 rebounds and 3 assists. Jabri Abdur-Rahim added 17 points, giving the 6-foot-8 senior 35 points in the Bulldogs’ first two games.
Five players scored in double figures, shooting percentages were up (47%) and turnovers were down (7). Georgia got significant contributions from nine different players and never trailed after the 8:54 mark of the first half.
That made for a lively atmosphere inside their six-decades-old, recently-refurbished arena. A crowd of 8,176 nearly filled the 10,400-season coliseum and stayed engaged until the Demon Deacons’ final ill-fated shot.
“You know, we’re a brand-new team, 10 newcomers, so we’re still learning ever day,” said Thomasson, a 6-4 guard playing at his third school, but first time in a power conference. “You have a lot of teams that have a lot of continuity that know how to win in those moments. So, we’re looking to learn from it and move on.”
Wake Forest, which overcame a 20-point deficit to defeat Elon 101-78 in its home opener, wasn’t exactly an old team. Coach Steve Forbes’ Demon Deacons also featured eight newcomers. But there were a lot of veterans in the bunch and they played that way down the stretch.
Georgia sent them to the foul line way too much and Wake missed only two of their 18 attempts from the line with the clock stopped. Guard Kevin Miller, despite playing the final 11:34 with four fouls, led the way with 22 points and the Deacons made 11 of their 30 3-point attempts.
With just under a minute to play, Georgia’s Justin Hill missed a driving layup that could have pushed the lead to seven. Instead, 6-10 senior Andrew Carr, converted his lay-in on the other end to give him 18 points on the night and make it a one-possession game with 43 seconds to play.
The Bulldogs tried to go deep in the clock on the offensive end, but freshman guard Silas Demery turned the ball over. A tie-up left the ball in the Deacons’ hands with 7 seconds left and they still had possession after a defensive deflection out of bounds.
Finally, Carr launched a 3 pointer just before the final buzzer, but his shot was short and bounced off the rim.
“Please, please, please, please,” Abdur-Rahim said of Carr’s shot heading toward the basket. “We knew they were a good team that had been down by 20 and ended up winning by 20. So we knew they were capable of making runs and we just had to stay with it.”
Friday’s game was the first of four the Bulldogs will play against ACC teams over the next month. Their season-opening loss came against Oregon on Monday in Las Vegas. White expects both the Ducks and Deacs to be in position to earn postseason play at the end of the year.
Next up for the Bulldogs is North Carolina Central, which visits The Steg on Sunday. Then it’s back to power conference play with trip to the Bahamas to play Miami in the Baha Mar Championship tournament.
As it is, Georgia’s the only power-conference team in the country to open against back-to-back power-conference opponents.
“We’ve got a little fight to us,” White said. “We’re a lot harder to guard when the ball moves. When we play for us and we get our shot, we had to get those jitters out a little bit. I thought we had a little carry-over from how we play in practice.”
It felt like Georgia was out-playing the Demon Deacons most of the night, but it just couldn’t distance itself from the visitors. That finally happened with a 10-0 run midway through the second half. It involved a myriad of Georgia players, with Thomason, Abdur-Rahim and freshman Cain all contributing to both the scoring and defense.
Cain’s fast-break lay-up off a midcourt steal was followed an assist on an Abdur-Rahim 3-pointer that gave the Bulldogs a 59-50 lead as the horn for a media timeout sounded at the 13:42 mark.
Georgia’s lead would grow from there. The Bulldogs would get it to 13 twice on the inside-outside combination Russel Tchewa and Thomasson. The 7-foot, 275-pound Tchewa twice would score buckets off the dribble, including a fast-break dunk at the 10:50 mark that left him blowing kisses to the adoring crowd. Thomasson bracketed next Chewa’s drive layup with a 3 and a pull-up jumper.
The Bulldogs led 40-36 at halftime and probably would have been ahead by a significantly larger margin if they could have consistently defended or made 3-pointers. The other thing keeping Wake close was its acumen from behind the arc. The Deacons made 6 of their first 9 3-point attempts and 8-of-18 for the half.
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