ATHENS — One never can be sure how a transfer’s innate skills will translate to his new home, especially when he’s moving up in level of competition. Such was the case when Georgia welcomed Russel Tchewa from South Florida this past summer.
The Bulldogs felt good about Tchewa’s size. They simply had nobody else like the 7-foot, 280-pound center. What they didn’t know at the time is what a well-conditioned athlete they had on their hands.
That became apparent in summer workouts.
“He consistently finished at the front in our conditioning segments,” Georgia coach Mike White said. “He carries 280, but he never gets tired in practice.”
Tchewa never appeared to tire Saturday during Georgia’s SEC opener on the road against Missouri. Only guards Noah Thomasson and Jabri Abdur-Rahim played more than Tchewa’s 29 minutes in that 75-68 victory, and Tchewa played almost flawlessly for every one of those. With 18 points and 11 rebounds, he finished with his first double-double as a Bulldog, and he was strong in clutch moments. Five of Tchewa’s rebounds, including two on offense, and three free throws in four attempts came in the final 4:19 after the Tigers briefly stole Georgia’s lead.
A lot of that had to do with Tchewa simply being able to play hard all the way to the final horn. While he brought some of that ability with him to Athens, the Cameroon native credits Collin Crane, the Bulldogs’ director of athletic performance, for building upon it.
“In the summertime, we were going really, really hard with conditioning,” Tchewa said after the Missouri win. “Coach Crane always said, ‘we’re running today, but it’s going to show up later.’ He was right.”
The key now is for the Bulldogs not to let up after recording their first SEC road victory since 2021. In its SEC home opener Wednesday (9 p.m.), Georgia will be facing an Arkansas squad that was humiliated by 32 points Saturday at home against No. 16-ranked Auburn. Coach Eric Musselman’s Razorbacks (9-5) were picked to finish third in the SEC’s preseason poll.
But don’t let the Hogs’ record fool you. While their schedule includes a loss to North Carolina-Greensboro, it also includes a win over No. 11 Duke and defeats at the hands of No. 7 North Carolina, No. 9 Oklahoma and No. 13 Memphis.
“It’s definitely an outlier,” White said of Arkansas’ lopsided loss to Auburn. “As you evaluate their results for the rest of the season, they’re a good team and a good program. They’ve had a lot of success in recent years. They’ll be ready. They’re really capable, really talented, they sit down and guard and have a bunch of weapons.”
While Arkansas was picked in the top half of the SEC in the preseason, Georgia was picked 12th in the 14-team league. Yet it’s the Bulldogs who come into Wednesday’s game on a nine-game win streak. That equals the fifth-longest in program history and was tied for the fifth-longest active in the nation.
Should Georgia make it 10 in a row with a win over Arkansas, that would be its longest win streak since 1930-31.
“The preseason stuff, it should go away,” Musselman said of the opponents’ respective preseason prognostications. “It’s meaningless because of the transfer portal. It’s meaningless in everything. It’s meaningless in football. … I don’t know how you know anybody is going to be good.”
That brings us back to Tchewa. He’s one of eight newcomers on a Georgia squad coming off a 16-16 record in White’s first season. Though he played in 104 games while competing in the American Athletic Conference, there were no guarantees that his previous-season averages of 11.1 points and 8.6 rebounds were going to translate into the rough-and-tumble SEC. And, truthfully, he hadn’t put together at Georgia the type of performance he just had in Columbia. His season highs entering that game were 11 points against Mercer and Wake Forest and nine rebounds against Oregon. And his 75% free-throw percentage this season far outpaces that of his career coming in (59.9%).
But the Bulldogs had seen Tchewa’s consistent progression in practice since he showed up this past summer and, increasingly they’re seeing it show up in games.
“I mean, he works hard, man,” said Thomasson, one of Georgia’s four transfers and the team’s second-leading scorer at 12.5 ppg. “He played really well, and he helped us win the (Missouri) game. That’s something we’re going to need from him a lot, just being a presence down low and rebounding the ball the way he did. If he keeps doing that, we’re going to have a lot of success.”
Said White of Tchewa’s recent surge: “We thought we’d see that, and I was glad it happened when it did. I thought our guys did a good job getting (the ball) to him in the spots where he could be successful and at the right times. And he’s done a better job of getting deeper post position. That was as confident as he’s played all year.”
Hey, no time like the present. Up next for the Bulldogs after Arkansas is No. 5 Tennessee (11-3) at noon Saturday and a road date Jan. 16 against 13-1 South Carolina.
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