A season officially in infamy
A forgettable regular season came to an end Saturday afternoon at Missouri as Georgia fell to the home-standing Tigers, 79-69.
It was a record breaker to boot for the Bulldogs, who still have a game remaining Wednesday in the SEC Tournament.
With the loss, Georgia (6-25), finishes 1-17 in SEC play, capping off what is now officially the worst season in Bulldog basketball history. Not only do the 25 overall losses stand as the most ever for a Georgia team, but the 1-17 record in conference play is also an all-time Bulldog low.
Saturday’s latest defeat followed a familiar script.
Tom Crean’s squad led by as many as 14 points with just five minutes to go in the first half, only to see the Tigers roar back in the second to walk away with an easy win.
“What happens to this team has been happening all year. We lose a little momentum, and we don’t realize that we have to go get it back,” Crean said. We start to get really quiet. When you start to get really quiet, you’re not going to be very good defensively on the glass, and the ball movement is not going to be very efficient.
That’s where we’re at. When that’s happening, you’ve got to have a couple of people outside of the head coach to keep reminding people that we’re still fine,” Crean said. “I’m spending too much time in the timeouts reminding them they’re still in the game. But I’ve been doing that all year, and that’s the hard part, because we never know what can happen if we would just keep our spirit up and keep believing.”
Unfortunately for Georgia, there simply has not been much reason to believe. Missouri dominated the Bulldogs on the boards, out-rebounding Crean’s squad 43-24.
“We weren’t physically aggressive, and we didn’t have a high level of competitiveness and physicality on the glass, at all,” Crean said. “When that happens, a lot of times it’s indicative of where our defense is at.”
Georgia didn’t help itself from the free-throw line.
The Bulldogs only converted 21 of 33 trips to the charity stripe, while Missouri made 13 of 15 tries. “Offensively, we missed some layups toward the end, and we shot uncharacteristically poor from the free throw line,” Crean said. “We’re going to score points, but that’s why we need our defensive rebounds to get our game going, and they made some open threes.”
Braelen Bridges scored 19 to lead the Bulldogs, followed by Kario Oquendo with 17 and Aaron Cook with 16.
“We play hard. That’s not the problem. Nobody is backing off from playing hard, but it becomes our mentality where it starts to drop because the other team is making a run,” Crean said. “It was unfortunate, because this was still a very, very winnable game all the way to the end.”
But as the Bulldogs have shown, believing, and doing are two different things.
“The harder the game gets, the harder you’ve got to be. It’s leading the way on the court, it’s not getting quiet. It’s being able to get over things quickly,” Crean said. “Leadership is all about moving forward. How quick can you move forward, and unfortunately, we’re not there. We don’t move forward very well. That’s unfortunate.
"Again, we play hard, we’re scoring points, but guys get quiet and lose that moxie of we’ve got to bear down, get this done and get momentum back. Momentum is always up for grabs. But you can’t get it back when you start to lose your belief.”
The Bulldogs will have one more opportunity when they play Vanderbilt on Wednesday in the SEC Tournament.