No. 20 Auburn at Georgia
WHERE: Stegeman Coliseum
WHEN: Wednesday, 6:30 p.m.
RECORDS: Georgia (10-3, 0-0); Auburn (11-2, 1-0)
TV/RADIO: SEC Network (Kevin Fitzgerald, Jon Sundvold); Georgia Bulldog Radio Network (Scott Howard, Chuck Dowdle, Adam Gillespie)
A couple of weeks ago, Georgia basketball coach Mike White joked that he wished his team had a little more time before tipping off SEC play.
Tuesday, White laughed it would be nice if that was still true.
But alas, that’s not the case for the Bulldogs, who open conference play Wednesday night against Auburn (6:30 p.m., SEC Network).
“You've got to have some edge, and you've got to be ready to go,” White said before practice on Tuesday. “It’s exciting. You come to Georgia to compete against the best of the best, and SEC men's basketball now is arguably the best league in the country, to match a lot of other sports that have done it in this league for a long time. There'll be Auburn then another one and another one, there will be 18 really strong opponents, and then the SEC tournament, so we’re ready to get going.”
The Bulldogs (10-3) put in some impressive work during their non-conference slate.
Last week’s victory over Rider allowed Georgia to finish with double-digit wins prior to New Year’s for just the fourth time in school history.
“A big reason I came back is to win. Obviously, around this time (last year) we had five wins and we finished with six,” center Braelen Bridges said. “We have 10 (wins) now, so that is a big accomplishment for me. I want to continue to win and make it to the tournament.”
The Bulldogs certainly showed some positive signs over the first two months of the season.
After averaging 68.8 points over the first seven games, Georgia is bumped that up to 73.6, an increase that White said is promising.
“We found a little bit of offensive identity and we'll continue to progress toward our best version. Like the rest of our league, it's still a work in progress, probably us especially,” White said. “Our ball security, our decisions, our assist-to-turnover ratio, our emotions, we talked about how our responses to adversities have gotten better.”
However, there’s obviously more work to do.
“A strength obviously has been our offensive rebounding deficiency and in our last one was defensive rebounding, which has been pretty good, but it hurts at times against Auburn and against most teams in our league. If you're not on point there, you're going to give up offensive putbacks, you're going to give up extra possessions,” White said. “So a lot of strengths, a lot of weaknesses, but more of an understanding right now of what we can ride and what we can continue to improve upon to be competitive and league play.”
The Tigers (11-2, 1-0) under head coach Bruce Pearl appear to have another solid team after starting the season undefeated before back-to-back-losses to Memphis and Southern Cal.
Wendell Green Hr. is averaging a team-high 12.7 points per game, while Johni Broome is chipping in with 12.3 points and team-best 8.3 rebounds per game. Jaylin Williams is averaging 10.3, while former Bulldog K.D. Johnson is averaging 9.8 points off the bench.
“They're strong, they're big, they're deep, they're very athletic. They play a really big starting lineup, and they play really hard,” White said. “They get after it on the offensive glass. It's an elite defensive team, one of the better defensive teams in college basketball right now, and very disruptive. A team that really gets after you.”
