COLUMBIA, S.C. – Frustration hasn’t been a word you’ve heard uttered much from Georgia players and coaches.
That wasn’t true after Saturday’s 77-75 loss to No. 19 South Carolina, a defeat that dropped the Bulldogs to 13-10, 4-6 in the SEC.
“As a competitor, I don’t like to lose so for me as the leader of this team I somehow have to get it behind me,” senior J.J. Frazier said. “But yeah, I’m frustrated.”
He wasn’t the only one.
“We’ve just got to stop making a couple of errors here and there and finish a couple of plays,” Yante Maten said. “I could have finished a lot better around the rim, so that’s something I can work on. Everybody needs to find something they need to go to get a little bit better so we can get over the hump.”
It’s easy to understand why Maten and Frazier feel that way.
Although Georgia has now dropped four of its last five SEC games, two of those came in overtime (to Florida and Kentucky) while the Bulldogs’ loss at Texas A&M and Saturday’s defeat at South Carolina were by a combined total of three points.
“I feel for our people, our young people, but we’ve got to find a way to make one more play, one less mistake and keep competing,” head coach Mark Fox said. “Certainly, it’s been frustrating for our team, but we have no choice but to put it behind us.”
That may be easier said than done.
It won’t get any easier for the Bulldogs, who host Florida on Tuesday night before hitting the road again next Saturday, this time to Tennessee.
Know what else was frustrating for Georgia? Watching the Gamecocks (19-4, 9-1) light it up from three-point range by converting 14 of their 25 attempts.
Nothing the Bulldogs tried defensively worked here.
The South Carolina trio of Sindarious Thornwell, Duane Notice and PJ Dozier went a combined 9 of 17 from beyond the arc. Thornwell and Notice both went 4-for-7. Dozier led the Gamecocks with 21 points, followed by Thornwell with 18 and Notice with 15.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” said Frazier, when asked about South Carolina’s three-point success. “A couple of them were a contested three that they made, others were in the break. They were locked in from the three-point line and we couldn’t slow them down. Turnovers, second-chance points, the fast-break points, that was the reason we lost the game.”
Fox agreed.
“When they shoot the three like that they’re hard to beat because their defense is so good,” Fox said. “When they make 11 threes it’s going to be hard to beat them. We came up a buck short.” Georgia did shoot the ball surprisingly well against the league’s best defensive team.
The Gamecocks entered allowing just 60.9 points per contest, the top mark in the SEC. But the Bulldogs were able to have some success.
Georgia went 24-for-49 from the field while the 72 points represented the second-most tallied against the Gamecocks all season, behind only the 85 scored by Kentucky two weeks ago, in Lexington.
But the difference in the game was second-chance shots and South Carolina’s ability to consistently convert its perimeter plays. The Gamecocks were able to get off 11 more shots than the Bulldogs, who attempted just nine three-point attempts, making five.
“Offensively we shoot nearly 50 percent but we gave up too many second-chance points and I thought that was the key to the game, the second-chance baskets in the second half,” Fox said. “Give credit to them, they’re a good basketball team. It was a hard-fought game but we came up a play short.”
Maten and Frazier led the Bulldogs with 18 points each, followed by Juwan Parker with 11.
“I thought we spaced the floor well. I thought especially in the first half we finished some plays inside. We were patient and selective on our three-point shooting so we ended with a good percentage, but we just can’t allow 43 percent from the field and 45 percent from three,” Fox said. “Those numbers are too high to win on the road.”
