Georgia posted a solid performance on Tuesday, claiming a 76-68 victory over Vanderbilt, showing its ability to take care of the league’s middle-tier teams.
The short visit home for Georgia was a beneficial one before hitting the road again to play at Texas A&M on Saturday. Below are five observations from Tuesday’s victory, before the Bulldogs make a quick turnaround.
1) Offensive balance: It seemed to be an issue for Georgia in the early stages of the season, the Bulldogs could only find consistent offense from their stars J.J. Frazier and Yante Maten. On Tuesday, it was proven that it’s no longer an issue. In addition to 21 from Maten and 15 from Frazier, Georgia also had two other starters finish in double-digits, Juwan Parker with 17 for the second-consecutive game and Derek Ogbeide with 11.
The balance can be credited to Parker’s emergence as it finally seems as if he’s found a rhythm from his Achilles injury, which sidelined him for more than a full season. The consistency started to become evident in the South Carolina game, in which Parker finished with 12 points on an effective 5-of-8 shooting, and he’s only gotten better from that point. It seems as if he’s found a niche in the jumper right inside the 3-point line, and has expanded that as of late, hitting a couple of contested 3-pointers against Florida and Vanderbilt. Parker has averaged 13.2 points per game thus far in conference play.
Thus, Georgia has found its third scorer, which had media scrambling as it thought the lack thereof would be the Bulldogs’ downfall, but Frazier believes otherwise.
“We weren’t worried about that third scorer, y’all might have been,” Frazier said. “But we know what we have has a team, and we had to understand that most of our guys were new to a bigger role early on.”
2) Georgia benefits from Fisher-Davis’ lack of rhythm: One of Georgia’s primary concerns may have been the abilities of Vanderbilt guard Matthew Fisher-Davis. The junior averaged 15.7 points per game entering Tuesday’s game, but didn’t start and sat out for the first six minutes. Fisher-Davis’ demotion in the rotation was due to conduct detrimental to the team during Saturday’s game against Tennessee.
Although Fisher-Davis played and saw significant minutes, he was out of rhythm. Only scoring nine points on 4-of-13 shooting, the Bulldogs were able to take advantage of his off night, and Vanderbilt found itself in an offensive drought as a result.
3) Struggles from the stripe: Throughout conference play, one of Georgia’s strengths was its ability from the free-throw line, averaging 74 percent. It had been the difference-maker in each of Georgia’s league wins thus far. On Tuesday, that wasn’t the case despite the victory. The Bulldogs shot 18-of-30 from the stripe, at a 64.7 percent clip. The 30 attempts compared to six for Vanderbilt still gave Georgia an advantage.
4) Georgia shows improvement in perimeter defense: It’s been a recurring theme, the struggles in defending beyond the 3-point line. Vanderbilt could’ve been a bad matchup for the Georgia as the Commodores average 40 percent from beyond the arc. Tuesday, Vanderbilt was anemic in that area in the early going, shooting 1-of-9 in the first half which allowed Georgia to jump out to a significant advantage. Vanderbilt found some rhythm late in the final period, shooting 9-of-22 from deep in an attempt to comeback, but it was too late.
5) Georgia minimizes turnovers: Turnovers had also been critical for Georgia, proving costly in its two conference losses as they piled up quickly for the Bulldogs. Thus, it became a focus for Georgia and drastic improvements were apparent on Tuesday with only six total turnovers.
