Georgia found itself in a familiar situation.
The Bulldogs trailed by two points at the final media timeout in Saturday's game at Ole Miss. Georgia hadn't won a road game this year, and looked to be on the verge of falling short again.
But this time, Georgia changed the script. The Bulldogs (13-4, 3-1 SEC) rallied late to pull off a 62-58 victory against Ole Miss (8-9, 0-5) in Oxford.
"If our guys weren’t connected and hadn’t grown in the mental toughness category as much as we have the past couple months, that wouldn’t have happened," head coach Mike White said after the game.
The teams traded leads throughout the first half. Neither side led by more than three points. Georgia took a 30-29 lead into intermission after shooting just over 35 percent in the first 20 minutes.
Free throw shooting also continued to propel the Bulldogs. Georgia made 13 of its 14 attempts at the line after shooting well there in its last win over Mississippi State.
"When you’re able to get to the line and convert at a high rate, it gives guys added incentive to drive through contact and get to the glass, to play through physicality," White said. "Our guys, for the most part all year, we’ve been a good free throw shooting team outside of a couple of those games as we talked about. We’ll certainly need that moving forward in this league to be competitive."
The back and forth continued through the second half. With 4:19 left to play, an Ole Miss basket extended the Rebels' lead to four.
To that point, Georgia's Kario Oquendo had just four points. But he picked an opportune time to shoulder the load.
A layup from Oquendo cut the lead to two. He then gave the Bulldogs the lead for good with a 3-pointer. Another triple and two made free throws gave him all of Georgia's final 10 points as the Bulldogs won 62-58.
"He showed a lot of confidence down the stretch, looked like a guy who has scored a lot of points in this league," White said. "Really happy for him that he didn’t just say, 'Hey, it’s not my day.' When we needed it most, he stepped up and hit some huge shots. He was the biggest difference and did a pretty good job defensively as well."
The win makes Georgia 3-1 in league play for the first time since the 2016-17 season. The Bulldogs look to continue their early-season success on Tuesday when they travel to Lexington to face Kentucky. Tipoff is set for 9:00 p.m. ET, and the game will be televised on ESPN.
