To be successful in the SEC, especially teams in the upper echelon, you’d better value the basketball, make good decisions, and execute simple plays.
When you don’t, the results can be ugly. That’s a lesson Georgia learned the hard way Saturday at No. 5 Florida, as the Gators took advantage of a mistake-filled showing by the Bulldogs to roll to an 89-59 win.
Georgia fell to 14-6 overall and 2-5 in the SEC. The loss was the Bulldogs' fourth straight.
“Our decisions, our carelessness with the ball at times, our ball toughness at times, our incorrect reads … you know, in adverse ball screen coverages,” head coach Mike White said. “Sometimes we made the right reads and threw the right passes, but some is just accuracy. I mean, we threw a couple of passes up into the stands. We just played rattled in the first 20 and it starts with me. We've got to figure out what we're doing offensively because turnovers continue to kill us.”
White’s not kidding.
The Gators scored 29 of their points off 18 Bulldogs turnovers, 14 of which came in the first half.
Unfortunately for Georgia, that wasn’t the only problem.
Another poor outing from the field (35.6 percent) combined with a big night by Florida in the paint led to 44 points by the Gators, who shot 53 percent.
“Defensively, we're way better than that. But when you're throwing the ball to the opposition and they're going and dunking it, that has an effect negatively on your half-court defense, on your transition defense,” White said. “I've been doing this a long time and I've just never struggled this much with the assist-turnover ratio (9-18).”
It’s not just one or two players responsible for the mistakes being made.
All 11 players who made it into the game for the Bulldogs lost the ball at least once, led by guard Tyrin Lawrence with four.
Unfortunately, the problem isn’t new.
“We started talking about it literally in our first few games and some of those wins at home and it started to grab our attention as a staff. We've made it a big deal at times and then I've also, through trial and error, tried the let's just not talk about it for a week,” White said. “Maybe it's too mental; maybe it's this, or maybe it's that. But we're going to keep swinging at it.”
Blue Cain was the only Bulldog in double-figures with 10 points. Star freshman Asa Newell only scored eight after being shut out in the first half.
“We'll continue to do ball handling drills, passing drills, and figure out where we are in the court and who's where and what we're trying to accomplish collectively, offensively, because we're searching a little bit right now,” White said. “Defensively, outside of defending, outside of some missed block outs there in the second half, did some good things. Florida's really good. They're really good. But this game was over early. I haven’t been a part of many of those. It wasn't very fun but we’ll figure it out.”
Brutal was the only way to describe the first half after Florida jumped out to a 51-26 lead.
The statistics were about as ugly as you might imagine.
Sticking out like a snowman in the desert was Georgia’s 14 turnovers, including one a minute for the first eight minutes of the game. To put it in perspective, Florida missed nine shots the entire first half.
“It makes it more difficult for sure. It's a big challenge, but we've got to figure it out,” White said. “It's not like we've got a guy that's three to one or two to one, and we say, hey, let's just let this guy over dribble a little bit and play off of him. We've got good players. We've got good bigs, and we've got good guards. We've got good skill level. But our decisions and our passing ability have got to improve.”
Making it even worse was the fact the Bulldogs were not able to get their shots to fall, including star freshman Asa Newell who missed all three of his attempts.
Georgia shot just 37.5 percent (9 of 24 from the field), while Florida blistered the nets at 66.7 (18 of 27), including 7 of its 14 tries for three.
The Bulldogs return to action on Tuesday when South Carolina comes to Stegeman Coliseum.
