Although it may be too early to predict what the immediate future holds for Georgia’s basketball team, Saturday’s 65-62 win at No. 9 Memphis was a signature moment for the Bulldogs under second-year coach Tom Crean.
For those who are unaware, beating Memphis at the FedEx Forum was a big deal … a really huge win.
To find the last time Georgia beat a top-10 team on the road, you have to go all the way back to 2004. This was the first win – home or away – over a top-10 team since 2011.
Crean summed it up well during his post-game interview with Clark Kellogg of CBS.
“Considering the way, we started, when earlier in the year where I’m not sure we believe we could win, I never looked back at these guys and not seeing them believe that we would not find a way to win the game,” Crean said. “As a coach, that’s the best possible thing you can look at, is look in their eye and have them looking back at you and not having to convince them that they could win the game. That’s huge.”
In more ways than one.
If Georgia does ultimately put itself in position for post-season play, a road victory at No. 9 Memphis is going to carry a ton of weight with the NCAA selection committee.
It doesn’t get any easier for the Bulldogs who host Kentucky on Tuesday night (9 p.m. ET, ESPN) before traveling to Auburn next Saturday. Any future NCAA tournament talk will depend on how successfully Georgia manages the 18 games on its SEC slate.
In the meantime, this is a game the Bulldogs deserve to relish.
The Tigers (12-2) entered Saturday’s contest winners of 10 straight and featured one of the top freshmen classes in all of college basketball.
But Georgia found a way to win.
Anthony Edwards obviously and deservedly gets a lot of attention and scored 13 points with five rebounds and four assists. But the Bulldogs are starting to show this is far from being the one-man team like many were thinking before the season began.
Rayshaun Hammonds chipped in with his fourth double-double of the year (15 points, 12 rebounds), while Donnell Gresham Jr. added 12 points with eight boards, while freshman standout Sahvir Wheeler came off the bench with 10 points and seven assists.
“I feel like my teammates played a major role in the win. Sahvir Wheeler came in, facilitated the game, Rayshaun played great and contributed,” Edwards told CBS. “The bench was cheering us on the whole time and we’ve got a great coach so we did what he told us to do.”
This was a legitimate program the Bulldogs were able to find a way defeat.
Crean warned on Friday that rebounding was going to be a real concern, and although the Tigers held the overall edge (44-39), Georgia was able to equal Memphis on the defensive end (29 boards apiece) that turned out to the key to Saturday’s big win.
“They’re really, really hard to rebound against and that’s got to be our battle cry on a daily basis because of our size and youth. We have to get better at that. When this guy (Edwards) rebounds we’re a better team, too. But we did guard better,” Crean said. “We guarded the three better we guarded the field better. We did a somewhat better job on the glass, but they are hard to deal with. They are very deserving of their ranking; they’re an outstanding program.”
Edwards, meanwhile, might not have had the game that many watching on national TV had expected. But they also learned something perhaps even more impressive about the young Bulldog star – he’s as humble as a young superstar as you’ll find.
“He’s one of the great teammates at his age that I’ve ever been around. He’s a young 18, should be a senior in high school playing at Christmas Tournaments back in Atlanta, and he’s here helping us win,” Crean said. “The biggest thing we want him to have is to understand not only how to win but how important it is for him knowing he’s a winner because he’s a heck of a young man, a heck of a teammate, he’s got tremendous talent basketball-wise and we want him to be an outstanding winner because that’s going to carry on with him the rest of his career.”
Edwards' answer to Kellogg summed that up quite succinctly.
“To me, it’s all about winning,” Edwards said. “I’m a player where it doesn’t matter how many points I score, as long as we’ve got a win at the end of the day, I’m happy. I’m just as happy when my teammates score, so it doesn’t really matter to me.”
In an age where the old adage of big-team-little-me doesn’t always apply, it’s refreshing when an athlete the caliber of Edwards tells a nationally televised audience that’s really how he is.
It’s also refreshing to see how much this young Bulldog team continues to grow.
Crean has instilled a real sense of excitement when it comes to the basketball program. Don’t believe it? Come to Stegeman Coliseum and check it out for yourself.
Saturday’s signature win over Memphis may not be the last one we’ll see.
