It wasn’t difficult to pick out what went wrong for Georgia in Saturday’s 92-84 loss to Florida.
One quick look at the final stats made the reasons quite clear.
Florida (8-4, 5-3) dominated the Bulldogs on the glass, outrebounding UGA 41 to 27. This led to the Gators' 22 second-chance points, compared to just 11 for Georgia. Neither did the Dawgs help their cause by converting just 13 of their 24 free-throw attempts.
“Collectively, we didn’t do what we had to do,” graduate transfer Andrew Garcia said. “It’s frustrating coming off a game where we played as hard as we did. Everybody knows what we have to do. We’ve just got to figure it out.”
Point guard Sahvir Wheeler shared Garcia’s concerns.
“I think everything was equally frustrating, but you can’t just decide if the ball goes in. You don’t miss free throws on purpose, you always go up there trying to make them and if it doesn’t fall, then it doesn’t fall,” he said. “On the rebounding, everyone can get better, every person on our roster, that’s just an effort thing. That’s just going down there and attacking the ball and that’s something that we didn’t really do today as a team. I think that will be a little more frustrating and we’ve got a couple of days to correct it.”
Wheeler is correct if the Bulldogs (9-5, 2-5) hope to find any of the consistency they’ll need to be competitive the rest of the way.
Head coach Tom Crean was quite disappointed.
During Friday’s Zoom with reporters, Crean bragged on the intensity and effort he was seeing from his players. Saturday, however, that was not always the case.
“I didn’t see that one coming,” Crean said. “That aggressiveness we had against Ole Miss and Kentucky wasn’t there at all. The fact we had only four deflections at the half and were getting beat of the dribble; we just weren’t physical enough.”
The Gators, despite playing without their two best players in Keyonte Johnson and Scott Lewis, had no such problem.
Florida used an athletic front line that featured 6-foot-11 Colin Castleton (14 points) and 6-10 Omar Payne (10 points and nine rebounds) to control the boards, while guards Tre Mann (24) and Noah Locke (16) combined for 40 of the Gators’ 92 points.
Much of Florida’s damage came while in transition, leading to numerous easy looks in the paint.
“We shot 54 percent for the game, but we didn’t play physical. We weren’t active,” Crean said. “Even though it was a (three-point) game at the half I didn’t think we were active. The biggest thing we’ve got to learn is if we’re relying on one or two people to lead us and be the emotional, verbal leaders of our team, we learned a very hard lesson about that today.”
Georgia’s lack of consistency with its free throws has been a season-long issue, as Saturday’s effort marked the second time in four games where the Bulldogs failed to convert at least 54 percent of their attempts.
“That’s embarrassing, that’s embarrassing for the guys missing free throws. It really is, because they were way better shooters than that,” Crean said. “We went 15 of 17 against Ole Miss, and 7 of 9 against Kentucky. We knocked them down. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for that.”
Garcia led the Bulldogs with 17 points, followed by K.D. Johnson with 16 and Justin Kier with 14, including four three-pointers.
Unfortunately, there were just too many second-half lapses by the Bulldogs, who saw the Gators use a 16-3 run to build a 17-point lead of 76-59 with just 6:27 to play.
Georgia trailed 42-39 at the half, but it could have been much worse.
The Bulldogs went over six minutes without a field goal until a layup by Wheeler broke the string for Georgia, which gave up numerous easy baskets.
Of Florida’s 18 field goals, eight came either on layups or open shots from right underneath the basket.
Locke led the Gators with 13 first-half points, with Keir putting in 11 for the Bulldogs, nine coming on a trio of three-pointers.
This and that
• Georgia owns the advantage in games played in Athens against Florida with the 63-41 edge. However, Florida holds the lead in the series between the Bulldogs and the Gators with 117-105 in the interstate rivalry.
• The Bulldogs remain one of the nation’s most balanced offensive teams, with no less than seven players averaging 9.5 ppg. or more. Saturday’s matchup exhibited this power with five players scoring in the double-digits.
• Kier posted a double-figure scoring output with 14 points. He scored 10 or more points for the sixth time this season and for the 57th of his career.
• Reigning SEC Freshman of the Week, KD Johnson, bagged a double-figure game for the fourth time this season and his collegiate career.
• Wheeler exhibited why he is first in the SEC in assists, posting a double-double (10 points, 10 assists) for the fifth time this season and fifth in his career. This was also Wheeler’s 11th time scoring in the double-digits this season and 23rd of his career.
• Wheeler now has five point-assist double-doubles this season, the second-most of any SEC player during the 2000s.
Next Up
Georgia travels to South Carolina on Wednesday. Tip-off is set for 7 p.m. EST on ESPN2.