After spotting visiting Auburn a nearly 30-point first-half lead, the Georgia men’s basketball team rallied in the second half only to fall short, 71-59, on Wednesday at Stegeman Coliseum. “They just out-efforted us in the first half,” said Bulldog point guard Dustin Ware. “That’s one thing that we always put our hat on is that we’re going to play harder than the next team. It definitely didn’t happen in the first half, but it happened in the second half, so hopefully we can build off of it.” Tay Waller led the Tigers with 20 points, while Ware paced the Bulldogs with 14, all of which coming in the second-half comeback.
The loss came after Georgia (10-16, 1-10) gave Florida a Valentine’s Day surprise, knocking off the Gators last Saturday to end an 11-game losing streak and pick up its first conference win. Before the win, the Bulldogs played poorly in stretches of their three previous games, ugly losses to Tennessee, South Carolina and LSU. “As I told the players, we’ve been doing this now for three weeks and we need to keep putting more consistent minutes together,” said interim head coach Pete Herrmann. “That’s what we did on Saturday.”
Not only was the energy missing from the Bulldogs’ Valentine’s Day performance against the Gators, but the clock had since struck 12 and the calendar had moved ahead several days, as Georgia’s 57 percent shooting from the field turned into a fraction under 27 percent for the first half against the Tigers. Auburn (17-9, 6-5) jumped out in front practically from the opening tip, as Waller hit two 3-pointers to start the game, prompting Herrmann to call a timeout less than two minutes into the game. “The slow start surprised me more than anything,” Herrmann said. “[Auburn] was quicker early in the game. They were more confident. They were more aggressive driving the ball.”
The sight of Mark Richt looking on at Georgia trailing Auburn 28-7 midway through the first half is a nightmare for any Georgia fan, but this horrific scene was on the basketball court. The Bulldog head football coach was among the Georgia faithful that turned out to watch Auburn’s hot start, as he celebrated his 49th birthday. Waller scored 15 of his points in the first half, as the Tigers shot 50 percent from the field. Auburn also beat the Bulldog defense on the boards, outrebounding Georgia 27-15 and 10-4 on the offensive glass. “I really thought they hurt us when we did force them to miss and they got almost 60 percent of their misses back in the first half,” Herrmann said. “Everything we did defensively was poor.”
The Auburn lead grew to as large as 38-9 with 5:20 remaining in the half, but the Bulldogs managed to fight back in the second stanza. Ware and Travis Leslie combined to score 11 of Georgia’s 14 points in a stretch that saw them cut the lead from 17 to six. Leslie put back a Ware missed free throw to cut the Tiger advantage to 60-54 with 4:12 left in the game. Two Ricky McPhee free throws made it 62-56 less than a minute later, but Auburn did not allow Georgia closer than the six points. “We’re too good of a shooting team and got too good of players for shots to be completely gone for 40 minutes,” Ware said of the improved second-half shooting. “That’s not going to happen with us.”
Leslie brought effort off the bench and finished with six points in seven minutes of action. “When I got in I just knew I had to bring a lot of energy to help the team out,” Leslie said.
Trey Thompkins had nine, while Corey Butler and Terrance Woodbury each had seven. The Bulldogs remain in the cellar of the SEC East, four games behind fifth-place Vanderbilt. Georgia is still the only SEC team with an under .500 overall record and remains tied with Western division cellar dweller Arkansas as the only teams with one conference win. The Bulldogs are 1-5 under Herrmann.
Georgia travels to Ole Miss on Saturday for a 5 p.m. contest. The Bulldogs return home next Wednesday for a 7:30 p.m. game against Vanderbilt.
Butler can be reached at jbutler@scoreatl.com.
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