Georgia prevailed for the fifth-straight time in a Saturday home game against a conference foe with a 78-76 win over rival Florida. “That was a hard-fought league game,” said head coach Mark Fox. “We beat an excellent basketball team, a team that I thought today coming in was playing as well if not better than anybody in the league.”
The win gives UGA a 6-0 record in Saturday games played in the state of Georgia and a 5-0 record in home Saturday games against SEC opposition.
“It’s always great to beat Florida,” exclaimed freshman guard Demario Mayfield, echoing the sentiments of the Bulldog Nation.
Georgia watched as a commanding 45-30 halftime edge was dwindled to just two with over a minute remaining. However, Florida’s Erving Walker misfired on a three-pointer with 50.1 left and then center Albert Jackson blocked a pass from Dan Werner with less than a second remaining to preserve the narrow Georgia victory.
“They came at us really strong in the second half,” said Fox. “We feel fortunate to win but we feel good about winning too.”
The Bulldog bench contributed some valuable minutes as well as scoring 31 points to buoy a drained UGA team coming off a tough overtime loss at Vandy on Thursday night. Jeremy Price led the reserves with 13 points while Ebuka Anyaorah added nine, including two three-pointers.
“The coaches let us know that the bench really needs to step up,” explained Anyaorah. “The starters get exhausted and they’ve really been beat up. It’s the end of the season so the coaches talked to us and told us that we (the bench) has to step up.”
Fox said that he felt that the team was a bit tired today coming into the game
“Our bench tonight really helped us,” said Fox. “I told them before the game (that) we’re gonna play a lot of players tonight. I thought today in our shoot-around (that) we were extremely fatigued.”
“We made a point to play a lot of guys and foul trouble probably forced us to play them a little earlier than we were planning on, but those kids did a nice job.”
Among the Georgia starters, Thompkins led the Dawgs with 20 points while Travis Leslie added 12. Once again, Georgia led their opponent in field goal percentage (57.4%-46.8%) and rebounding (33-26) as has been the case for most conference games in Athens.
The Gators got a game-high 29 from star forward Chandler Parsons, but saw starter Alex Tyus shut out completely from scoring. Tyus came in averaging 12.3 points per game.
Florida lost for the first time in four games and exits Athens tied with Tennessee for third place in the Eastern Division at 9-5.
“Give Georgia a lot of credit,” said Gator coach Billy Donovan. “They played a great game…Mark’s team is playing really well and he’s done a great job. They showed a lot of resilience after a tough road loss on Thursday.”
UGA led by double digits for most of the second half, but saw Florida creep to within two with 5:38 left in the game. However, Fox’s squad refused to relinquish the lead as point guard Dustin Ware nailing a crucial three to push the lead back to five.
Florida then made a final push and narrowed the gap to two on a Kenny Boynton lay-in with 1:31 left.
Georgia (13-14, 5-9) will host No. 2 Kentucky on Wednesday in Athens. The Dawgs narrowly lost to the Cats in the SEC opener for both clubs earlier this season in Lexington. It will be Senior Night in Stegeman Coliseum and Georgia will honor seniors Ricky McPhee, Albert Jackson, and Tyler Whatley.
Loading ...
