After last leaving the Stegeman Coliseum court back on Dec. 9 with a win over Virginia Tech, the Georgia Bulldogs retuned to action on Saturday without leading scorer Terrance Woodbury and needed overtime and a couple of answered prayers courtesy of Zac Swansey to dispatch Wofford, 74-73.
First, a Swansey 3-pointer tied the game at 71-71 with under :30 left in overtime. Later, Swansey went coast-to-coast and hit a pull-up 3 to give the Bulldogs the win as time expired. “I had two guys going at me and I got around the first one,” Swansey said. “I then tried to get into the lane, but I looked at the clock and there was only one second left, so I pulled up and it went in.”
At first it appeared as if Georgia (7-3) would not need overtime to get the win, as the Bulldogs jumped on the Terriers early, taking an 11-5 lead on a Howard Thompkins 3-pointer with less than 15:00 left to go in the first half. A Dustin Ware 3, followed by a Ware feed to Chris Barnes, made it 20-7 and the rout appeared to be on. “Once we got up on them, we were expecting them to back off and pack up and be ready to leave,” said Thompkins, who led Georgia with 15 points. “Wofford is a fighting team and they never gave up.”
The Terriers went on a 13-3 run to end the first half and trailed Georgia 34-30 at the intermission. Wofford (4-4) continued to keep pace with the Bulldogs in the second half thanks to the shooting of Junior Salters, who finished with a game-high 20 points. A Salters 3-pointer gave Wofford a 42-40 lead with under 16:00 left to play and the two teams went back and forth until the Bulldogs found a 3-point marksman of their own.
Two Ricky McPhee 3-pointers gave Georgia leads of 50-48 and 57-54 and his 2-point jumper with a little over 4:00 left to play put the Bulldogs up 59-54. “Ricky gave us a major, major lift of the bench,” said Georgia head coach Dennis Felton. “He was tough defensively and he also made some great shots.”
“I got myself open for a couple of shots and I started to get in a rhythm out there and my shots kept falling,” said McPhee, who finished with 11 points in 23 minutes, including playing all of the overtime period.
Wofford still would not go away and led the Bulldogs by one point before a Thompkins 3-pointer gave Georgia a 62-60 lead with :25 left to play. The Terriers answered with two free throws from Brad Loesing and Thompkins missed a last second 3-point attempt, sending the game into overtime.
Woodbury, who averaged 12.2 points over the team’s first nine games, missed the contest because of an ankle injury. The Bulldogs used a balanced effort to fill in for his production, as Georgia got 32 points from its bench, including the 11 from McPhee and 12 from Jeremy Price. Price also had five rebounds. “We knew we had to pick up Terrance’s slack. “We miss his leadership, hard work, defensive ability and scoring,” Thompkins said. “It’s a team effort. It takes the five that are out there on the floor to win a game and that’s what we did.”
Travis Leslie got the start for Woodbury and finished with four points and four rebounds. Swansey finished with 11 points and a team-high six assists. The Bulldogs return to action on Monday when they host Texas A&M Corpus-Christi at 7:30 p.m.
Butler can be reached at jbutler@scoreatl.com.
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