Georgia Basketball breaks program record for losses in single season, falling 84-72 to Florida

Georgia’s 2021-2022 basketball season may have hit a new low after their 84-72 loss to the Florida Gators. That’s an incredible accomplishment considering that Saturday’s loss was the Bulldogs’ 23rd of the season, the most in a single season in program history. 

Furthermore, it was Florida’s Athens native Phlandrous Fleming Jr. that led the Gators in victory after he grew up a fan of the Dawgs. He even took to Twitter in January after the Georgia football team won the National Championship, receiving quite a bit of backlash for his excitement, forcing Fleming to issue an apology immediately following the celebration. It’s safe to say that after his performance today, Florida fans aren’t mad anymore.

Coming into Saturday’s game, Fleming Jr. had been averaging 9.5 points per game, with a season-high of 20. However, in his home town of Athens, Georgia, Fleming Jr. dropped 27 points, contributing 5 rebounds and 4 assists as well. The Gator duo of Fleming Jr. and Tyree Appleby finished the contest with a combined 48 points, with 11 assists and nine 3-pointers. Florida’s Chris Castleton added a double-double with 10 points, 12 rebounds, and five assists.

After the game, Georgia head coach Tom Crean commented on Fleming Jr’s career day.

“(Fleming Jr.) had a great day. They made 14 threes as a team, and a lot of it’s what I covered in a sense that they’re not feeling pressure on shooting of the ball. We wanted to have Kario (Oquendo) on (Tyree) Appleby to put some length on him. We’re just not doing a good enough job of making them feel us our see that hand extended early enough. We’re there. We just got to do it with more urgency. And I think he was the benefactor of that. He’s a good player, no doubt about that, and they’ve got a really good team. But we allowed them to gain confidence because there wasn’t enough pressure on their shooting.”

Kario Oquendo continued his success against the Gators, scoring a team-high 20 points while also pulling down 6 rebounds. Freshman guard Christian Wright got his second straight start and found success, scoring 8 points while getting 4 assists.

Just a few days after turning the ball over 20 times against the Texas A&M Aggies, the Bulldogs took care of the ball against the Gators, only giving the ball up 10 times, tied for the second fewest in a game this year. Unfortunately, the majority of the Dawgs’ turnovers came at the beginning of the second half, helping spark a 10-0 run for the Gators.

“Yeah, we didn’t have the right urgency,” Crean added. “We had a couple of turnovers. They were unaggressive, right? We lose the ball in the post, and they got some run offs. The first five to eight minutes of the second half or so, crucial. We closed half, even though we were down I think 7, it’s not a big deal, right? You just come back out and we got to go, and we just did not have that urgency with our own offense in the sense of how strong we have to be with the ball. Then the same thing on the defensive end. Just not challenging with authority enough the way we have to when it comes to guarding the basketball when the guy goes into his shot. So that was it. I’ll have to go back and watch the film for a blow by blow. I don’t have that recollection, but that’s why I called the timeout, because we were doing self-inflicted things, right? Not getting our hands up our losing ball when we don’t need to lose it.”

The Bulldogs will be back in action next Tuesday, March 1st, when they invite the No. 17 Tennessee Volunteers into Stegeman Coliseum for the final home game of the season. The Volunteers are coming off of a 67-62 victory over the No. 3 Auburn Tigers. Georgia’s contest will be at 6:30 p.m. ET on SEC Network.

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