Georgia Basketball seeing bigs battle in preseason practice

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — There were many things that Georgia Basketball lacked under Tom Crean but one of the biggest (no pun intended) was a true center. Now under the direction of Mike White, the Bulldogs have two players listed for that position, both of whom are battling each and every day in practice.

Braelen Bridges returns to Georgia for a fifth season of College Basketball after finishing second on the team in scoring last season and the leading the Bulldogs in rebounding. Bridges was the only Georgia player to start all 32 games last season. Meanwhile, Frank Anselem transfers into Georgia from Syracuse after two seasons with the Orange. He logged action in 32 games last year with six starts in what should have been his first season of College Basketball after reclassifying and joining Jim Boeheim’s historic program a year early in 2020-21. Anselem tallied double-digit minutes in 20 contests and notched a trio of double-digit rebounding performances, averaging 3.8 rebounds in 14.2 minutes played per game on the season.

“It’s been healthy. It’s been a good competition,” Georgia head coach Mike White said about the battle between Bridges and Anselem. “Those guys go at each other every day, and tell each other about it. But they’re close off the court and keep it between the lines and that’s what you want to see. They make each other better. Frank has made Braelen better and Braelen has made Frank better. We’ve got to keep these guys healthy.”

“It’s definitely a hard competition. Iron sharpens iron. That’s what we say to each other. It’s definitely going to make us better,” Bridges added. “We definitely attack it every day. We’ll be scratched up, blood every day. We’re playing hard.”

RELATED

• Kario Oquendo explains why he came back to Georgia under new coaching regime

• Terry Roberts reunites with former teammate, giving Georgia leadership at the point

Of course, 6-foot-10, 6-foot-11 players don’t grow on trees and Georgia’s only got two of them. That means that where they might be able to withstand injuries at other positions, that’s not necessarily the case at center.

“It’s not like we have three or four true fives out there. But we’ve got two fives who we really like,” White said. “We can play small ball, too, with MA (Matthew-Alexander Moncrieffe) or with KyeRon (Lindsay). Who knows how some of these other guys progress, but those two fives have a chance to be pretty good for us.”

Matthew-Alexander Moncrieffe and KyeRon Lindsay are two other additions to the team this year. Moncrieffe comes to Georgia from Oklahoma State where he was recruited by UGA assistant Erik Pastrana as while Lindsay is the lone high school player that the Bulldogs landed in the Class of 2022. Ranked the No. 116 player overall and the No. 18 power forward according to the On3 Consensus, the Denton, Texas native is impressing already.

“He’s coming off probably his best practice yesterday. He’s kind of got some throwback to his instincts, kind of an old school game to him. I don’t know what his greatest strength is, but he’s good at a lot,” White said. “He’s one of these guys at the end of a practice, you know, he may have 18 points and 10 rebounds and a couple blocks. He’s done a good job staying in front of the basketball, defending. He’s just good at a lot. He’s a very good basketball player that has a chance to be a very good basketball player at this level in time.”

“Kye, I think he’s been pretty good from a freshman standpoint,” Georgia junior guard Kario Oquendo added. “I feel like, he’s just one of the guys that I want to talk to. Like, I want to tell him, ‘Alright, if you’re doing this wrong,’ just to get the aspect right. I think at the beginning he thought I was doing a little bit too much, but, like, I think every day he’s improving as a player, and you’ll see it on the court.”

Georgia officially tips off basketball season on November 7th with a home game against Western Carolina to open up the new regime. Mike White is working with a group of Bulldogs that will be fresh faces even to UGA fans with nine newcomers and just five returnees on the roster.