Georgia Basketball leads majority of game, loses at Kentucky

Georgia Basketball lost on the road at Kentucky Tuesday night, falling 85-71 to the Wildcats. Despite leading for 23:05 of the first 24:22, the Bulldogs didn’t hold a lead in the final 15:38 as Oscar Tshiebwe took over in the second half to dominate the night. The reigning National Player of the Year had a career-high 37 points and a season-high 24 rebounds to lead all players in both categories.

Terry Roberts led Georgia with 21 points, followed closely behind by Kario Oquendo‘s 18. No Georgia player had more than five rebounds. Tshiebwe was joined in double figures by Cason Wallace (17), Antonio Reeves (11) and Jacob Toppin, who had an 11-point, 11-rebound double-double.

“We’ve had a couple of these where we got away with it against a couple of mid-majors, finding a way to win when we weren’t quite as sharp in the second half. It’s always a topic of conversation amongst staffs and teams throughout a long season of College Basketball. Sometimes you are going to be more sharp in one half than another. I addressed that, we’ve got to find a way to be as good (in the second half),” Georgia head coach Mike White said after the game. “It’s not about holding on. it’s not about watching the scoreboard. It’s about trying to be a little better, and that’s why we watch film at halftime. We show some clips of some positive, some negative. It’s about staying in the moment, the next possession let’s get an A-shot, let’s get a stop, let’s clean some things up. We could have been a little bit better. I know we’re up eight, but let’s try to be better in the second half. So again, it’s not about the holding on mentality. If you do that on the road, good things tend to not happen. Whether that became our mentality or not, whether it was just Oscar dominating the game I’m not sure. It could have been a combination of both.”

Things went about as well as anybody could have hoped for in the first half as Georgia went into the locker room leading by eight. The Bulldogs shot 55.6% from the field, made eight of their nine attempts at the free throw line and only turned the ball over four times. That resulted in a season-high-tying 42 points before the break. Meanwhile Kentucky only led for 12 seconds as it was held to 34.

Kentucky came back strong though. In the first 2:43 out of the locker room, the Wildcats outscored Georgia 12-3 with nine points from Tshiebwe. The Wildcat big man scored and was fouled on what Georgia coaches and players thought should have been a travel. He then missed the free throw attempt but got the offensive rebound, only to kick it out to CJ Frederick for a 3-pointer to give Kentucky the lead and all the momentum. The Dawgs would call a timeout.

Georgia took the lead back momentarily before the Wildcats went to their big man again. The Bulldogs tied it at 55 and at 57 before Kentucky scored 13 of the next 18 to jump back ahead by eight. Georgia however couldn’t capitalize on opportunities at the free throw stripe, an inability that kept them from cutting into the deficit. Overall, Kentucky outscored Georgia 51-29 in the second half and led by double-digits for the final 2:39.

“I thought we got some stops. You know, we got a lot more stops that allowed us to get out in transition and play in the broken floor a little bit. Terry Roberts had a high-level first 20 [minutes], of course. Our poise, our decisions. We had a low number of turnovers in the first half. I mean, we gave ourselves a chance. We still didn’t get to the offensive glass, but in the second half, I mean, they just come out and made most of their first few field-goal opportunities,” White added. “Crowd got loud of course, we made some emotional decisions offensively, never defended the glass whether it be on post-ups, Oscar missing his own shot and going and getting it. Oscar obviously drew some fouls on his own in one-on-one. Post isolations, free-throw misses, field goal misses, they just dominated the glass. I mean, 44 to 31. Our best offensive category as we know is the offensive glass, and we had a couple guys get 1 each. Oscar gets 11, and they get 16. So their strength dominated our strength. We’ve got to be much better than that in the future. Our energy level early second half didn’t match our first half’s effort, and that’s on me. That’s something we’ve got to discuss as a staff and figure out why ’cause we were pretty sharp. I mean, we played a really good 20 and put ourselves in a position to be really competitive at Rupp — a really hard place to play. Second 20, we weren’t the same team. Obviously Oscar and Kentucky had a lot to do with that.”

Georgia, now 13-5 on the season and 3-2 in the SEC, has played its last two games on the road. The Bulldogs return back to Athens for their next outing, Saturday at Stegeman Coliseum versus Vanderbilt. Tip time is set for 1:00 p.m. ET on SEC Network.