BUFFALO, N.Y. — If you knew anything about the NCAA Tournament but hadn’t seen the first-round game that preceded Georgia guard Jeremiah Wilkinson’s remarks, you would find it almost impossible to believe what he was saying.
And even if you had actually witnessed the Bulldogs’ 102-77 surrender to Saint Louis on Thursday night, it was still a little difficult to absorb. In the tournament that young basketball players dream of one day playing in, in a game in which team members had every reason to play as though their lives depended on the outcome, Georgia played with the intensity and focus of a pickup game at the YMCA.
And that might be an insult — to the YMCA.
“We were prepared well for this game and we just came out flat,” Wilkinson said. “I don’t know exactly what it was in the locker room, like what happened, but we weren’t ready to play (Thursday) and we didn’t act like we wanted to be here.”
It was completely confounding — a team that broke school records for wins and scoring and prided itself on its resilience laid down on the court at KeyBank Center. Eighth-seeded Georgia’s season ran off a cliff in the 25-point loss to ninth-seeded Saint Louis (29-5), a performance that even befuddled the winning team.
“I mean, when I looked up and it was 100-60, I didn’t realize it was that much,” Billikens coach Josh Schertz told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
For the record, Schertz wasn’t exaggerating. With a little more than four minutes to play, Saint Louis led by that exact score. Only the Bulldogs’ exploiting the Billikens’ least-used subs in the final four minutes prevented the Bulldogs (22-11) from absorbing the worst loss in an 8-9 game in the history of the NCAA Tournament. (The record remains 32 points.)
“There’s no excuse for what happened (Thursday),” Wilkinson said. “I don’t even know what happened.”
Here are some snippets of what Wilkinson and his teammates contributed. They were lackadaisical getting back on defense. They didn’t block out. They consistently lost 50-50 balls to Saint Louis. They played selfishly on offense. After falling behind, they couldn’t handle the moment.
“This team’s been so resilient,” coach Mike White said. “We went in and watched some plays at halftime that I’ve never seen us do. With point-blank layups with guys looking and not even jumping and trying to contest the shot — the lack of effort was really disappointing. I haven’t experienced something like that in a long, long time. I don’t remember the last time.”
After getting smoked by Gonzaga in its first-round loss last March, Georgia has a problem in how it prepares to play in the first game of the NCAA Tournament. Losing in the SEC Tournament to No. 15 seed Ole Miss could use a look, too.
It doesn’t erase what White’s team did accomplish — setting the school record for regular-season victories (22) and points per game (89.4) and making back-to-back NCAA trips for just the fourth time in school history. Remember that White took over a program that, by winning percentage, had just had the worst season in nearly 70 years (the 6-26 record in 2021-22 in Tom Crean’s final year in Athens).
There are many programs that would happily trade their defining flaw with Georgia’s, starting with its archrival in Midtown.
But it doesn’t relinquish White from his obligation to figure out a solution. And it’s not just “play harder.” A year ago, the Bulldogs were rattled by a Gonzaga team with immeasurably more NCAA experience and success.
On Thursday night, that would not seem to have been a problem in facing a Saint Louis team that didn’t have a single player who’d played in the NCAA Tournament before.
Further, White acknowledged liking the matchup with Saint Louis more than he did Gonzaga last year. This year, he had a better team. Further, White thought Gonzaga was underseeded last year. His sense of the team beforehand was that his players were ready to go.
“I expected to win (Thursday’s) game,” said White, whose candor is refreshing and admirable.
But the outcome was far worse, and it was easy to wonder how Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks would respond if this were to happen again.
“I’ll have to go back and reevaluate everything we did,” White said.
For instance, because of the late tipoff time, White worked the team out twice both Wednesday and Thursday.
“(Saint Louis) played more fresh, for sure,” he said. “So I always will look in the mirror first with our preparation.”
His usage of timeouts could be better. Against Gonzaga, he didn’t use one until the score was 27-3. On Thursday, even though he said he saw concerning body language from his team as the deficit grew to 10 points, he only called a timeout when the margin had reached 37-18.
White’s conundrum, though, looks a lot bigger than that.
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