Georgia scored 46 of its 77 points from inside the paint and led for 29 of 40 minutes Friday inside McCamish Pavilion en route to a 77-69 win over Georgia Tech, the second-straight win for the Bulldogs in a rivalry now 200 games old.
The Bulldogs (4-0) had four players in double figures in a win that they mostly controlled from start to finish in a grimy, physical affair. Silas Demary Jr. led the way for UGA with 18 points while Asa Newell had 14 points and seven rebounds.
“The way they spread ya they’re very difficult to defend and I thought in the first 20 (minutes) we did a very good job holding an ACC opponent on the road to 19 at the half,” UGA coach Mike White said. “They got it going in the second half and really wouldn’t go away.”
Tech (2-2) shot just 36.5% and missed 17 of the 22 3-point attempts. The Jackets also had 13 turnovers to just 11 assists in what is already their second loss at home this season.
Lance Terry scored 20 to lead Tech. Baye Ndongo added 14 and Javian McCollum added 13 before fouling out.
Georgia returns to Stegeman Coliseum on Tuesday to host Alabama A&M. Tech is off until Nov. 23 when it welcomes No. 17 Cincinnati to town.
“A lot of times I think we’re our own worst enemy,” Tech coach Damon Stoudamire said. “We’re a team right now, this is probably the most disappointing thing to me, and you have to accept it today and it is what it is, man, I just don’t like our mental makeup. I think that’s probably the toughest thing about losing, to me, at times. We’ll work on it and we’ll get better.”
Neither team was setting the nets on fire out of the gates Friday. Tech started 3 of 15 from the floor while UGA was 4 of 12 (and 0-for-4 from deep) over the first 8 1/2 minutes. Georgia finally put together a 9-0 run, while Tech went almost five minutes without a point, to take a 13-7 lead on a pair of Blue Cain free throws.
Tech crept within 15-14 after Luke O’Brien’s 3 from the left corner, but that only seemed to wake up the Bulldogs. Newell’s steal of a lazy pass at halfcourt led to a one-handed slam from the freshman forward and then Newell’s and-1 at the 4:01 mark put UGA up 25-14.
The Jackets closed the half with five points in a row, but even that seemed like a massive struggle against UGA’s blanketing defense. The Bulldogs held Tech to 20.6% shooting, had a 26-20 rebounding advantage and scored 18 points in the paint.
Georgia’s failure to make a 3, going 0-for-10 in that department, allowed Tech to be down just 27-19 at the break.
“We just got to stay true to ourselves,” Terry said about the offensive struggles. “We had a couple things that were working and then we just gotta stay with it. We tried to deviate a lot, but we just gotta stay true ourselves and keep running what’s working.”
After Tech great Dennis Scott officially had his No. 4 jersey retired during a ceremony at halftime, action got a tad chippy with two technical and a flagrant in the first 47 seconds. The Jackets then began to find their shooting touch a bit by making three of their first five 3-points attempts, the last coming out of the hands of freshman forward Doryan Onwuchekwa from the right wing that gave Tech a 34-33 lead.
“I told our guys this before the game, you don’t ever wanna taste your own blood in order to get fired up,” Stoudamire said. “They did the hitting up until that point and then we responded, we answered the bell, but then we didn’t answer the bell after that. You have to wanna do it for yourself. And then you have to wanna do it for your team and you’re playing for your team.”
Georgia had started the second half 2 of 10 from the field, yet didn’t crumble and came back to go up 40-39 on Newell’s two-handed dunk with 10 1/2 minutes to play. That bucket was a part of a 14-0 run by the Bulldogs that was punctuated with an alley-oop finish making it 50-39 with 7:23 on the clock.
Terry tried to spark the Jackets with a three-point gave that got the margin down to 54-46 with a little more than six minutes to go. Terry then took a charge at the 4:46 mark to get the ball back into Tech hands, a play that led to a McCollum layup on the other end.
But UGA responded with a Cain 3 from the left wing and RJ Godfrey layup to get the Georgia lead back up to 11. Tech had nothing close to a comeback remaining in its arsenal from there.
The Bulldogs were just 3 of 18 from distance and missed nine free throws in the victory.
“When you go 3 of 18 from 3 and negative assist-to-turnover ratio as a team — this team has more of a chance to win ugly, especially on the road, maybe more so than the past couple teams,” White said. “I love the fight from our guys. It was a good win.”
About the Author
