The University of Georgia Men’s Basketball team lost to the South Carolina Gamecocks 80-68 on Saturday afternoon in Stegeman Coliseum.
The Gamecocks were led offensively by impressive performances from Keyshawn Bryant and Devin Carter, who scored 22 and 21 points, respectively. Kario Oquendo and Braelen Bridges carried the load for Georgia in scoring 18 and 16 points on a combined 13-22 shooting.
The Bulldogs came out hot to start the game offensively, converting on 7 of their first 9 field goal attempts as they jumped out to an early 16-8 lead heading into the first media timeout. Georgia looked to pound the ball inside early and had success in doing so as Bridges, Oquendo, and Aaron Cook each got two buckets down low. Georgia maintained their advantage for the next 5 and a half minutes of play, at which point the tide shifted dramatically in favor of the Gamecocks. A 3-Pointer from Jabri Abdur-Rahim at the 11:18 mark would be the only Georgia basket for over 5 minutes of action as South Carolina unleashed a 20-0 scoring run, hitting 3 3-Pointers in that stretch while stifling the Georgia offense with a 2-2-1 full-court press and half-court zone defense.
The monster scoring run was eerily reminiscent of the last matchup between these two teams, in which South Carolina went on a 24-0 run to put the Dawgs away in the second half. When asked about a possible correlation between these two occurrences in a post-game press conference, Jabri Abdur-Rahim commented that “they’re a good team. They like to really, really run, and that was giving us problems in the first half. Their offense in transition was really good, they were getting to the rim and sharing the ball. And when they went zone, they were switching back-and-forth zone to man, so we were kind of getting out of sorts a little bit.”
As it looked like Georgia was dead in the water, the Dawgs rallied at the end of the first half behind a scoring boost from Oquendo, who hit back-to-back triples to stop the bleeding and give his team some life. Georgia finished the period converting on 7 of 12 field goal tries and went into the locker room trailing by only 4 points at halftime.
After Bryant opened the second half scoring with a bucket for the Gamecocks, Georgia had a scoring spurt of their own, scoring 7 unanswered with Oquendo’s third 3-Pointer of the afternoon and buckets from Cook and Jaxon Etter to put themselves back ahead 45-44 with 17:31 remaining. This would prove to be Georgia’s only lead of the second half after Bryant grabbed the lead back for South Carolina with a layup on the ensuing possession. The South Carolina lead toggled between 1 and 7 points for the next 7 and a half minutes as both teams fought hard to create separation. Up by just 2 points after an and-1 finish from Cook, the Gamecocks went on an 11-3 run over 4:40 to give themselves their first double-digit advantage of the second half at a score of 69-59 with 5:50 left to play. Georgia struggled again offensively to close out the game, converting on just 2 field goals over the last 9 and a half minutes of play.
The loss on Saturday brings the Dawgs to 1-11 in conference play as they prepare to travel to Baton Rouge on Wednesday to take on LSU at 7:00 P.M.