One Bulldogs men’s basketball team had fun on Saturday night and the other… not so much.
In fact, not much if anything went right for the Hoop Dawgs on Saturday in Starkville. Georgia took to the road after dominating Tennessee in Athens this past Wednesday, 80-63, only to have the tables turned on them by Mississippi State in a 32-point loss to the other Bulldogs in the SEC, 91-59.
The 32-point loss is not the worst of Tom Crean’s short stint as the UGA men’s basketball head coach. Last season, in January, Georgia took a 46-point loss on the chin to Tennessee on the road in Knoxville. So… what exactly went wrong?
Mississippi State jumped out to a 10-2 lead to start the game, but Georgia would keep fighting and took the lead, 15-14, with 12:52 to go in the first half. It would be short-lived, however, as UGA fell behind and went into the locker room down 42-31 at the half. The second-half didn’t go much better for Crean’s Bulldogs.
As the score would indicate, Georgia just couldn’t find any rhythm on offense and shot only 39.3% on the night while Mississippi State had the hot hand shooting 61.7%. Those missed shots for UGA were only compounded by the fact that State outrebounded the Hoop Dawgs on both the offensive and defensive boards to a tune of 40-2. Mississippi State had over double the second-chance points, 15, to Georgia’s, 6.
The Starkville Hounds’ Reggie Perry was a thorn in UGA’s side all night as he turned in another double-double posting 22 points and 12 rebounds. For Georgia, Anthony Edwards led the team with 19 points but only hit 1 out of 8 three-pointers which led to 5-of-16 shooting from the field for the true freshman.
Probably the lone positive on the night was that UGA freshman Sahvir Wheeler was able to play for 21 minutes after injuring his ankle versus Tennessee.
CLICK HERE for the complete boxscore with both player and team stats.
With the loss, the Georgia men move to 11-6 on the year and 1-3 in conference play. Now, the challenge for head coach Tom Crean is to rally his Hoop Dawgs as they have to travel to hostile Rupp Arena in Lexington to face a Kentucky team they opened SEC play with just a couple of weeks ago, a bitter 79-69 loss to the Wildcats in Athens.
You can catch the Georgia men versus Kentucky on Tuesday, January 21st at 7:00 p.m. ET on ESPN.