Georgia to face Tennessee in 2017 SEC Tournament

Alabama’s bench scoring advantage over SC in their quarterfinal game wasn’t as pronounced as that epic four-overtime contest during the regular season when the Crimson Tide subs outscored the Gamecocks 56-5 in the 90-86 victory.

The ball pressure Hawkins applied, and that Kentucky applied as a team, is something different from what it has shown for much of this season, and in fact better than most teams in the nation can muster. They trailed by double digits for all but 51 seconds of the second half.

The rebounding battle between the two teams was even and Kentucky narrowly had the edge in shooting at 38-percent to Georgia’s 33-percent. Frazier made just four shots on 17 attempts from the field.

The Wildcats, winners of nine straight, had to rally to win their last three games of the regular-season, but forced Georgia to play from behind and never relinquished the lead. “I just tried being aggressive and playing with confidence and taking shots with confidence, hoping they were going to fall”. The Bulldogs did a good job of that by holding Monk to two points on 1-of-7 shooting. Asked why his team kept fouling in the final seconds of an imminent loss to Kentucky, he again recounted the broken-clock fiasco at Texas A&M: “We didn’t get to play till the clock hit zero at Texas A&M”.

Three players are averaging at least 9.5 points per game for Georgia, they are: Frazier (18.7), Yante Maten (18.7) and Juwan Parker (9.5). Yante Maten, Georgia’s outstanding power forward, was playing his second game in two days after missing nearly three weeks. Robert Hubbs III also chipped in six first-half points for the Vols as they led 27-26 at the break.

Georgia standout J.J. Frazier was held scoreless in the first 16 minutes before scoring six to close out the half.

Kentucky’ largest lead was 18 points, 50-32, with 10 minutes to go. We just didn’t beat one of the top 25 teams.

The loss to Kentucky knocks Georgia out of the SEC Tournament and, barring a surprising bubble decision, out of NCAA Tournament contention. Derek Willis added a 3-pointer and Adebayo slammed home a lob as the Wildcats opened 4 for 5.

Georgia head coach Mark Fox on the loss: “I felt like that we made a couple defensive errors in the beginning of the game, which put us in position where we had to play from behind the entire night and it’s just hard to play uphill in this situation”.

The Bulldogs and Volunteers were back and forth all day trading the lead 12 times. Defensively, Kentucky is yielding 72.1 points against the opposing teams. Despite the string of victories, freshman guard De’Aaron Fox doesn’t think the Wildcats have reached their peak. Maten’s first didn’t come until almost four minutes into second half. Adebayo had eight rebounds. Frazier failed gain much traction against the Wildcats and finished with 15 points.

Friday’s game marked the third meeting between Kentucky and Georgia.

Kentucky defeated the Bulldogs, 91-80, in overtime on January 31 and escaped with an 82-77 triumph almost two weeks later in Athens.

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