Edwards, UGA Smoke Texas A&M
ATHENS - You can tell Anthony Edwards wants to win, and he wants to win in Athens.
Edwards’ 29 points and 15 rebounds proved that during today’s 63-48 win over the Aggies. If he didn’t care, he could shut it down right now… take the money from the NBA and move on.
But his actions prove that’s not what he's about. He’s committed to this season at Georgia, and that’s not been an easy thing to do after this past month. The freshman from Atlanta loves to get the crowd going - and loves smiling and celebrating with his teammates when things are going Georgia’s way.
It is pretty easy to tell that he’s still very young.
Things have not been going the Dawgs’ way of late… and there’s been plenty written about that. This team should have more wins than it does. It had two chances in a row in the previous two games to get much closer to the NCAAs than it is at right now. Those are completely wasted opportunities they won’t get back.
And at the start of today’s game, the Dawgs seemed interested in keeping up the poor habits that made certain they would come into today’s game with 11 wins rather than 13. Georgia wasn’t competing on the defensive side of the ball the way it should have. The Dawgs were OK with A&M securing seven offensive rebounds in the first seven minutes of the game.
SEVEN OFFENSIVE REBOUNDS IS NOT OK - NOT IN A HALF.
Turnovers didn’t seem to bother Georgia, either.
The lack of attention to detail, which includes being committed to the little things like grabbing boards and cutters making it easier on passers to deliver the ball, was killing Georgia. Although A&M was shooting about as well as a church-league team, the Aggies were sticking with and even beating Georgia.
Just about the time the final gasps of the season were upon us, UGA started playing like it should. They started scoring. They started getting rebounds. They started sprinting out. They started acting like they cared if they ran a functional offense. They built up a double-digit second half lead, and this time they didn’t blow it.
Edwards, for the second game in a row, created a double double to put the Dawgs on his back. I would love to see him get rolling from the jump, but he plays the way he plays, and you don’t over criticize guys who are pouring in points and racking up boards.
Edwards and Georgia awoke from the January slumber and decided they weren't ready to get ready for next season quite yet.
Good. Sellout crowds like the Dawgs had today don’t grow on trees. There is, even after that miserable January, momentum in the program. At least it feels like it still. People know who Edwards is, but probably don’t know anyone else. Fans in this program can give you their critics of Brock Vandagriff and Carson Beck, but don’t know the Dawgs’ second-best basketball player.
Wasting a once-in-a-generation opportunity of having a top-five NBA Drat pick on your college team isn’t something Georgia can risk. Folks can only talk about Beck and Vandagriff for so long. Georgia needs its basketball program to matter.
This team has a tremendous uphill fight to get into the discussion of the NCAA Tournament, but at least today they did what had to be done to make sure the season isn't over. From a 40,000-foot perspective, this is as much about building a give-a-shit attitude from the UGA fanbase as it is about playing the right way.
Those of us that know a thing or two about basketball can quibble with the details, but Tom Crean is going to have to make sure that this opportunity is not wasted by his team slopping around on the offensive side of the ball and getting punked on the defensive boards. He yanked them back into reality at the half.
“Everyone thinks that we are young,” Edwards told the SEC Network’s Andy Kennedy after the game. “But I think we are not young.”
Georgia is completely young and inexperienced, and you can tell because this group is still learning how to compete on a possession-by-possession basis. Each possession matters in league play.
We’ve not seem them dig out a tight SEC game yet. The wins have been lopsided, and the losses have been, too. Only two of their eighth SEC games have concluded with the margin of victory being within ten points… that’s pretty abnormal for conference play. Most games are knife fights to the end.
Competition doesn’t always have to be about about winning or losing. Sometimes it is about digging in and fighting no matter the outcome. Today was about both for Georgia. They were risking a win by not competing the way they should have at the start. Digging in and fighting produced the win.
That’s the part they are still learning.