Georgia Surrenders 22-Point Lead in Loss to Gators

If you need to know how to blow a 20-point second half lead there’s only one team to help you. Georgia. 

In trying to best figure out how to upstage their most embarrassing loss of the season (at Missouri), Georgia built a 22-point lead, had the Gators close to quitting and forfeited the entire lead back to their rivals. 

Georgia just gave itself its worse loss of the season. 

Something is wrong with this team. I don’t say that to get clicks - I say that because it is true. Anyone who saw this debacle tonight knows that it is true. 

Is it fixable? I’m not smart enough to know the answer to that question, but is doesn’t seem fixable this year. 

Teams can go entire seasons and not blow 20-point leads. Georgia has done it twice in a matter of days. Stand-and-shoot offense is something this program has become comfortable with, and that sort of play is the best way to ruin your season. 

Georgia does things the hard way - meaning they take the easy way out. These Dawgs figure out how to play their best, and then don’t realize that it is OK not to play your best, but that you have to continue to fight and grind when that’s not happening. 

There is value in the struggle after greatness has exited your body for the night. It feels like UGA does’t seem to value the effort they’ve put in to the leads they have built, and that can certainly be linked back to youth. 

ESPN says that this is the second-biggest collapse of the season so far in college basketball. We’ve seen this before. We shouldn’t see it again, but it shouldn't have happened the first time. 

How can a team be this up and down? Florida can ask the same question. There were times Wednesday night that the Gators simply were not competing - they were just out there in uniforms running around. 

I’m not sure I have any answers for Georgia’s quick sand act, and I have been around the basketball block for a while. Tom Crean has as well, and he’s going to have to answer for this. All of the good will he’s built up with the marketing he’s done - often by himself by foot - is being wasted. 

I guess that’s natural, but the shame of it all is that folks will hold it against him and his program for a while. Actually, they will hold it against him forever because this is what we do. This will always be in the back of folks’ minds when they figure out the season for not supporting or watching the team. 

That’s the real shame in all of this. 

Had Georgia gone down to Florida and lost to the Gators by a margin under the spread (UF -9), no one would have thought about it. Instead, they figured out the most spectacular way of losing and did that. 

Fans will only take having the rug pulled out underneath them so many times. Needless to say, if Kirby Smart and the Bulldogs forfeit another double-digit lead to Alabama this fall or winter there will hell to pay. 

But when it happens with basketball apathy sets in, and that’s far, far more dangerous than having hell to pay. You want folks angry after losses - not listless. UGA fans will just revert to talking about recruiting or whatever passes the time until a ball is snapped rather than swished. 

Not sure if you saw it, but UGA signed the No. 1 recruiting class in the country today… 

It’s a shame because all of the pieces are gathering to make this program good. But fans will only take so much of this madness. And any excuse UGA fans have not to watch is the excuse they will use to do just that.