What UGA Basketball Learned in the Loss to No. 1 Auburn
ATHENS - UGA basketball game into Saturday 0-19 all time against No. 1 teams in the country. It left 0-20.
Mike White’s Bulldogs, just ranked for the first time in years this week, lost 70-68 to No. 1 Auburn in Athens. The difference in the game? Auburn is now expert at the bare-knuckles fighting that you have to participate in during SEC play.
UGA is just getting used to it.
Consider what Bruce Pearl has done at Auburn. The Tigers are one of the few programs in the SEC that have as bad a history as Georgia in the sport. After three losing seasons at Auburn, which mimicked much of Auburn basketball as we’d known it, Pearl has turned the Tigers into one of the nation’s best programs. In each season Auburn has been eligible, the Tigers have qualified for the NCAAs.
They’ve gone to a Final Four. They’ve won the SEC. They’ve been ranked No. 1 in the country. That’s what Auburn has done, and that’s a heck of an accomplishment. People at Auburn care about basketball. I’m certain I never thought I would type that sentence.
Hundreds of years of academics and dozens of decades of football prove that anything Auburn does, Georgia can do better. That will be a climb in basketball as it stands right now, but it has been the case through the years with these two schools.
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Again, and I am going to continue to write about this, Georgia should be great in basketball. Auburn certainly is. Saturday is a reminder that greatness can happen if you plan for it and go for it. It also underscores that greatness is not an easy thing to achieve. It is not easy. This was not an easy win for Auburn… it was an SEC road win. Those are not easy at all.
Neither is winning in the NCAAs.
For all of the success at Auburn, there have been far too many missed opportunities in the NCAAs for a program as good as Auburn. The Tigers have not gotten to a Sweet 16 since being there on the way to the Final Four in 2019.
Everyone has their own struggles. Today for the Dawgs it was about consistency - something UGA didn’t have. The Dawgs missed more free throws than they made - that’s a Georgia problem… Auburn can’t scheme it up that you miss free throws. Just when Georgia didn’t need to commit a turnover it did. Just when it needed to grab a board to close out an Auburn possession it didn’t.
Auburn made game-winning plays. Georgia did that often, but not often enough. This wasn’t surprising. Today showed how far Georgia has come - the last time it played a No. 1 team in the country it lost by 49 points (forty-nine!!!!!!) - and how far it has to go.
A close loss to the No. 1 team in the country should not be celebrated.
The Bulldogs learned Saturday that playing well most of the game isn’t going to be good enough to take out a team that’s probably going to be a No. 1 or No. 2 seed. You have to play well all of the time. All details matter. Taking care of the ball (UGA only had 12 turnovers during the game - hardly a huge problem - but everything adds up) matters all of the time.
This isn’t about having players capable of winning at a high level - that’s there. This isn’t about interest from fans - that’s there, too. This is now about playing the best you can all of the time in each trip down the court.
Georgia had a two shots in the final moments of the game to send it to overtime. Didn’t happen.
There is no shame in losing. This is a long season, and UGA has proven it is wiling to fight and compete. That’s a huge thing. That’s step one. Now this young program is going to have to stack multiple steps on top of that to grow into what it can be.