University of Georgia Athletics
Georgia Game 1 Notes at the SEC Tournament
March 12, 2015 | Men's Basketball
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About the Game
• For the second straight year, Georgia will be the final team to participate in the Southeastern Conference Tournament. The Bulldogs at 20-10 overall, 11-7 in league play, have earned a #3 seeding and therefore, a double-bye into the quarterfinal round. Indeed, half of the SEC's 18 teams will have exited for home by the time Georgia sees the Bridgestone Arena court on Friday night.
• The most pertinent reason its late entrance is a good thing for Georgia? Six days off could possibly give this team the rest sufficient to regain full health for the first time since early January, as the SEC schedule tipped off. Injuries have beset the Bulldogs for much of the season, the league schedule in particular. Starters have missed a total of 18 games since the SEC opener.
Most recently, Georgia concluded the regular season with a 64-61 victory at Auburn. It was the Bulldogs' eighth true road win of the season, their school-record sixth of the league schedule. Georgia, in fact, had a better road record in SEC play (6-3) than at Stegeman Coliseum (5-4) in 2014-15.
The win at Auburn was Georgia's 20th overall on the season. It gave the program 20 wins in consecutive years for just the second time ever and first time since a string of three straight seasons from 1996-98.
• Fifth-year senior forward Marcus Thornton was recognized this week on multiple fronts for his outstanding season. The Atlanta, Ga., native -- who set the UGA record for Most Games Played in the Auburn game last Saturday -- was named this week to the Coaches' All-SEC 2nd team. Additionally, he was named by the same group to the SEC All-Defensive Team. And finally, Thornton was selected to the SEC Community Service Team, his second straight appointment to this team, which is comprised of one representative from each SEC school for exemplary work in the community.
Probable Starters
| GEORGIA BULLDOGS | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pos. | No. | Name | Ht. | Wt. | Cl. | Hometown | PPG | RPG |
| F | 24 | Marcus Thornton *** | 6-8 | 235 | Sr. | Atlanta, Ga. | 12.4 | 7.1 |
| F | 42 | Nemanja Djurisic *** | 6-8 | 230 | Sr. | Podgorica, Montenegro | 11.3 | 5.0 |
| G | 4 | Charles Mann ** | 6-5 | 210 | Jr. | Alpharetta, Ga. | 11.1 | 3.7# |
| G | 12 | Kenny Gaines ** | 6-3 | 195 | Jr. | Atlanta, Ga. | 11.7 | 3.6 |
| G | 30 | J.J. Frazier * | 5-10 | 150 | So. | Glennville, Ga. | 10.0 | 3.3# |
#Assists Per Game
Head Coach: Mark Fox
Record at Georgia / Years: 105-87 / 6th season
Overall Record/Years: 228-130 / 11th season
Assistant Coaches: Philip Pearson, Jonas Hayes, Yasir Rosemond
Leftovers from Regular-Season Finale
Georgia won at Auburn for just the second time in the past 12 tries, covering a span of 20 seasons...The Bulldogs shot 50 percent for the fifth time this season (5-0 record)...Their 91 percent shooting from the line was the second-best effort of the season and included 13 for 13 in the second half...J.J. Frazier's 3-for-4 shooting from 3-point range was his first +50 percent game since making all seven of his treys at Miss. State on Jan. 24...Juwan Parker saw his first meaningful action (15 minutes) since Georgia's 2OT loss at LSU on Jan. 10...Georgia's 7-point deficit in the second half was its largest that the Bulldogs have overcome this season. They've overcome 8-point first-half deficits three times.
History-Making 20th Victory
Georgia capped its regular season at Auburn with its 20th victory. It marked just the second time ever that Georgia has strung together 20-win seasons consecutively. Tubby Smith and Ron Jirsa guided three straight Georgia teams to at least 20 victories in 1996-98.
road sweet road?
Georgia now has a 8-4 road record overall, 6-3 in SEC games. Both the overall total road wins and total of SEC road wins are the most since 1991. No Georgia team had ever won six SEC road games before the current squad won last weekend at Auburn
One Injury After Another
Getting a healthy roster has been a season-long challenge for Georgia, acutely so during the 18-game SEC schedule. The last time the Bulldogs achieved 100 percent operating capacity was during the first 12 minutes of the SEC opener vs. Arkansas on Jan. 6, before Kenny Paul Geno broke his left wrist in a first-half tumble. All told, Georgia began this week having accumulated 30 injury- or illness-caused DNPs this season:
14 games missed by Juwan Parker (Achilles)
11 games missed by Kenny Paul Geno (broken wrist)
2 games each missed by Marcus Thornton (concussion) and Cameron Forte (flu)
1 game each missed by Kenny Gaines (foot sprain), Yante Maten (concussion) and J.J. Frazier (concussion, fractures).
All of this discussion excludes any mention of Gaines' additional health issues: illnesses that caused him to miss all but four pre-season practices, as well as a shoulder sprain, suffered on Dec. 7, that forced him out of 10 consecutive days of practice.
Free Throws a Georgia Staple
Thus far, Georgia has continued one of its trademarks from last season: getting to the FT line. The Bulldogs rank 2nd in the SEC (15th in NCAA) in total free throw attempts, despite 10 of the league's 14 teams having played one more game than Georgia. Georgia has also made a 515 free throws, 3rd in the SEC and 25th nationally.
For much of the season, Georgia led the nation in average free-throw attempts per game, a stat not kept by the NCAA, and ranked among the top 5 teams in the nation in average free throws made per game, also not kept by the NCAA.
No Substitue for Experience
Four-fifths of Georgia's starting unit comprise one of the most experienced groups in the SEC. The seniors (Thornton & Djurisic) and juniors (Mann & Gaines) began this week with a combined 444 career games played, 270 starts and nearly 10,600 minutes played.
Fox Stamping Imprint On UGA Program
When Georgia defeated Tennessee on Feb. 7, head coach Mark Fox joined a short list of coaches that have won 100 games at UGA. The first to do it was Herman J. Stegeman, namesake of the Bulldogs' home court, who went 170-78 over 12 seasons (1920-31). Next was Harbin "Red" Lawson -- who split his time teaching Phys Ed and coaching the Bulldogs -- needing 12 of his 14 seasons (1952-65) to reach 100 wins. Lastly, Hugh Durham -- considered the father of modern-era basketball at UGA, went 298-216 in 17 seasons (1979-95).
Fox completed the regular season having reached another important marker. He evened his SEC record over six seasons at UGA to 51-51. The significance of this ledger comes with the fact that no Georgia basketball coach with at least five seasons of tenure has ever finished with an SEC record over .500. Durham, UGA's winningest coach, finished with a 148-150 record in SEC play.
Thousnd-Point Club Welcomes Two New Members
In the Tennessee game on Feb. 7, Nemi Djurisic became the 44th player in UGA basketball history to reach that milestone and the first since Kentavious Caldwell-Pope in 2013. Additionally, and perhaps more significant, Djurisic became just the 19th player in the program's history to amass 1,000 points and 500 rebounds in his career. Over the eight games since, he's already climbed over 15 players on the 1K list. Djurisic begins the postseason with 1102 career points, good for 29th place.
In the Bulldogs' regular-season finale, Charles Mann also scored his 1,000 career point and will no doubt climb over a number of people on that list before his career is over.
The 2015 season marked the first time since 2011 (Trey Thompkins, Travis Leslie) since two Bulldogs in the same season scored their 1,000 career points.
Georgia and the SEC
Following are a few tidbits about Georgia's history in the SEC:
• Georgia's all-time record in SEC games, covering 80 years, is 521-745 (.412). That ranks 10th of 12 SEC members (excluding Missouri and Texas A&M).
• Georgia can claim one SEC regular-season championship (1990), one regular-season divisional title (2002) and two SEC Tournament crowns (1983, 2008).
• Georgia has had just two AP SEC Players of the Year: Dominique Wilkins in 1981 and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope in 2013. Other superlative post-season awards include Coaches' SEC Defensive Player of the Year (Rashad Wright in 2004), AP SEC Newcomer of the Year (Jarvis Hayes in 2002), and Scholar-Athlete of the Year (Dave Bliss in 2008).
• Wilkins was the first of four Georgia players to lead the SEC in scoring at season's end. He averaged a league-best 23.6 points per game in 1981. Others to follow him have been Vern Fleming (19.8 ppg in 1984), Jumaine Jones (18.8 ppg in 1999) and Jarvis Hayes (18.6 ppg in 2002).
• Georgia has an all-time SEC Tournament record of 41-52.
Georgia, SEC's Most Concussed Team
There's no question that injuries have played a pivotal role in the fate of the 2015 Georgia squad. Concussions, however, have taken an inordinate share of the attention focused on the health of the team. That's because three Bulldogs have had concussions during the SEC schedule, two as a result of in-game actions, another from an on-campus pedestrian accident:
Freshman Yante Maten was struck by a car while using a pedestrian crosswalk on the evening of Sunday, Jan. 11. He suffered a concussion and just minor scrapes, and missed only the team's next game, Jan. 14 at Vanderbilt. Maten cleared all of the concussion protocol criteria on the morning of Jan. 17, the day of Georgia's home game against Florida.
Marcus Thornton took a hard foul from Vandy's Josh Henderson in their game on Jan. 27 (Henderson was assessed a Flagrant 1 foul on the play.). Though he played another 18 minutes in the game, Thornton displayed the classic symptoms of a concussion afterward: headache, nausea. He eventually missed two games but required at least two more to regain his pre-concussion level of performance.
J.J. Frazier took an elbow from Auburn's Cinmeon Bowers in a late-game loose-ball scramble in their game on Feb. 14. The blow caused a fracture to the orbital bone in his face -- for which he continues to wear a protective mask -- in addition to a concussion. Frazier missed Georgia's next game, a home loss to South Carolina, and needed additional games before fully recovering to his previous level.
Odds & Ends from 2014-15 Season
• A recent tweet from ESPN Stats & Info: Kentucky holding opponents to 35.1 FG pct, on pace to be lowest in a season since NCAA Tournament seeding began in 1978-79 season. In two games against the Wildcats this season, Georgia shot a combined 44.6 percent, including 47 percent in the March 3 game in Athens, the second-highest number by a UK opponent this season.
• The top-ranked Wildcats were outrebounded just five times in 31 games this season. Two of those were by Georgia.
• Georgia's 3OT win over Mercer on Dec. 27 was the longest game in Stegeman Coliseum history (building opened in 1964) and the program's first 3OT game since December of 1990...
• Georgia's win at Chattanooga on Dec. 2 represented the program's largest victory margin in a road game since Hugh Durham's final UGA squad won at Central Florida 83-52 on Dec. 8, 1994...
• Georgia's win over Florida marked the first time in over seven years that a Bulldog team won despite allowing 50 percent shooting (1st since 11/14/07 vs. Grambling St.)...
• In 110 years of basketball, Georgia has played more than one multiple-OT game in a season just twice before this year: in 1978-79 (a 3OT and 4OT game) and 2011 (two 2OT games)...
• J.J. Frazier earned SEC Player-of-the-Week honors in mid-January, largely on the strength of his 37-point day Jan. 24 at Miss. State. The 5-10 (standing on his tiptoes) sophomore claims never to have been perfect from the 3-point stripe -- at any level -- until then (7x7). His scoring outburst was the 7th-highest in UGA history and the most by a Georgia player since UGA career scoring leader Litterial Green poured in 38 points in a loss at UCLA on Jan. 4, 1992.
In that game in Starkville, it took 9 minutes, 38 seconds before a Georgia player besides Frazier scored a field goal in the second half.
The Case for NCAA Candidacy
Following are the most basic arguments in behalf of Georgia's inclusion into the 2015 NCAA Tournament:
• Current RPI of 40, according to the official RPI recognized and maintained by the NCAA.
• 8-4 record in true road games. Just 32 of the current RPI Top 50 teams have winning road records.
• Overall schedule is rated 25th most difficult.
• 9-8 record vs. RPI Top 100 includes road wins over two Top 50 teams and three RPI 51-100 teams.
• Injuries have played a significant role for Georgia all season, but especially during the conference schedule. Georgia players have missed a total of 31 games because of injury or illness.
• 18 of those 30 DNPs were by starters.
• Georgia lost two road games -- at South Carolina, at Kentucky -- without leading scorer & rebounder Marcus Thornton, who missed the games because of a concussion.
2015 Attendance Notes
The home schedule has concluded for 2015 and Georgia enjoyed much-improved support from Bulldog fans. The final home-game average attendance of 7,517 represented a 22 percent increase from 2014, a jump that will surely rank among the nation's largest when the NCAA compiles its numbers in April.
Student attendance jumped 32 percent during the entire 2014-15 schedule, a whopping 64.5 percent during Georgia's nine SEC games.
