MBB Game Notes: Georgia Opens Homestand Against Wofford

Georgia Basketball Game Notes

Georgia (2-4) vs. Wofford (4-2)
Sunday, November 28, 2021 - 4:00 p.m.
Stegeman Coliseum (10,523) in Athens, Ga
Radio: Georgia Bulldog Sports Network (Flagship: WSB AM 750); (Scott Howard, play-by-play; Chuck Dowdle, analyst; Adam Gillespie, producer) | Affiliates
TV: none
Video Stream: SEC Network+ (Jeff Dantzler, pbp; Mark Slonaker, analyst)
Audio Stream: georgiadogs.com
Satellite: XM: 191; SXM App: 962
History: UGA 9-1 (Full History)
Last Meeting: W, 72-52 (11/8/2013)

No.	Name	PPG	RPG

Georgia Bulldogs
Coach: Tom Crean
43-53 in 4th season at UGA
399-284 in 22nd season overall
0	Jailyn Ingram	10.2	7.0
(6-7; 225; Grad.; Madison, Ga.)
1	Jabri Abdur-Rahim	4.2	3.3
(6-8; 210; Soph.; South Orange, N.J.
3	Kario Oquendo	8.8	2.7
(6-4; 215; Soph.; Titusville, Fla.)
10	Aaron Cook	12.3	3.3
(6-2; 185; Grad.; St. Louis, Mo.)
23	Braelen Bridges	13.8	6.0
(6-11; 240; Sr.; Atlanta, Ga.)

No.	Name	PPG	RPG

Wofford Terriers
Coach: Jay McAuley
38-26 in 3rd season at WC
38-26 in 3rd season overall
2	Max Klesmit	16.3	2.2
(6-3; 190; Soph.; Neenah, Wisc.)
4	Isaiah Bigelow	8.0	6.7
(6-7; 200; Jr.; Greensobro, N.C.)
11	Ryan Larson	11.2	3.7
(6-1; 180; Sr.; St. Paul, Minn.)
25	Messiah Jones	9.4	3.8
(6-6; 247; Jr.; Chicago, Ill.)
33	B.J. Mack	12.0	5.7
(6-8; 247; Jr.; Charlotte, N.C.)

TEAM COMPARISON

2020-21 STATISTICS	GEORGIA	WOFFORD
Points Per Game	66.2	82.4
Opp. Point Per Game	69.2	61.2
Scoring Margin	-3.0	+21.2
Field Goal Pct.	.426	.489
Opp. Field Goal Pct.	.434	.387
3-Point Pct.	.292	.402
3-Pointers Per Game	5.5	9.0
Opp. 3-Point Pct.	.326	.327
Free Throw Pct.	.644	.753
Free Throws Per Game	12.7	13.4
Rebounds Per Game	35.8	36.0
Opp. Rebound Per Game	35.2	33.0
Rebound Margin	+0.7	+3.0
Assists Per Game	14.3	20.2
Turnovers Per Game	13.7	8.4
Assist-to-Turnover Ratio	1.05	2.40
Turnover Margin	-2.0	+7.0
Steals Per Game	6.0	7.8
Blocks Per Game	2.7	4.0

The Starting 5...

Tom Crean is one win shy of his his 400th career W, with 190 at Marquette, 166 at Indiana and 43 at Georgia.
Aaron Cook entered the weekend ranked No. 3 nationally in total assists (45) and No. 5 in assist average (7.5).
Kario Oquendo delivered his second #SCtop10 dunk of the season against Northwestern.
Jailyn Ingram averaged a double-double of 10.0 ppg and 10.5 rpg in two games of the Roman Legends Classic.
UGA's seven first-year transfers combined to score 4,782 points at their previous schools.

The Opening Tip

Georgia opens an eight-game, 37-day homestand on Sunday when the Bulldogs host Wofford at Stegeman Coliseum.

Georgia will play its next three games over 10 days before having a rapid-fire trio of contests in five days followed by a week-long holiday break. The Bulldogs will wrap up their non-conference slate by hosting Gardner-Webb on Dec. 29 and then open SEC action by entertaining Texas A&M. Georgia's next road outing will be at Kentucky on Jan. 8.

Series History Against Wofford

Georgia enters Sunday's matchup with a 9-1 lead in the all-time series with the Terriers, including a 5-1 mark here in Athens.

The first five games date back to the 1920s.The next canine contest did not occur until Dec. 19, 2004.

The most recent meeting came in the season opener of the 2013-14 campaign on Nov. 8, 2013 when Nemanja "Nemi" Djurisic scored 12 points to lead a trio of Bulldogs in double figures in a 72-52 win.

Georgia took control with a 14-0 surge late in the first half to build a 39-20 advantage at the intermission and bulged that margin to 25 points early in the second half.

Keeping An Eye On... Entering Today's Game:

Entering Tonight's Game:

Tom Crean is...
• 1 victory shy of his 400th career win

Jailyn Ingram is...
• 5 points from 1,400 for his career
• 1 assist from 200 for his career
• 4 steals from 100 for is career

Scouting The Terriers

Wofford arrives in Athens with a 4-2 record following a Tuesday night setback at South Carolina. Both of the Terriers' losses have come on the road to the Palmetto State's two Power-5 programs, the Gamecocks and Clemson.

Max Klesmit leads a balanced offensive attack for Wofford, which features eight players averaging 6.5 ppg or more. Klesmit's 16.3 ppg clip tops those efforts, while B.J. Mack and Ryan Larson are scoring a double-digit paces of 12.0 and 11.2 ppg, respectively. Isaiah Bigelow tops the Terriers on the boards with an average of 6.7 rpg, while Larson paces the team in assists at 4.3 apg.

Last Time Out

Braelen Bridges and Kario Oquendo led a quartet of Bulldogs in double figures; however, Georgia dropped a 78-62 decision to Northwestern on Tuesday in the Roman Legends Classic.

Aaron Cook and Jailyn Ingram both added 10 points and also notched game-high efforts. Ingram collected nine rebounds, and Cook dished out six assists.

Northwestern raced to a 43-23 halftime lead largely due to connecting on eight 3-pointers. The Wildcats made more field goals from beyond (8) than inside (7) the 3-point arc during the period.

A 7-0 surge midway through the second half pulled Georgia within 62-52 with 9:39 remaining. The Bulldogs notched five stops on the defensive end over the next 1:42 but could not cut further into the Wildcats' lead. Georgia played short-handed, with starter Noah Baumann and reserve Tyrone Baker staying at the team hotel and Jonathan Ned missing the trip altogether due to illness.

"We never overcame our circumstances in the first half," head coach Tom Crean said. "In the second half, we sucked it up. But the first half, we never overcame it and put ourself in a hole. (Northwestern) is too good of a shooting team, too good of a free throw shooting team and too good of a passing team to do that."

The SportsCenter "top-Quen"

If it's a Tuesday and the Bulldogs are playing, go ahead and set your DVR for SportsCenter if you want to see a Kario Oquendo highlight.

On Tuesday, Nov. 16, Oquendo came it at No. 3 on SportsCenter's top-10 plays after his third highlight reel effort of the night against South Carolina State. He stole the ball at midcourt and windmilled home an uncontested dunk.

Oquendo came in at No. 6 on Tuesday, Nov. 23 with a posterized effort. The Titusville, Fla., native, who's 6-4, gathered a steal in the Northwestern lane and drove the length of the floor before delivering a thunderous dunk over 6-9 Robbie Beran.

If you want to rate Oquendo's SportsCenter dunks, you can find the S.C. State dunk at gado.gs/kariosctop10 and the Northwestern dunk at gado.gs/kariosctop2.

Bridges, Cook Among Leaders

Through games on Thanksgiving Day, Braelen Bridges and Aaron Cook ranked among SEC and NCAA leaders in field goal percentage and assists, respectively.

Bridges was No. 2 in the league and No. 36 nationally in shooting efficiency, converting on 62.5 percent (35-of-56) of his shots from the floor.

Cook led the SEC and ranked No. 3 in the country in totals assists with 45 passes-to-points. He also was No. 2 in the conference and No. 5 in the nation in average assists at 7.5 apg.

Crean Closing In On 400 Wins

Georgia head coach Tom Crean is now just one win shy of his 400th career victory. He compiled 397 W's in his first 21 campaigns as a collegiate head coach, an impressive average of 18.9 wins.

Prior to arriving in Athens, Crean was 190-96 in nine seasons Marquette's coach from 1998-2008 and the recorded a 166-135 mark in nine campaigns at Indiana between 2008-17.

Tom Crean's Milestone Wins

No. 1 – Nov. 20, 1999 – Marquette defeats Chicago State, 62-43, in Tom Crean's first game as a collegiate head coach.
No. 100 – March 6, 2004 – Freshman Dameon Mason's three-point play with eight-tenths of a second left lifts Marquette over No. 25 Louisville, 81-80.
No. 200 – Dec. 8, 2009 – Indiana knocks off Pittsburgh, 74-64, in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge.
No. 250 – Nov. 20, 2012 – A day after beating Georgia, 66-53, in the first round, IU tops Georgetown, 82-72, to win the Progressive Legends Classic at Barclays Center.
No. 300 – Dec. 20, 2014 – Indiana tops No. 23 Butler, 82-73, as Yogi Ferrell became the 48th 1,000-point scorer in the Hoosiers' history.

Experience Has Traveled

The phrase "defense travels" is a well-known sports phrase.

For Georgia, "experience has traveled" may become a more appropriate catch phrase for 2021-22.

Georgia's lineup this season is anchored by five Division I transfers, sixth-year "super seniors" Aaron Cook and Jailyn Ingram, graduate transfer seniors Noah Baumann and Braelen Bridges and sophomore Jabri Abdur-Rahim.

That quintet has accounted for 80 percent of Georgia's starts to date as well as the majority of its production in virtually every statistic

D-I transfer contributions
Minutes	1200	711	59.3
Scoring	397	267	67.3
Rebounds	191	127	66.5
Assists	86	69	80.2
Blocks	16	7	43.8
Steals	36	18	50.0

Wofford Led By A former Dog

Georgia fans will likely recognize a familiar face on the "other" bench on Sunday.

Wofford head coach Jay McAuley was a four-year letterwinner for the Bulldogs from 2002-06 and served as a team co-captain his senior season. He played in 46 games in his Georgia career, including a trio of starts, and averaged 0.8 points and 0.7 rebounds in those outings.

McAuley served as a graduate manager for the Bulldogs for two seasons – including the 2008 SEC Tournament championship season – before joining the Wofford staff as an assistant coach in 2008. After stints at Gardner-Webb and Furman, he returned as the Terriers' associate head coach in 2017 and became head coach in 2019 when Mike Young departed for Virginia Tech.

Shooting His Shot

Noah Baumann had an eventual Sunday, November 14. The graduate transfer from Southern Cal proposed to his longtime girlfriend, Mackenzie Moore, beside Lake Herrick at the intramural fields on the UGA campus.

Baumann and Moore have known each other since they were 7th graders at Akimel (pronounced ah-kee-mull) Middle School and started dating during their senior year at Desert Vista High School in Phoenix.

They have endured a long-distance relationship for the past four years.

Moore was a four-year starter on the Miami (Ohio) softball team, batting .279 with seven homers and 66 RBI. She was named second-team All-MAC as a senior, leading the RedHawks to a 46-10 finish, the MAC Championship and an NCAA Tournament bid.

A Homecoming For Jabri

Jabri Abdur-Rahim is from South Orange, N.J., and played his high school basketball at Blair Academy about an hour from the Prudential Center.

Abdur-Rahim was named the 2019 Gatorade New Jersey Player of the Year after leading Blair's Buccaneers to the Prep A state title.

A two-time high school All-American, he missed all but two games of his senior season due to a foot injury. Abdur-Rahim was a consensus top-50 prospect in the Class of 2020, including being listed at No. 38 by ESPN.com. Jabri's uncle, Amir, was an assistant coach on the Georgia staff during Tom Crean's first season in Athens before being named head coach at Kennesaw State.

Within The Win Streak Over GT

The Bulldogs' five-game winning streak over Georgia Tech marked only the fifth time in 196 meetings that Georgia captured five consecutive victories over the Yellow Jackets.

The Bulldogs' longest winning streak in the series covers seven games twice, in spans from 1909-21 and 1980-84. Georgia also won five straight between from 1929-31 and 1939-41.

Cook Tops Millennium Mark

Aaron Cook blew past the 1,000-point career scoring mark on Nov. 16 against South Carolina State.

The "super senior" was eight points shy of that plateau entering the game. He inched past the milestone on a jumper with 2:21 left in the first half. Cook finished the night with 22 points, three of his career high versus Indiana State on Jan. 24, 2018.

Cook scored 845 points at Southern Illinois from 2016-20. He competed for four seasons at SIU, including a redshirt campaign in 2019-20 due to a broken hand.

Cook transferred to Gonzaga and added 127 points for the Bulldogs en route to their NCAA runner-up finish last season.

Cook scored 10 points in each of his first two outings at UGA, pushing him to 992 prior to the S.C. State matchup.

Dalen, Kario Draw Attention

Kario Oquendo and Dalen Ridgnal have been ranked among the top junior college transfers expected to make the biggest marks at the Division-I level this season.

On August 25, bustingbrackets.com ranked the top-25 junior college players moving to the "high-major" level. Ridgnal was tabbed No. 2 on that ledger, while Oquendo was ranked No. 23.

On Nov. 1, college basketball guru Jon Rothstein tabbed his top-10 "JUCOs to watch" that also included Ridgnal.

Cook Among Most Experienced

Aaron Cook arrived in Athens having already participated in 133 games. Cook logged action in 103 contests in four seasons at Southern Illinois, including six in a 2019-20 redshirt campaign. He then played in 30 contests last season at Gonzaga.

Cook's was the third-most experienced player – game wise – in Division I entering this season as outlined in the next column.

As a point of reference for Georgia's record for career games played is 133 contests by Marcus Thornton from 2011-15. Thornton's tally covers five seasons, including a redshirt season with nine GPs.

In addition, Jailyn Cook ranked among D-I's top-50 players in career outings entering 2021-22, having played in 122 contests at FAU prior to joining the Bulldogs.

D-I's career GPs Leaders
Rk.	Player, School	Games
1.	Jordan Bohannon, Iowa	142
2.	Chevez Goodwin, USC	138
3.	Aaron Cook, Georgia	133
	Garrison Brooks, Miss. St.	133
	Jalen Coleman-Lands, Kansas	133
	Justin Kier, Arizona	133

The Hoops Version of The CFP

Anyone who knows anything about college athletics is well aware that Georgia and Cincinnati, which met on the hardwood on Nov. 13, are undefeated in football.

In fact, there were only four FBS football programs that entered last weekend with unblemished records. In an almost unfathomable coincidence, the other two unbeatens – Oklahoma and UTSA – also played basketball against each the day before Bulldogs and the Bearcats did so.

Georgia In Season Openers

With their win over FIU, the Bulldogs improved to 84-33 in the opening contests of 117 seasons of basketball.

That tally includes an even more impressive 38-6 mark in openers contested at Stegeman Coliseum.

Georgia's most significant win in an opener at the Coliseum also was its first. In the Bulldogs' initial season opener in their current arena on Dec. 3 1964, Georgia bested No. 13 North Carolina, 64-61.

Welcoming A Slew Of Scoring

Of the 10 newcomers on the Bulldogs' roster seven are transfers – five from the Division I level (Jabri Abdur-Rahim, Noah Baumann, Braelen Bridges, Aaron Cook and Jailyn Ingram) and a pair from the junior college ranks (Kario Oquendo and Dalen Ridgnal).

Those players arrived in Athens having already scored 4,782 points at their previous schools. That represents the largest addition of scoring by any Division I program for the 2021-22 season as outlined below.

In their previous stops, the D-I quintet of the group also logged 8813 minutes in 404 games played, while grabbing 1283 rebounds, dishing 643 assists, swatting 116 blocks and collecting 304 steals.

Top Scoring Influx's In D-I hoops
Rk.	School	Players	Points
1.	Georgia	7	4782
2.	Duquesne	5	4695
3.	Florida	5	4144
4.	Arkansas	6	4125
5.	Penn State	7	5183
6.	Washington St.	4	3785
7.	SMU	4	3733
8.	Kentucky	4	3538
9.	Utah	6	3175
10.	Arizona St.	3	3132

On The Flip Side...

While Georgia welcomed a huge influx of college scoring from its newcomers, the Bulldogs returned a minuscule portion of their scoring from last season.

P.J. Horne was Georgia's only returning starter but was lost for the season after suffering a knee injury during preseason practices. The Tifton, Ga., native put up 222 points – 8.5 ppg – last season, largely due to connecting on a team-high 46 3-pointers.

"This is such a major blow to us because P.J. was playing so well and showing great leadership as our leading returning player, but more so because he is such a great person and one of the finest people I've ever coached," Tom Crean tweeted on Oct. 20. "He cares about his teammates deeply."

With that, the four returning Bulldogs accounted for only 1110 of Georgia's 2014 points a year ago, or 5.5 percent. Walk-on Jaxon Etter is the top returning point producer with 47 points.

Putting Up Points Under Crean

Georgia has certainly been keeping scoreboard operators busy since Tom Crean arrived in Athens in 2018.

The Bulldogs reached the 90-point plateau 15 times in 90 games during Crean's first three seasons. That's a relatively healthy 16.7 percent of the team's total contests.

By comparison, Georgia scored 90 or more points just 15 times in 387 games before Crean's arrival, or .038 percent of the outings in a span that dates back a dozen seasons to the 2006-07 campaign.

The big numbers by the Bulldogs aren't just a single-game thing.

In three seasons under Crean, the Bulldogs have averaged two of their top-5 scoring outputs of the 2000s.

Top Scoring Averages In 2000s
Rk.	Season	Points	Games	Avg.
1.	2002-03	2138	27	79.2
2.	2020-21	1944	25	77.8
3.	2001-02	2444	32	76.4
4.	2019-20	2428	32	75.9
5.	2006-07	2477	33	75.1

"B" Is For Basketball Player

You may notice on Georgia's roster that the Bulldogs have gone away from listing traditional positions – guard, forward and center. All 15 players are now simply listed as "B" for "Basketball Player."

Tom Crean is a proponent for "position-less basketball."

"That's what they are," Crean said. "It's not valid to call them centers and power forwards and things like that as much with the way that we're trying to play. They're being trained as basketball players, every day... in the sense of how we train with the ball handling, the driving, the shooting – all those type of things. That's big to me."

MBB Game Notes: Georgia Opens Homestand Against Wofford

Next Event

Players Mentioned

Jabri Abdur-Rahim

Tyrone Baker

Noah Baumann

Braelen Bridges

Aaron Cook

Jaxon Etter

P.J. Horne

Jailyn Ingram

Justin Kier

Jonathan Ned

Kario Oquendo

Dalen Ridgnal

University of Georgia Athletics

MBB Game Notes: Georgia Opens Homestand Against Wofford

Next Event

Players Mentioned

Jabri Abdur-Rahim

Tyrone Baker

Noah Baumann

Braelen Bridges

Aaron Cook

Jaxon Etter

P.J. Horne

Jailyn Ingram

Justin Kier

Jonathan Ned

Kario Oquendo

Dalen Ridgnal

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