The Georgia Bulldogs defeated South Carolina in Columbia this afternoon. Trey Thompkins led UGA with 16, while Malik Cooke had 15 for Carolina. Sam Muldrow added 13 with 4 blocks.
This game was a story of two halves. The first was all Georgia, as Carolina played one of the worst halves of basketball I've ever seen, scoring only 9 points. However, in the second half the Gamecocks managed to work their way back from a 19-point deficit on the strength of strong defense. Muldrow's blocks and our ability to force turnovers with our press keyed the comeback. Unfortunately, though, when you dig yourselves into the kind of hole we found ourselves in at the midway point, the odds are against a successful comeback. We didn't manage to convert some good opportunities in the final minutes, and considering what we were up against, nothing less than perfection down the stretch would have been enough.
Carolina won the battle on the offensive boards and ran away with the turnover differential. Usually, when you do that, you win big. After all, we were +9 in FGA and +6 in FTA, always good measures of putting yourself in position to win a game. What happened? Well, Carolina shot the ball very poorly. The biggest culprit was--surprise, surprise--Bruce Ellington, who shot 1-12 for 2 points. At this point, it's time for Darrin Horn to do something drastic with the Ellington situation. Ellington has shown promise at points this year, but, clearly, he's hit a huge slump. Working most of our offense through him is clearly hurting us, and I wonder if the best thing at this point is to let him spend some time on the bench and see what the team is like with another lineup. We've looked good with Eric Smith at the point. Perhaps it's time to go that route and introduce more size into the rest of our lineup. I'm confident that Ellington has a huge role in this program's future, but sometimes it's good to give a guy a chance to clear his head.
Next up is UT in Knox-vegas.