BUFFALO, N.Y. — March has many familiar beats. “One Shining Moment” upsets and teams cutting down the nets as they advance deeper in the NCAA tournament.
Georgia experienced a familiar feeling in its first half of the NCAA tournament. For the second-year in a row, Georgia fell behind by double digits en route to an opening-round blowout. Whereas last year Georgia lost to blue blood Gonzaga, this time around the Bulldogs lost to the Saint Louis Billikens.
The final score was 102-77. It was the most lopsided loss of the season for the Bulldogs. Georgia needed a 17-2 run in the final minutes to prevent a 40-point loss.
Georgia finishes the season 22-11. Much like last year, Georgia ended the season on a two-game losing streak, going one-and-done in both the NCAA and SEC tournaments.
Georgia shot poorly from the jump, starting the game 3 of 14 from the field. Only the free-throw line kept Georgia within single digits.
Coming out of the under-8 media timeout in the first half, Saint Louis held a 27-18 lead. It proceeded to go on a 10-0 run to balloon the lead up to 19. White called a timeout, but by that point, it was too little too late. Georgia would never pull the lead back under single digits.
The second half improbably went even worse, with Saint Louis opening the second half on an 18-0 run. Before Justin Bailey made Georgia’s first basket of the second half, Saint Louis had a bigger lead, 35, than the Bulldogs had points with 32.
Jeremiah Wilkinson led Georgia in scoring, finishing with 30 points in the game. He was the only Georgia player in the first half to make more than one shot. His teammates went 0-for-11 from 3-point range in the opening 20 minutes, as Georgia finished shooting 26 percent on its 3-point attempts in the game. The Bulldogs shot 34 percent on all shots in the defeat.
Kanon Catchings had been Georgia’s best player coming into the NCAA tournament. He topped double figures in five of Georgia’s previous six games. But he missed all 11 of his shots on Thursday and did not score a point in the loss.
Perhaps most frustrating for White and his team is that Saint Louis out-rebounded Georgia by a 47-36 margin. Add in that Saint Louis got whatever it wanted from inside the 3-point line — Saint Louis shot 75 percent on 2-point shots and finished with 66 points in the paint — and it proved to be an all-around bad game for Georgia in its most important and what was final game of the year.
Georgia had the better athletes, but Saint Louis had better basketball players. Dion Brown led the Billikens with 18 points. Saint Louis had eight players finish with at least 9 points, including six in double figures.
With the loss, Georgia still waits for its first NCAA tournament win since 2002. White deserves credit for getting the Bulldogs to the NCAA tournament in back-to-back years, something that hasn’t been done since the 2000-2002 seasons. The Georgia coach deserves credit for pulling the program out of where he found it when he took over for Tom Crean following the 2022 season.
Thursday night showed that for as much progress has been made in the last two years, this program still has more steps to take if it wants to keep ascending. Of the five SEC teams that played a first-round game on Thursday, Georgia was the only one to lose.
It was an utterly disappointing night for Georgia. A feeling that seems to be all too familiar for the Bulldogs in March.
Georgia basketball box score, recap
