ATHENS – Georgia basketball forward Jailyn Ingram suffered an apparent lower body injury in the Bulldogs’ 69-58 win over Jacksonville on Tuesday night at Stegeman Coliseum.

The FAU transfer, who was averaging 10.5 points and 6.4 rebounds per game going into Tuesday, went down at the 14:21 mark of the second half when he jumped for a lofty pass and landed awkwardly on his right leg. Ingram was helped off the floor.

“He’s an incredible young man and we don’t do what we’ve done to this point without him,” said an emotional UGA coach Tom Crean. “He’s getting better and if we don’t have him, we’ll just have to have other people that are going to step up and be even more.”

“When you see a non-contact injury, you can’t help but think the worst,” said Jabri Abdur Rahim. “When something like that happens especially to somebody that I consider a really close friend, one of our brothers, a leader of our team, a really good player and a really good person, you never want to see that stuff happen.”

Georgia (4-5) has 10 new players this season, seven of them transfers like Ingram.

The Bulldogs were a man down before the season started when forward PJ Horne suffered a knee injury. Horne was Georgia’s only returning starter.

Ingram, like Horne, played on the front line where UGA has been smaller than most teams in the SEC.

“What I’ve been seeing from Jailyn ... was a guy that was going to challenge to be an all league defensive player with the way he’s grown,” Crean said. “He has made so many strides in two weeks and a lot of it is because of his leadership.”

Crean gave no indication to the severity or the timetable of Ingram’s injury. He did add that Ingram was scheduled for an MRI Wednesday morning.

“The indications aren’t good. We’ll wait to see how it goes,” he said.

The Bulldogs were strong defensively with 10 steals and 3 blocks. Jacksonville didn’t make a second half field goal until the 11:31 mark.

Georgia scored 15 points off the Dolphins’ 17 turnovers.

“I thought we really were aggressively defensively,” Crean said. “Because they were scoring at the rim, we didn’t necessarily want to go to the pressure and give them something uncontested that we weren’t as good at yet.”

An offensive insurgence in the final 10 minutes sealed the win for Georgia despite some dry spells early. The Bulldogs scored 22 of their 69 points during that stretch.

A long 3-point shot at the 2:58 mark by Abdur Rahim put Georgia out of reach for good. The Virginia transfer finished with 10 points, one rebound, and one assist.

UIC transfer Braelen Bridges led the way for the Bulldogs with 14 points along with 5 rebounds and 3 assists. The redshirt senior also helped keep the sizable Jacksonville frontcourt in check.

Gonzaga transfer Aaron Cook returned to action for UGA after being sideline with an illness for Georgia’s last game. He added 9 points, 5 assists, 5 rebounds, and 2 steals in the win.

Georgia will have 11 days off before playing host to George Mason December 18th.