ATHENS — There were very few bright spots offensively during Georgia’s 78-62 win over NC Central on Monday.

The Bulldogs shot just 44% from the field, made just six of their 26 from shots from three and missed 10 free throws.

“You don’t shoot it well when you don’t play well,” Georgia coach Mike White said postgame. “When you’re thinking about the right stuff, you lose yourself in the game, you execute, you run Georgia’s offense, you defend Georgia’s defense, guys fall into making shots. I have no idea why. That’s just how the game works.”

But even on a night when nothing seemed to go right, junior forward Kanon Catchings proved just how important he is to Georgia.

Catchings comes into this season as one of Georgia’s returning stars after averaging 11.6 points in 32 games a year ago. Throughout the preseason, he led the Bulldogs in scoring across three exhibitions with 43 points.

He set the pace offensively for Georgia on Monday with a team-high 16 points on 5-of-10 shooting. He add three rebounds, one assist, a block and a steal in the Georgia win.

Catchings wasn’t immune from the poor shooting struggles, as all five of his missed field goals came from 3-point range. He made just 2 of his 7 attempts.

“I’d say a little bit of good looks, a little bit of some poor shots, but we definitely got better than 6-for-26 for sure,” Catchings said.

After scoring a quick 11 points to open the game, Catchings didn’t score for the first 10 minutes of the second half.

White made it clear afterward that the lack of second-half production does not just fall on Catchings, but the rest of the team for not creating more open chances for him.

“He’s such a talented scorer. He’s got an ability to create and make hard shots with a live bounce,” White said. “He’s got to be able to complement that with scoring off of screens, with scoring off of ball screens, with making ball-screen reads for his teammates. We’ve got to just continue to expand his game, and his teammates have to help him do that. He’s got to wait on a screen; we’ve got to sprint to a screen. We just didn’t collectively do a very good job of that.”

The Brownsburg, Indiana native admitted he was surprised by how Georgia played on Monday based on how he and his teammates looked in practice.

“We practice better than we played up to this point,” Catchings said. “But I mean, I feel like we have practice and we have time to get it together for next game.”

Georgia will get the day off on Tuesday before getting back at it on Wednesday ahead of Friday’s matchup against the Presbyterian Blue Hose (0-1) at 7 p.m. ET.