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Everyone having anything whatever to do with Georgia Bulldogs basketball performed poorly tonight, starting with me.
Due to a combination of multiple obligations, fatigue, and plain old-fashioned forgetfulness, I was late posting tonight’s game thread. (MaconDawg and chuckdawg rendered yeoman’s service in identifying my error and ensuring it was corrected, by the way.) Due to an unspecified “violation of team policy,” Kenny Gaines and Donte` Williams did not accompany their teammates to Gainesville. Finally, due to causes that are downright baffling, not the least bit encouraging, too numerous to set forth, and so profound and disgusting that decorum prohibits listing them here, the Hoop Dogs were hammered by the 11th-ranked Florida Gators, 77-44, to open SEC play.
The initial eleven points of the contest were scored by the Orange and Blue, as the Red and Black were held without a bucket for the first five and a half minutes. Georgia’s efforts to cut into the lead met with no more than merely temporary success, as Florida held an eleven-point edge with three minutes remaining until intermission, by which time the score was 24-13. The home team added a jump shot and a layup, and the visitors contributed a dunk, ere the opening 20 minutes mercifully came to a close, prompting the following to occur during the break:
Pee-wee game going on here at halftime is drawing bigger cheers than the big boys' game!
— UGA Men's Basketball (@UGABasketball) January 10, 2013
It’s not hard to figure out how this game got to be so ugly at intermission. Georgia turned the ball over eleven times in the first half, and the Gators turned those takeaways into 14 points. The Bulldogs hit five free throws to Florida’s zero, but the Sunshine State Saurians made four treys to the Classic City Canines’ none, which is not an optimal trade-off. The Orange and Blue made nearly half of their shots from the field (12 of 25) in the initial 20 minutes, in contrast to the Red and Black, who got barely more than one-third of their shots to fall (5 of 14). Georgia had one offensive rebound in the first half. Count it, one.
The Fox Hounds managed to score in the first two minutes after the break, though not until after the Gators had added five points to their tally. Five successful shots from beyond the arc in a four-minute span staked Florida to a 54-26 lead with twelve minutes left to play, and, at that point, it was simply a question of how off-the-charts bad it was going to get. Because Billy Donovan is not Urban Meyer, the final margin was a mere 33 points.
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope led the Bulldogs with a blistering eleven points, while the Red and Black’s top rebounders were Tim Dixon and Brandon Morris with a sizzling four apiece. Charles Mann’s eye-popping two assists set the pace for the Athenians. That should tell you all you need to know about the game that left the Gators undefeated at home and Georgia winless on the road.
By the way, today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Richard Nixon. That’s neither here nor there, really, and I’m certainly not trying to get political, but, since you’ve read this far and endured this much, I thought it was only fair that you should come away from this experience feeling like you’d at least gotten something out of it.
Go ‘Dawgs!