ATHENS, Ga. — Having today’s Georgia-Xavier basketball game tipping off the four-day chaos known as the NCAA tournament’s opening weekend can be viewed one of two ways.
Either NCAA and CBS officials are into torture, making Dennis Felton’s Bulldogs lead off after they had to win three games in a 30-hour stretch to capture last weekend’s Southeastern Conference tournament. Or maybe they’re just wanting to start out by showcasing a team that knows how to start out.
Though Georgia’s improbable SEC tournament run likely will be remembered by the Dave Bliss bank shot that beat Ole Miss or Zac Swansey’s 3-pointer that sank Kentucky in overtime, it’s what the Bulldogs did early that made it all possible.
“We always set out playing hard until the first TV timeout, because we feel as long as we win the first four minutes, we’re in good shape for the rest of the game,” junior forward Terrance Woodbury said. “We always want to come out more aggressive and try to sustain that throughout the rest of the game. I think it’s a very big deal for us to be just as aggressive early against Xavier.”
The West Regional’s 14th-seeded Bulldogs and third-seeded Musketeers have a 12:20 start at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C.
Georgia led all four SEC tournament games last weekend at the first media timeout, including surprisingly sizable starts against Kentucky (10-3), Mississippi State (10-2) and Arkansas (12-5). The Bulldogs built double-digit leads in all four games and needed all those points in pulling out close calls.
Kentucky and MSU managed to grab brief second-half leads against the Bulldogs, but Arkansas trailed wire-to-wire in Sunday’s championship game.
“We wanted to be aggressive early in the game,” said assistant Pete Herrmann, who subbed for a hoarse Dennis Felton earlier this week. “With teams like Mississippi State and Arkansas, that aggressiveness has to be on the inside. Arkansas, for one, had outrebounded Vandy by 20 and had outrebounded Tennessee by 12. We knew we had be aggressive and make them miss, because we couldn’t let them get extra possessions. It was the same thing with Kentucky.
“We also made shots, and that’s a big part of it, especially early in the game. You can battle all you want, but you need to make some shots to keep their confidence and to keep that defense being real aggressive.”
Sundiata Gaines hit a 3-pointer early in Saturday night’s semifinal to give the Bulldogs a 15-4 lead over Mississippi State, and Woodbury had two in the first six minutes Sunday as Georgia built an 18-5 bulge. Woodbury, a 6-foot-7, 220-pounder from Virginia Beach, Va., has led the Bulldogs in scoring four of the past five games and made 11 of 19 3-point attempts (57.9 percent) at the SEC tournament.
“I think we kind of shocked some people with our defense, and we started scoring a lot of points off our defense as far as transition and getting wide-open shots,” Woodbury said. “As a team, we’ve got nothing to lose, so we’ve got to play our hearts out no matter what point of the game.
“It was a good thing we did jump out so quickly, because there were some points in those games where we couldn’t really score, yet we still had a cushion from the beginning of the game that kept us ahead and wound up helping us throughout the rest of the game.”
Georgia had a motivational edge once the SEC tournament moved to Georgia Tech’s Alexander Memorial Coliseum, because the three teams they faced had warranted NCAA tournament bids. The Bulldogs would not seem to own such an edge today, because every team shares the same desire to advance.
Xavier is ranked 12th in this week’s Associated Press poll and is the only Division I team with six players averaging in double figures, so another strong start by Georgia could be imperative. The Bulldogs trailed at halftime of 11 SEC regular-season games this season, and they didn’t win any of them.
“The reason we’ve been coming out so quickly is because we wanted to be more aggressive than the other team,” Woodbury said. “We’ve been tired all week, but we’ve gotten some rest and now feel pretty good.”
Odds and ends
On Dec. 29, 1983, Georgia beat Xavier 73-70 in Athens in the only previous matchup between the two teams. The game was arranged so former Bulldogs guard Vern Fleming could face twin brother Victor, who played for the Musketeers. ... Georgia won its first three NCAA tournament games to reach the 1983 Final Four but is since 4-9 in such contests. ... Gaines enters the tournament with a school-record 257 career steals and with 470 assists, which is 23 short of the mark set by Rashad Wright (2000-04). ... The only No. 14 seeds to advance since Y2K have been Bucknell over Kansas in 2005 and Northwestern State over Iowa in 2006.
David Paschall is a sports writer for the Times Free Press. He started at the Chattanooga Free Press in 1990 and was part of the Times Free Press when the paper started in 1999. David covers University of Georgia football, as well as SEC football recruiting, SEC basketball, Chattanooga Lookouts baseball and other sports stories. He is a Chattanooga native and graduate of the Baylor School and Auburn University. David has received numerous honors for ...
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