KNOXVILLE - No Southeastern Conference basketball program is happier J.J. Frazier is nearing the end of his senior season than Tennessee.
Something about the Volunteers brings out the best in Georgia's diminutive guard.
After scoring 28 points in last season's win in Athens, Frazier eviscerated Tennessee one final time, provided there's no SEC tournament rematch. He registered 20 of his 29 points while single-handedly rallying the Bulldogs from a 14-point deficit after halftime to a 76-75 win Saturday at Thompson-Boling Arena.
"He took over in the second half," said Tennessee forward Grant Williams, who scored 30 points for the second time during his freshman season.
Frazier's explosion led to Georgia's seventh win in nine games against Tennessee (14-11, 6-6), which suffered a serious blow to its NCAA tournament hopes and in the SEC standings.
The win ended a rough stretch for the Bulldogs (14-11, 5-7), who had lost five straight league games and been on the wrong side of some close and controversial losses. They played most of Saturday's game without star forward Yante Maten, who picked up his fourth foul with more than 16 minutes left and the Vols storming to a double-digit lead.
"They just gave the ball to J.J. Frazier," Vols coach Rick Barnes said. "They just gave it to him and let him dribble. It's one of the hardest things to defend now is a guy that can dribble and snake it and get here and get there. He's a tough player to defend. You look at him, he had 29 points, but he had six assists. That's a lot. He accounted for a lot of their points.
"They played through him, and we didn't have an answer for it."
Neither team led by more than six points in a first half with eight lead changes, but Tennessee turned a 36-34 halftime advantage into a 14-point margin with a 17-5 run to open the second half. During that stretch, Maten picked up two fouls and Georgia coach Mark Fox - who gambled by leaving Maten in the game after his third foul - was slapped with a technical foul.
Frazier ripped control of the game away from the hosts with eight straight points and a pair of assists to fuel a 12-2 run to get Georgia back into the game.
"They've been beating us," said the 5-foot-10 dynamo. "You look at last year, they were beating us at home. You look at this year and they were beating us here. For me it's just my will to win. I don't really care if I score 28, 38 or eight. I just want to win games, and I think that trickles down throughout my team. They see how much winning means to me."
A circus shot by Frazier put Georgia ahead 63-62 with 4:09 to go, and after two Williams free throws put the Vols back on top temporarily, Frazier's assist set up Mike Edwards for the basket that gave the Bulldogs the lead for good.
Georgia freshman Tyree Crump's 3-pointer with 2:26 left appeared to be the dagger at the time, but Tennessee's Lamonte Turner made a 3 with 47.2 seconds left. Frazier answered, though, by finishing through contact on a drive and converting a killer three-point play with 20.8 ticks remaining.
"We tried to do a lot of things," Barnes said of guarding Frazier. "We wanted to trap him. We tried to go with Shembari (Phillips) on him to get length on him. He kept getting in there. He went by our post players a couple of times. I know he drove by Lew (Evans) twice where he snaked around him, but you've got to give them credit. I thought they showed great poise.
"It started turning at the end of the first half when we had a lead, and even though we came out and built the lead up real quickly, when Maten left the game, he just went to work. We bogged down a little bit on the offensive end. We had some looks that we need to make, but we didn't. (Allowing) 51.8 percent (shooting) is not going to win a lot of games."
Georgia shot almost 54 percent in the second half while Tennessee made just 38 percent of its shots and went nearly six minutes without a field goal, missing nine straight shots during a critical stretch.
Trailing 76-72 in the final seconds, Turner's 3 was deflected by Georgia's Derek Ogbeide at the rim, but what clearly appeared to be goaltending with 7.6 seconds remaining was uncalled.
Had it been whistled, it might not have changed the outcome. Tennessee lost for the fifth time this season after leading by at least 13 points.
"Teams that don't have a J.J. Frazier or a Yante have come back on us before," Williams said. "We just can't allow that to happen, because it's happened to us five times. We just have to not take a step back. We just keep taking steps back, and we're trying to progress forward."
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.