ATHENS – The good news is Georgia basketball finally gets to play a couple of SEC home games in a row. The bad news is you might call it Hell Week based on the opponents.
The Bulldogs draw the two hottest teams in the league. Arkansas (16-5, 5-3 SEC) comes in first Wednesday night (7 p.m., ESPNU) having won six in a row and is “playing as good as anybody in the league right now,” according to Georgia coach Tom Crean. Then the heat inside Stegeman Coliseum really gets turned up to broil when No. 1 Auburn and its basketball freight train visits Saturday afternoon (1 p.m., SEC Network). The Tigers hammered Alabama 100-81 on Tuesday night improve to 21-1 and remain undefeated in SEC play (9-0).
So, yeah, it’s good to be back home.
“But we have to play really sharp,” said Crean, whose fourth Georgia team has struggled to a 6-15 mark (1-7 SEC). “Our margin for error is not high, and it’s even less when you’re playing against the best teams in the league. We have to be really locked into what we need to do tomorrow night with Arkansas and stay completely focused on that, not think that home will be something that will give you an edge in a game.”
The Bulldogs, like most teams, do play better at home. They just have one skinny conference win to show for it.
That came last week when a bipolar Alabama team came to town. Georgia used a 46-point second half and made 24-of-30 free throws for a come-from-behind 82-76 victory. The Bulldogs also looked to have Texas A&M beaten before giving up a 3-pointer with one second to play and led Vanderbilt at halftime in Athens.
On the road, Georgia typically has been competitive, but then has almost predictable spans of ineptitude to fall impossibly behind. That has been the script most of the losses, including Vanderbilt on Saturday.
“We have to have a good first half and good second half,” said senior center Braelen Bridges, a graduate transfer and one of 10 Georgia newcomers this season. “We just haven’t really put a whole game together besides (Bama). We played pretty good against Alabama.”
In Arkansas, the Bulldogs will be facing another one of the state’s native sons who escaped their grasp. Razorbacks’ senior guard JD Notae is from Covington. He transferred to Arkansas from Jacksonville and, last season, was named the SEC’s sixth man of the year. This season, Notae is a starter and one of the league’s leading scorers at 18.8 points per game.
Notae will be just one of the Bulldogs’ issues. Most of them are on their own side of the ledger. Georgia’s still trying to shoot and defend more consistently and take care of the basketball and rebound.
The seemingly endless list of fix-its keeps Crean hopping. After trying to cut down on his coffee intake this season, he’s back up to a second cup of coffee in the afternoon before practice.
“The bottom line is I love working with these guys,” Crean said. “They are getting better and every day is a different day. … The bottom line is that they can see right through me if I didn’t believe we could win and I don’t have any doubt that we can. So every day we go in there that is the plan and that is the process. We just have to carry it out in the games.”
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