ATHENS – It wasn’t the fast-running, high-scoring outing we’ve come to expect from Georgia under Tom Crean, but victory was satisfaction enough for the Bulldogs and their beleaguered coach.
Georgia used a second-half surge orchestrated by Gonzaga transfer Aaron Cook to defeat Florida International 58-51 in the season opener Tuesday night at Stegeman Coliseum. Cook, a 6-foot-2 point guard from St. Louis, led the Bulldogs in scoring with 10 points and added eight assists, six rebounds and three steals to help overtake the Panthers.
Florida International led by seven points in the first half and was ahead by two points with 10:04 to play. But Georgia would outscore its visitors 18-9 from then on.
“It certainly amped up in the second half with our defense, even when our shooting wasn’t going the way that it needed to be,” said Crean, in his fourth season as Georgia’s coach. “We had three stops in a row eight times, which is a huge number for us. It’s right up there with deflections. We had 42 deflections. Aaron Cook had 10. We had three stops in a row eight times. That’s big.”
Georgia never could shake the pesky Panthers (0-1). They got within three, 51-48, on Tevin Brewer’s high-arcing floater off the glass with 2:53 to play. But after trading missed baskets, Jaxon Etter’s reverse layup off Cook’s backhanded feed gave Georgia some breathing room with 1:54 to go. Then Jailyn Ingram, another transfer and one of 10 newcomers, made a fadeaway jump shot from the lane to put the game out of reach at 55-48 with a minute to go.
The Bulldogs’ play in the second half was a welcome relief after the falling behind by as many as seven in the first half and trailing 27-22 at intermission. But Georgia came out of the locker room and quickly put together a 12-0 run. The Bulldogs lost the lead briefly only to retake it for good after Cook was the victim of a flagrant foul and scored the first two of a four-point possession. Georgia was 15-of-21 from the foul line, while the Panthers were 2-for-4.
“Our coaches made a really good adjustment going into the second half,” Cook said. “We knew that they liked to drive and kick, so they told us to stay on the shooters and really force them to take tough shots. Once we locked in on that, our defense started our offense and that’s what got everything going.”
Senior Braelen Bridges, sophomore Kario Oquendo and Etter each tallied nine points, with Bridges hauling in a team-high eight boards. The Bulldogs shot 35.1% for the night, but improved to 41.4% in the second half. Georgia out-rebounded the Panthers 46-36.
It wasn’t the free-flowing offensive basketball normally associated with Crean’s teams. The Bulldogs averaged 77.5 points per game last season, their second-highest scoring average of the 2000s and the most since 2002-03. UGA’s average of 75.9 ppg in 2019-20 gives Crean’s teams two of UGA’s top-5 scoring averages in the 22 seasons completed in the 2000s.
“Our shooting will get better, but tonight it was our defense,” Crean said. “It was our rebounding. They are a very good team, a very good 3-point shooting team. Our guys, for the most part, did a pretty good job of the adjustments we were trying to make to guard them over the last few days.”
Next up for Georgia is a trip to Cincinnati to take on the Bearcats on Saturday (7 p.m., ESPN-Plus). In their first season under coach Wes Miller, the Bearcats (1-0) took down Evansville 65-43 at Fifth Third Arena. In December, the Bulldogs bested the Bearcats 83-68 at Stegeman Coliseum.
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