Georgia’s SEC run stopped by Vanderbilt

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The frustration showed on Trey Thompkins’ face throughout a dismal first half. Jeremy Price tossed the ball aside dejectedly after each killer 3-pointer drained by Vanderbilt in the second half. As the fouls, turnovers and bad shots mounted, head coach Mark Fox simply crossed his arms and shook his head.

They had expected more, but upstart Georgia simply ran out of gas and ran into a hot-shooting John Jenkins down the stretch of a 78-66 loss to the Commodores in the quarterfinals of the SEC tournament.

“I’m upset we lost,” Fox said. “I didn’t plan on losing. We were planning on being here (Saturday) afternoon.”

Georgia overcame poor shooting early and fought to keep pace late, but it wasn’t enough to overcome Jenkins’ torrid performance from long range. The Vanderbilt freshman scored 22 of his 25 points in the second half, connecting on five 3s — and draining three straight free throws after being fouled on another attempt — to seal Georgia’s fate.

Travis Leslie paced the Bulldogs with a valiant performance, carrying the team through the first half and tallying a career-high 34 points, while Thompkins chipped in with 15 — all in the second half.

“I told these guys that if they’d just listen, we’d figure out some way to win a game no matter who we played, and they usually bought in to that,” Fox said. “(Friday), they were just so much more physical than us on the glass. We haven’t been dominated like that on the glass — that might be the biggest discrepancy all year.”

Georgia took a 25-23 lead on Chris Barnes’ dunk with 5:08 left in the first half, but the Bulldogs’ offense quickly cooled.

Georgia missed its final nine shots of the half, and Thompkins remained the poster boy for the offensive frustrations. The Bulldogs’ leading scorer for the season finished the half 0-for-6 from the floor and was held without a point. Leslie, who had 16 in the half, was Georgia’s only scorer to make more than one basket.

The offensive failures down the stretch started with some rushed shots underneath. Thompkins, Price and Ricky McPhee all failed to covert second-chance opportunities in the paint, bouncing several shots off the bottom of the backboard in ugly fashion. Making matters worse, Vanderbilt managed to turn the Bulldogs’ shortcomings into points at the other end. Jeffrey Taylor followed McPhee’s missed layup with a long jumper, then Steve Tchiengang drove a dagger through Georgia’s heart with a 3 following Price’s miss that pushed Vanderbilt’s lead to six. Beal hit two free throws with 17 seconds left and Thompkins failed to convert a short jumper as time expired on the half to send Georgia to the break trailing 35-27.

“We missed about 10 shots in the post,” Price said. “We missed a lot of little bunnies around the basket, and that didn’t help us out at all. We didn’t do good with helping Travis.”

For the half, Georgia shot just 34.5 percent from the field — a mark that could have been much worse but for Vanderbilt’s own struggles, hitting just 35.3 percent. Aside from Leslie, the Bulldogs combined to hit just four of their 18 first-half shots.

Thompkins finally found his game early in the second half, converting back-to-back lay-ups as the Bulldogs opened on an 8-2 run, but that’s as close as things would get.

Vanderbilt’s cold shooting in the first half seemed like a distant memory by the time Jenkins drained his fourth 3-pointer of the night – and third in less than four minutes — with 8:22 left to play. Jenkins scored 12 straight for Vanderbilt, which opened up a commanding 59-47 lead.

“Jenkins is a great 3-point shooter, and it seemed like he just made those 3s at the right time for them and the wrong time for us,” Price said. “Right when we were making our run to get back in the game and get ahead, he squeezed in two wide-open ones and two tough ones, and that was a game-changer.”

As the once ice-cold Commodores drained 7-of-9 shots during a frenzied seven-minute stretch midway through the half, the wildly pro-Vanderbilt crowd drowned out any fans still pulling for the underdogs, and the hope of a miracle run like the one Georgia enjoyed two years earlier in Atlanta slowly disappeared.

“They’re at home. They had momentum. They had a crowd, and they were confident,” Thompkins said. “They played hard, relentless. And that rewards you.”

While Georgia’s players held out hope they might continue their seasons with a lower-tier tournament bid to either the College Basketball Invitational or College Insiders Tournament, Fox said he wasn’t expecting an invite.

Still, the strides Georgia made — doubling its conference win total and producing several wins over ranked teams — was enough to offer some silver lining to a disappointing conclusion.

“I am proud of this team because when I came everybody kept telling me how terrible we were,” Fox said. “I don’t know if we were necessarily a great basketball team, but we beat some people maybe we weren’t supposed to beat, we’ve given our program some momentum, and we earned some respect back. In rebuilding, those are steps you have to take. So I don’t feel empty because we did take some steps forward, but I’m angry that we lost.”