Georgia men’s basketball falls to LSU in close game, but there’s a silver lining

Georgia basketball head coach Tom Crean has made it clear for some time now: He needs a go-to guy. One who can score at-will, force a key steal or two or make the tough passes through his opponents’ outstretched arms.

Nobody encapsulated that better Saturday night than standout LSU guard Tremont Waters.

Waters was the No. 19-ranked Tigers’ go-to guy during their 83-79 win over the Bulldogs, but checked out midway through the second half. Georgia, by nature, took the lead and looked in prime position to notch a signature win. Then Waters re-entered the game.

LSU promptly went 4-of-4, pulled off a 12-3 run and iced the game.

“Tremont does so many things well,” Crean said. “In the half court, Waters is such a good passer. You can’t be in an over-help situation when he can kick it out for a three.”

The Tigers have their go-to guy. Crean’s won’t arrive until the summer, when highly regarded recruit Anthony Edwards joins the program.

Still, the mood was, dare it be said, optimistic inside Stegeman Coliseum’s post-game interview room. Nicolas Claxton and Christian Harrison spoke positively about the effort. Crean said he felt like the Bulldogs “did better” on defense, though he added he may feel different once he watches the film.

Any positives in a loss, of course, must be taken with a grain of salt. But the Bulldogs did keep it close and had a genuine chance at tying the game with 29 seconds left. That chance fell short, and the Tigers grabbed the rebound.

“We executed the play right,” Claxton said. “I just came up short with the layup.”

Missed layup aside, the loss still signaled progress for the Bulldogs.

Three-pointers fell at a rate unseen in Athens this season: At one point, the Bulldogs shot 70 percent (7-of-10) from behind the arc. The Bulldogs shot 43 percent from 3-point range — quite a bit higher than their 13 percent showing against Texas A&M — and forced eight first-half turnovers.

“I would say that it’s progress,” Claxton said. “Just us playing the part for the whole 40 minutes tonight. But, at the end of the day, we didn’t want a moral victory. We wanted to come out and get the win.”

Of course, this isn’t to say it was all sunshine and roses.

The Bulldogs didn’t force any second-half turnovers. Also of note: The Tigers grabbed 11 offensive rebounds, which led to 19 second-chance points. And 40 points in the paint. Crean said his team “couldn’t guard the dunk (LSU finished with five of those)” and the Tigers scored on more than half of their trips on offense.

The silver lining, though, is that the Bulldogs managed to keep it close numerous times in the second half, when the game seemed to be tilting in LSU’s favor.

When the Tigers went up 82-74 with just over two minutes left, the Bulldogs went on a 5-0 run to make the margin manageable. That’s a stark difference than the display UGA showed when Kentucky came to Athens, when the Wildcats turned a five-point halftime lead into a 20-point drubbing.

It’s progress. Maybe not what fans want to see at this point in the season, but progress.

This story was originally published February 16, 2019 at 10:22 PM.