Georgia’s Sahvir Wheeler sparks offense again, plus more observations from win over GS

It’s not even halfway through the season, yet it’s clear as day: freshmen will determine how the season unfolds for Georgia.

Monday night against Georgia Southern in Stegeman Coliseum was just the latest example. A trio of first-year players — Anthony Edwards, Toumani Camara and Sahvir Wheeler — carried the Bulldogs (8-3) to a 73-64 win over Georgia Southern (8-5).

Wheeler sparked a second-half comeback that the Bulldogs desperately needed. They entered halftime down by three and trailed by as many as seven points in the second period.

As the game wore on, it was Edwards and Camara that took over, leading the Bulldogs to their second win over an in-state rival this season.

Here are four observations from the game:

Sahvir Wheeler sparks the offense again

Just like he did against SMU on Friday, Wheeler started the second half in place of Donnell Gresham. Once again, he got things rolling.

First, he played in the middle of the zone against Georgia Southern’s zone defense. Acting as a distributor, he tried to get the Bulldog offense rolling from an unconventional spot, especially for a smaller player (although Edwards said he sees Wheeler as 6-foot-5 at times the way he plays).

“He did a great job controlling the game, distributing the ball, just everything,” Edwards said.

Then Wheeler got things going in transition. A rebound and sprint to the hoop for a layup tied the game at 53, and a pull-up jumper on the next possession gave Georgia its first lead of the second half at 55-53 at the end of a 6-0 run.

Wheeler wound up leading the team in minutes and ended the night with eight points and seven assists, once again performing well in a close game down the stretch. If he keeps this up, it will be hard for Tom Crean to keep him out of the starting lineup.

Led by Edwards, Georgia starts hot

After a sluggish start against SMU, Georgia started this game scalding hot.

The Bulldogs made five of their first seven shots and scored 12 points in the first 4:18 of the game. Edwards hit his first three shots for seven early points.

The offense later slowed, mainly because of the Georgia Southern’s zone that Georgia had prepared for but still couldn’t find much success against.

“We get off to a great start and all of a sudden we look like we were wearing cement boots and we’d never seen a zone,” Crean said. “We had very little intelligence of how we were going to attack it and play. We were just standing around, and that wasn’t what we’d practiced.”

But the coaching staff continued tinkering with the offense throughout the game, doing just enough for the Bulldogs to come out victorious.

Toumani Camara provides offense down low

In the everlasting search for quality big play, Camara had the best game of his collegiate career against the Eagles.

The freshman finished with 16 points and 7 rebounds, both career highs. He finished a perfect 8-of-8 from the field, getting the vast majority of his points from dunks produced by him cutting to the rim without the ball.

After the game, Edwards smiled and nodded his head when his “best friend” was asked about his career performance. Camara was more passive, saying today was just “his day,” but this isn’t the first time his head coach has been pleased with his performance.

“He practices well, oh yeah,” Crean said. “Toumani plays extremely hard, and his statistics have not matched up with how hard he plays. Tonight, they did. Oh absolutely, he wouldn’t have been in the lineup if he wasn’t producing and doing a lot of different things.”

Off-ball movement is something Crean stresses constantly. It’s still early, but Camara would be a huge boost to this team if he continues to build on his performance against Georgia Southern.

Anthony Edwards shows up down the stretch

Edwards cooled off after fouls sidetracked his torrid start. After exiting with seven points in the opening minutes of action, he scored just three more in the first half to end the opening period with 10.

But after halftime, with his team trying to fight off an in-state rival, Edwards came to play. He scored 13 points in the second half, finishing with 23 and teaming up with Wheeler to form a formidable freshman duo that the Eagles had no answers for.

With Georgia leading 60-61, Edwards took over. He scored the game’s next eight points, stretching the lead to nine and putting the game out of reach.

“I can’t really say I took over the game,” Edwards said. ”My teammates, my brothers, they did great on finding me, we did great on finding them. We just had fun and got the team win.”

Crean said Edwards had perhaps his best pregame walkthrough of the season before the game. The freshman was “locked in,” and that showed both in how he started the game and how he ended it.

It was indeed that tandem of Edwards and Wheeler that really put the game away. Edwards had a thunderous dunk to push the lead to seven, and then he finished off an alley-oop from Wheeler to extend the lead to 69-60 with under two minutes left, putting the finishing touches on another quality win for the Bulldogs.

This story was originally published December 23, 2019 at 9:04 PM.