No. 21 Georgia intent to step on defense vs. Missouri
After dropping a 97-95 overtime decision to Ole Miss at home on Jan. 14, No. 21 Georgia focused its practice sessions toward defense.
That paid off with a 90-76 victory over then No. 17 Arkansas on Saturday.
The Bulldogs (15-3, 3-2 Southeastern Conference) will chase more progress when they tip off against Missouri (13-5, 3-2) on Tuesday in Columbia, Mo.
Georgia coach Mike White believed his team needed two days of intense work despite being well into league play.
"It's always risky this time of year to do that but our guys responded really well," White said. "Who knows moving forward, we've got a really tough one on the road here (Tuesday). If we that play that hard and can defend against high-level teams with that effort, we'll win our share because we're hard to guard."
The Bulldogs are the highest scoring Division I team at 96.0 points per game. White trusts his team to continue playing fast even during the final minutes of a tight game.
"We're so much different than the way we played in the last three years," White said. "As opposed to whoa, whoa, whoa let's really call something here, let's think about what we're doing and walk the ball up, this is a huge possession.
"We're effective in huge possessions playing in tempo, playing with pace and space and sprinting to corners and pitching it ahead and getting into some of our conceptional stuff. Or just putting your head down in space, right, if you see the rim, get to the rim."
Jeremiah Wilkinson leads the Bulldogs with 17.9 points per game.
"He continues to show that he was ready for this stage offensively and improving defensively as a young sophomore," White said.
Blue Cain (14.3 points), Marcus Millender (11.4) and Kanon Catchings (10.1) also average double figures in scoring for Georgia. White can extend his playing rotation to 10 players, and he has just one player averaging more than 24.1 minutes per game (Cain, 26.4).
Missouri struggled with slow starts in its last two games. That proved costly during its 78-70 loss at LSU on Saturday.
Coach Dennis Gates wants better rebounding at the defensive end.
"We were finding ourselves defending twice too many times," Gates said. "We had multiple opportunities to cut it to one possession, we just didn't come out with the rebound."
Missouri pulled together to score 43 points in the second half against LSU, but it couldn't overcome a poor start.
"We won the second half. I'm proud of our guys for doing that," Gates said. "We were able to minimize them in some spurts. We were able to get to the foul line, we were able to do some things."
Missouri is led by forward Mark Mitchell, who averages 17.3 points and 5.3 rebounds. Guard Jayden Stone (15.2 points per game) scored 78 points in his first four games back from a broken hand.
Guard T.O. Barrett earned a bigger role for the Tigers during the last two games while scoring 24 points off the bench. He totaled just 17 points in his previous five games.