An ugly win is more beautiful than a pretty loss.
If the Dawgs are to right the ship, we have to win games like the one against Tennessee. We have to protect our home court. We have to defend. We have to run the half-court offense, avoid jacking up the early three-pointer, and our big guys have to run the floor on the fast-break.
If we do all those things, then we can survive an off shooting night. Georgia shot right at 35 percent from the floor, and our three top guards were mostly ineffective: Gerald Robinson 6 for 19, Caldwell-Pope 4 for 14, and Dustin Ware 2 of 9. That's a combined 12 for 42 or 28 percent.
With that kind of performance, we could otherwise expect to be run out of our own gym. But we instead won because we notched 73 percent from the free throw line, our bigs fought hard, matched them in rebounding, and produced pretty well around the basket. We were able to keep it competitive until late and they missed four more free throws than we did, which turned out to be the exact difference in the final score.
Box Score