The Georgia Bulldogs are on top 62-56 with 12:53 left. No. 2 seed Kentucky (25-8) faces No. 1 seed Texas A&M (26-7) at 1 p.m. EDT Sunday at Bridgestone Arena.
Advertisement
What we know now is that the Aggies are on a roll, having won eight straight games, including a 71-38 whipping over what should be an embarrassed LSU.
Jamal Murray turned in his arrows and went with a dagger against Georgia in Saturday afternoon’s SEC tournament semifinal game. Kentucky went on to stretch the run to 27-10 to grab an 81-72 lead with 3:28 remaining. Briscoe had seven and Poythress had six. But Sindarius Thornwell was divested of possession by J.J. Frazier and then, thinking SC was behind, fouled him.
Kentucky got 23 points from Jamal Murray on Friday, his 12th straight game with at least 20 points, and the Wildcats broke open a close game with a big second half.
Kentucky: Ulis finished with five assists. Junior forward Derek Willis had 14 points, Briscoe, 12, and Poythress, 10. Guard J.J. Frazier leads a potent, yet inconsistent backcourt, at 16.4 points per game, and Frazier (13th in 3-point shooting at 40.4 percent) and Kenny Gaines (15th at 40.1 percent) are threats from beyond the arc. Despite the outcome, things got off to a rocky start for Kentucky as Georgia jumped to a 15-5 lead less than five minutes into the game. Defensively, Kentucky is yielding 67.6 points against the opposing teams. That’s the highest percentage for a game in which United Kingdom took at least 20 free throws since the Cats made 21-of-22 at Florida last season for 95.5 percent.
Kentucky defeated Georgia 88-48 in its only matchup of the season on February 9. Fred Thomas added 17 points off the bench and I.J. Ready contributed 13. Kentucky finally took the lead at 34-32 with 5:33 to play on a Murray 3-pointer.
The Bulldogs couldn’t sustain it in the second half, shooting just 35 percent to finish 49 percent from the field. Along with the efforts of Thornwell, Laimonas Chatkevicius was a bruiser down low, finishing with 14 points and 9 rebounds as his performance displays the physicality shown between the two teams. Kentucky shot 45.2 percent in the half. Murray hit a 3-pointer in his 33rd consecutive game, breaking Tony Delk’s school record …
Advertisement
Georgia endured a tough, physical battle and pulled it out in the bitter end, beating SC 65-64 and advancing to the SEC Tournament semifinals. The lone loss was the infamous 2008 game when a tornado forced games to be moved from the Georgia Dome to a almost empty Alexander Memorial Coliseum on the Georgia Tech campus.
