Gaels can’t get stops, lose 2nd game in row
FULLERTON, Orange County — Many predicted St. Mary’s and Georgia would meet in the championship game of the Wooden Legacy tournament, and the teams played Sunday afternoon’s third-place game as if they had fulfilled the expectations.
In a game full of award watch-list names, it was Georgia sophomore reserve guard Tyree Crump who made the biggest plays in the Bulldogs’ 83-81 overtime victory over No. 21 St. Mary’s at tournament host Cal State Fullerton.
Neither team led by more than eight points during a game that was tied 11 times and included 25 lead changes. The last lead change came with 2:55 left in overtime, when Crump made a jumper to put Georgia on top 78-77.
“I wasn’t really feeling it in the first half,” Crump said, “but in the second half, Coach (Mark) Fox looked at me and said, ‘Are you ready?’ I said, ‘Yes, sir.’ He gave me that look, gave me a kiss in the huddle and said: ‘You better make this shot.’ ”
Crump, who came in averaging 5.8 points per game, added a threepointer 88 seconds later to extend the Bulldogs’ lead to 81-77. Emmett Naar’s layup on the next play got St. Mary’s to 81-79 with just more than a minute to play. After Juwan Parker was called for an offensive foul, Jock Landale missed the front end of one-and-one free throws with 22 seconds left.
Turtle Jackson made two free throws to push St. Mary’s deficit to four points with 16 seconds on the clock, and Landale’s buzzer-beating putback left the Gaels two points short.
It was the first time St. Mary’s (5-2), which lost to Washington State 84-79 on Friday, has lost consecutive games since dropping the final three games of the 2014-15 season.
Aside from the missed free throw, Landale did just about everything else right, scoring a game-high 33 points to go along with 12 rebounds and four assists. Naar had 21 points and nine assists and Evan Fitzner added 14 points, but the Gaels couldn’t come up with defensive stops against Georgia (5-1).
“There’s no way around (it). We have miles to go defensively,” said St. Mary’s head coach Randy Bennett, whose team has allowed consecutive opponents to shoot better than 50 percent for the first time since 2014. “The facts are there. We have to go better. It doesn’t matter if we play at home, away or at a neutral site, and it doesn’t matter who we play. …
“We can’t be good if we’re doing this.”
Crump scored 17 points to lead Georgia. Four other Bulldog players scored in double digits as well. All-everything forward Yante Maten recorded 16 points and seven rebounds, Jackson and Parker combined for 29 points in the backcourt, and Derek Ogbeide added 10 points and nine rebounds.
In a game that seemed destined for overtime, there were 13 lead changes and four ties in the first half alone. The Bulldogs used an 8-0 run midway through the first half to go up 27-21, but St. Mary’s responded with an 8-2 run, tying it 29-29 on a Naar reverse layup at the 3:13 mark before Georgia took a 35-34 lead into the locker room at the break.
The seventh tie of the game came with 4½ minutes remaining, when Landale hit a backcutting Tanner Krebs for a layup that made it 6767. The score stayed that way until Landale’s lefthanded layup put St. Mary’s ahead by two with 3:03 on the clock and added to the championship feel during the third-place game’s closing minutes.
“St. Mary’s is so good that we had to keep trying to find different places to score,” Fox said. “Fortunately, we had a lot of guys finish some plays. … That balance was really key for us in playing a complete game.”