Georgia holds off Xavier to move onto NIT second round
Mike White raised his profile as an up-and-coming coach by coming to Stegeman Coliseum 10 years ago with Louisiana Tech and taking down the Georgia basketball team in an NIT game.
White was on the Bulldogs bench Tuesday night as the Georgia played in its first post-SEC Tournament game since 2017.
Georgia looked like it wanted to stick around for a while in running out to a big second-half lead but then had to hold on tightly down the stretch to notch a 78-76 NIT first round win over Xavier before 2,756 in Stegeman Coliseum.
"Fortunately, we were able to hold on of course against a heck of an effort by those guys," White said. "Bottom line is we just got a postseason win against a Big East opponent. It was a good win for our program."
Center Russel Tchewa blocked a layup try to tie from Quincy Olivari with 1.9 seconds to go – a goal-tending call was overturned – to keep the game from going to overtime. Xavier got the ball under the basket, but Desmond Claude who scored 30 points never got a shot off after receiving the inbounds pass.
Dayvion McKnight's jumper with 1:35 left cut the lead to 76-74 while Georgia missed 7 of 8 shots including a 3-pointer from Noah Thomasson. McKnight's layup with 11 seconds to go made it 78-76 after a Silas Demary's layup with 25.4 seconds to go after a steal.
The Bulldogs, who got 16 points from Demary and 14 from RJ Melendez, built a 12-point halftime lead and opened a 65-42 lead after a Jalen DeLoach dunk with 13:25 to go. They missed 8 of 9 shots in one stretch to help allow Xavier to pull to within 7672 on a 3-pointer from Lazar Djokovic with 2:41 to go.
Xavier sank 7 of 13 in the second half to rally back.
Georgia (18-16) won its first postseason game since a 93-84 win over Belmont in the NIT in 2016, when Yante Maten scored 33 points on 14 of 17 shooting, but lost in the second round
at Saint Mary's.
"I feel like we've grinded out games a lot," Demary said.
Xavier (16-18) lost its first NIT firstround game in 10 tries and fell to 21-8 in the NIT.
Georgia Bulldogs points aplenty in the paint
Melendez had two steals in the first half that he turned into a pair of dunks.
The second came off a Xavier inbounds after it called time with 4 seconds left in the half as the Bulldogs scored the final six points of the half.
"I feel like that's one of the positives in my game," said the Illinois transfer who also was 2 of 3 on 3s. "Being able to get out and run."
Georgia scored 28 points in the first half in the paint to take a 46-34 lead into the break. The Bulldogs had 44 points in the paint for the game.
DeLoach had two dunks and layup. Tchewa added six points and 4 assists. Six-foot-10 reserve center Frank Anselem-Ibe had two layups to give him four points, his most since a Jan. 16 win at South Carolina.
The Bulldogs made just 3 of 7 3pointers in the first half but shot 50% from the field overall. Georgia was 6 of 16 on threes.
Georgia basketball shows it might belong in NIT
No team in the 32-team NIT bracket had a lower NCAA Net ranking than Georgia's 100.
The Bulldogs got one of the SEC's two automatic bids because Ole Miss (No. 90) declined a spot.
"We thought the season was over after the (SEC) tournament, but we got another opportunity so we have to take advantage of it," Melendez said.
The other lowest-rated teams in the NIT: No. 95 Cornell, No. 94 LSU and No. 92 St. Joseph's.
Xavier was No. 64. The highest ranked NET teams in the NIT field were No. 28 Indiana State and No. 37 Cincinnati.
Among those teams that declined a chance to play: St. Johns's (No. 32), Pittsburgh (No. 40), Oklahoma (No. 46), Washington (No. 69), Memphis (No. 75), Syracuse (No. 84) and Indiana (No. 98).
Former Georgia coach Tom Crean went on rant about teams opting out of the NIT on the ESPN2 selection show.
“There's plenty of time for the portal,” he said. “There's plenty of time to talk to recruits. There's plenty of time to negotiate NIL deals. There's not plenty of time to play. There's not plenty of time to get your players on the floor and give them a chance to get better. There's not plenty of time for guys to continue to play that may never get to play again, and that to me is absolutely ridiculous.”
The Bulldogs improved to 4-6 in the NIT since the 1999 season.