Athens, GA – Georgia was able to hold off Texas in the 2nd half, after hot shooting from beyond the arc got the Dawgs hot early and they were able to pull away early in the 2nd half. Led by Tyree Crumps season-high 21 point performance, UGA moved to 10-9 after the 98-88 win over the Longhorns on Saturday.
After some early back and forth action, Texas took control of this one midway through the first period as they took a 21-13 lead over UGA, the Longhorns largest lead of the game. It was at this point, that the Bulldogs got hot and started to flex a bit from beyond the arc.
Tyree Crump drained a triple, his second of the game to this point, making it a 5 point deficit for the Dawgs. Then after a tip-in from UT, the doors got blown off of Stegeman Coliseum.
William Jackson drained a triple, then shortly after this was followed up from another from Crump. This put UGA in the lead for the first time of the game at the 10:20 mark left in the 1st half.
The party didn’t end their tough, as Teshaun Hightower got in on the action and Crump remained hot, hitting his 4th triple of the game to this point to put the Dawgs up 7 with 9:09 left in the half, capping off a 14-0 run.
This run would come to an end as UT got to the free throw line and Dylan Osetkowski sank two. Hightower would drain another triple to push the Dawgs lead back to 7 before the Bulldogs started to slow down a bit.
The Longhorns fought back hard over the final nine minutes of the half to draw even with UGA at 46 as the teams went into the locker room. The main catalyst for the Dawgs in the first half was their three-point shooting, which came in at 66.7% after hitting 8 of 12 from deep. UT was doing quite nicely themselves from deep hitting 6 of 11 at 54.5%.
In the 2nd half, Jaxson Hayes slammed home a dunk for UT to try and set the tone to start the 2nd half. This was answered with a layup from Hammons and a triple by E’torrion Wilridge for UGA as they took a 51-48 lead.
The spurt by the Dawgs continued as Claxton slammed in a dunk and put in a free throw to extend the Dawgs lead at 54-48 with 18 minutes left in the 2nd half.
Another dunk from Hayes would put a slight stop to the bleeding for Texas. However, at the other end of the floor, Tyree Crump drained a triple to make it 57-50 for UGA.
Yet another dunk from Hayes would settle the crowd momentarily. As we reached the under 16-minute timeout, UGA held the 59-52 advantage, looking to finish strong.
The success for Georgia continued as they continued to press and extend their lead to 9 with 14:16 left to play.
Over the next 7 minutes, things were pretty much back and forth between both squads.
Then with 7:31 left to play, Claxton took a charge in the paint to give the Bulldogs possession. This came right after he had put in a layup at the other end to extend the Dawgs lead at 72-66, and was ensuing 2 missed shots from Texas on their possession.
The Longhorns tried to claw their way back into this one, but with 7:00 left on the clock, Crump drained yet another triple, pushing the UGA lead to 8.
It seemed that each and every time Texas was able to trim it within striking distance, UGA was able to land an uppercut.
This happened again after a layup and free throw from Kerwin Roach cut the deficit to just 5 for UT. Claxton took over and slammed in a dunk, and then followed it up draining a triple with 5:46 left to play to make it a 10 point lead for UGA.
Texas had no answers and were only able to trim the deficit back to 6 after this point, as Georgia finished strong, going up by 13 with 2:21 left to play and wrapped things up with a 98-88 win over the Burnt orange from Austin.
Georgia head coach Tom Crean spoke highly of his team’s performance and believes the squad is headed in the right direction with 12 games left on the regular season schedule.
“It wasn’t masterful, but that’s the thing. This is a great example to show we are getting better. Even if the wins have not shown in the last few weeks, we are improving, but we have a lot of improving to do.”
Georgia was lighting up the stat sheets all night, with Claxton grabbing a career-high 3 steals, Hightower shooting a perfect 5 of 5 from the field and adding a career-high 7 free throws off 9 shots. Senior E’Torrion Wildridge played a career-high 29 minutes and had a career-high steals of 3. Then, Sophmore Rayshaun Hammonds tied a season-high of 4 assists and had a career-high of 3 steals as well.
