Georgia falls at Mississippi State, 75-62

STARKVILLE, Miss. – The Georgia men’s basketball team fell to Mississippi State by a 75-62 score on Wednesday evening at Humphrey Coliseum.

Noah Thomasson led all scorers, making a career-high six 3-pointers and finished with 20 points. Blue Cain also reached double figures, contributing 10 points and three rebounds. Georgia (14-9, 4-6 SEC) led Mississippi State (15-8, 4-6 SEC) in bench points, 25-15, but gave up 21 points off its 13 turnovers.

Georgia was unable to find its footing on offense at the start of the game, trailing by as many as 14 points in the first 17 minutes. The Bulldogs managed to trim the deficit to single digits by the end of the half, though, putting the score at 36-28 in favor of Mississippi State. Coming out of the locker room, Georgia rattled off eight straight points and found itself down just four. Mississippi State kept Georgia at arm’s length through most of the half until the Red and Black went on a 10-0 run to trail by three, with two buckets from Blue Cain, with just over six minutes to go. Mississippi State then hit consecutive 3-pointers to push its lead back out to nine. Despite keeping it within single digits for most of the second half, Georgia was unable to get the stops it needed down the stretch to pull out the win.

Georgia will continue its road trip by traveling to Arkansas to take on the Razorbacks on Saturday, Feb. 10 at 6 p.m. The contest inside Bud Walton Arena will be televised by the SEC Network. The Bulldogs previously beat Arkansas in Stegeman Coliseum earlier this season, winning by a 76-66 margin on Jan. 10.

Five Fast Facts
• Noah Thomasson knocked in six 3-pointers in the game, a career-high, in route to his third game this season scoring at least 20 points.
• Georgia finished with 12 made 3-pointers, tying the most the team has made in a road game this season.
• With 10 points tonight, Blue Cain has now reached double figures in scoring in three of the last four outings after doing so just five times in the first 19 games of the season.
• Georgia finished with 25 bench points, marking the 20th time in 23 games this season that the team has outscored its opponent in the statistic.
• Justin Hill totaled four assists with just one turnover on the evening, improving his assist-to-turnover margin in SEC play to plus 2.3.

Key Quote
Head Coach Mike White: “I really liked our looks against as stingy a defensive team as there is in the country, especially at home. Mississippi State’s numbers indicate that, and we’ve seen it live. We scored 62, that said, I’ll take those looks against their defense. I thought we did a lot of good things. Obviously, we missed some that we’ve got to make, we didn’t get to the foul line enough, we had some live ball turnovers that haunted us, and they converted. They made nine 3-pointers, converted at a high level from the foul line, I know they’ve struggled from there at times, so credit Mississippi State. I thought we defended better tonight than we have as of late, so that’s nice to see. I thought there was some growth there. Down three points on the road in the SEC with a few minutes to go, we gave ourselves a chance. The final score I don’t think indicates how close the game was down the stretch. The effort was there, the physicality was there, and I thought our guys played really hard.”

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