Georgia escapes Xavier in First Round of NIT, 78-76

ATHENS, Ga. – The No. 4 seed Georgia men’s basketball team edged past Xavier, 78-76, in the first round of the National Invitational Tournament on Tuesday evening inside Stegeman Coliseum.

The Bulldogs (18-16, 6-12 SEC) were led in scoring by Silas Demary Jr. with 16 points in the team’s first postseason game since 2017. RJ Melendez had 14 points, two steals and a pair of 3-pointers off the bench, while Noah Thomasson finished with 12 points. Justin Hill reached double-figures in scoring for the 15th time this season, finishing with 10 points, all of which came in the first half. Georgia led in the game for over 36 minutes and won the battle of the paint, scoring 44 points compared to Xavier’s (16-18, 9-11 Big East) 32.

Georgia jumped out to an eight-point lead at the midway point of the first half after a pair of 3-pointers from Hill. The Bulldogs capitalized on their offensive success in the opening 20 minutes to own a 46-34 advantage, highlighted by a buzzer-beating dunk from RJ Melendez, headed into the locker room. Georgia continued to find success against Xavier, going on a 15-2 run and forcing a timeout from the Musketeers after a triple from Melendez in transition. Xavier responded locked in on defense over the next seven minutes, outscoring the Bulldogs 19-6, with 15 from Desmond Claude, and getting Georgia’s lead down to seven points. A jumper from Lazar Djokovic brought it to a two-point game with 1:35 remaining. Leading by two points, Russel Tchewa sealed the Bulldogs win with just under two seconds left after his block at the rim, originally ruled a goaltend, was overturned. After Xavier was unable to get a shot off once it got the ball in bounds, Georgia earned the program’s first postseason win since 2016.

The Bulldogs’ Round of 16 opponent will the winner of the No. 1 seed Wake Forest and Appalachian State contest, set to tip off on Wednesday, March 20 at 8 p.m. ET in Winston-Salem.

Five Fast Facts
• Georgia’s first half scoring output of 46 points ties it for the most points scored in the opening frame this season. The team shot 50 percent from the field, including a trio of 3-pointers.
• Silas Demary Jr. led the team in scoring for the eighth time this season with 16 points. This marks the third time in the last four games the freshman has reached double-digits in scoring.
• Russel Tchewa recorded four assists in the game, marking the sixth time this season he recorded at least three dimes. In 103 career games at South Florida, Tchewa recorded 42 assists, while in just 34 games at Georgia, he is up to 45 assists.
• This marks the program’s first victory over a Big East opponent since winning at Marquette on December 2, 2017, and just the third time since then Georgia has played a team in the league.
• Georgia forced 15 turnovers from Xavier in the game, 10 of which were steals, and turned those extra possessions into 22 points. This marked the ninth time this season the Bulldogs racked up at least 15 turnovers, going 5-4 in those games.

Key Quote
Head Coach Mike White: “As a staff and as a team, we talk about the fact that we’ve got to learn from that. We’re always going to preach growth and learning through wins and losses, but we just got an NIT win. We just got a postseason win against a Big East opponent. It’s a good win for our program. It’s something that hopefully gives the returning players confidence moving forward. It’s another step in the right direction and obviously something we’ll use in recruiting. At the end of the day, everybody wants to be in the NCAA Tournament, but we’re honored to be a part of the NIT and honored to still be a part of it. To survive and advance.”

Keep up with all the latest news and information on the Bulldogs by following UGA Men’s Basketball on social media on Facebook, Instagram and X @UGABasketball, and the web at GeorgiaDogs.com.

Team Notes

• Georgia’s first half scoring output of 46 points ties it for the most points scored in the opening frame this season. The team shot 50 percent from the field, including a trio of 3-pointers.
• The Bulldogs outscored the Muskateers in bench points by a 35-7 margin during the game. Georgia entered the night ranking 20th nationally in bench scoring at 28.6 per game.
• This marks the program’s first victory over a Big East opponent since winning at Marquette on December 2, 2017, and just the third time since then Georgia has played a team in the league. The Bulldogs fell to Providence in the Baha Mar Championship earlier this season.
• Georgia used its starting 11th lineup of Silas Demary Jr., Noah Thomasson, Blue Cain, Dylan James and Russel Tchewa for the fifth-straight game.
• The Bulldogs trailed for just 51 seconds during the contest, breaking the final tie of the game with 13:45 remaining in the first half. Georgia led for 36:06 in total.
• Georgia forced 15 turnovers from Xavier in the game, 10 of which were steals, and turned those extra possessions into 22 points. This marked the ninth time this season the Bulldogs racked up at least 15 turnovers, going 5-4 in those games.

Individual Notes

• Silas Demary Jr. led the team in scoring for the eighth time this season with 16 points. This marks the third time in the last four games the freshman has reached double-digits in scoring.
• Russel Tchewa recorded four assists in the game, marking the sixth time this season he recorded at least three dimes. In 103 career games at South Florida, Tchewa recorded 42 assists, while in just 34 games at Georgia, he is up to 45 assists.
• Justin Hill scored 10 points in the first half of Georgia’s opening round NIT game, marking the 15th time this season the senior has reached double figures off the bench.
• Noah Thomasson dropped 12 points in the contest. The graduate student has started in all 34 games this season and reached 10 points in 24 of them, averaging 12.7 per contest.

GEORGIA HEAD COACH MIKE WHITE

On holding on to the win at the end of the game…
“The way we played the first 30 minutes, I thought we played really, really well. As well as we’ve played all year. I thought we played really well against Florida, at times against Missouri and you know, in the first say 25 and the last five minutes, the way we finished that game. We’ve got another opportunity potentially Saturday or Sunday correct? Maybe we can put together 40 [minutes] of playing at that level. Credit Xavier, my goodness. Downhill, having dug themselves a big hole, they were terrific down the stretch. Playing downhill in transition, executing versus zone and man, got some stops, hit some timely shots. I thought Claude down the stretch was really good. It was a really good college basketball game, and fortunately we were able to hold on against a heck of an effort from those guys.

On the value of a win like tonight’s against Xavier in the postseason…
“As a staff and as a team, we talk about the fact that we’ve got to learn from that. We’re always going to preach growth and learning through wins and losses, but we just got an NIT win. We just got a postseason win against a Big East opponent. It’s a good win for our program. It’s something that hopefully gives the returning players confidence moving forward. It’s another step in the right direction and obviously something we’ll use in recruiting. At the end of the day, everybody wants to be in the NCAA Tournament, but we’re honored to be a part of the NIT and honored to still be a part of it. To survive and advance.”

On Russel Tchewa’s block at the end of the game…
“I thought it was live, but I haven’t seen it on film yet.”

On the last 48 hours and preparation leading up to tonight’s NIT game against Xavier…
“Yeah it does a little bit. Fortunately for us, we try to do a lot of similar things, offensively and defensively, to Florida. Xavier has a lot of similarities, offensively and defensively, with their ball-screen motion, with their zone attack, or should I say with our need to two-zone them because of the difficulty to defend their guards off of ball screens and the way that their bigs seal drives. They play with great physicality. Not quite as tall and long as Florida’s front court guys, but probably even more physical. Defensively, they are very similar with their physicality on cutters, with their chasing and blasting of screens coming off the ball and with their drop coverage of their fours and their fives.”

On the message he had for the team with tough play in the final moments of the game…
“It’s really been the same message all year. I’m not creative enough to give a different one. It’s what I was taught. It’s what I always preach to teams. Your championship level teams and the best teams that I’ve been a part of don’t look at the scoreboard. They play the same way whether they’re down 20 or up 20. Stay in the moment, let’s get a nice shot, let’s get a stop. Get a nice shot, get a stop. It’s not about ‘Man I hope we hold on to win this one. We played really good the first 30.’ If you’re thinking about those things, that means you’re not in the moment, and you’re not executing what you should be in the millisecond of the game. It’s a game of split seconds. That said, I thought in a couple of our home games this year when we’ve got sizable leads that it was a little more apparent mentally and physically that we were a completely different team than the team that built that lead. I didn’t see that quite as much in this one. I credit Xavier. I thought Xavier was terrific offensively again in the last 10 minutes of the game. I didn’t think we had a huge letdown. We had a couple of really poor transition defensive efforts in the last minute or two. We missed one on ones(5:17). It wasn’t perfect obviously, but we also had some pretty good possessions that resulted in a difficult make by Xavier guards that just jumped up in the air and made some good shots. Good offense is always going to beat good defense.

On why there was success getting points in the paint…
“I thought we did a good job of curling some of those screens off the ball. I think we had three in the first half off of Russel passes. They’re very physical off of the ball with pushing you off screens. We just did a good job. When your five has the ability on the perimeter to make pretty good decisions that helps. Russ has really grown in that area throughout the year. I thought he made some passes. Some of the those layups just off of cuts that you don’t necessarily think of as paint scoring. You think back to basket, bigs getting baskets. I thought Silas did a really good job (6:20)

On RJ Melendez’s energy entering the game…
“I thought RJ played really well. I thought he did a pretty good job on Claude when Claude made some hard ones on him. He stayed in front of him and forced some long twos and threes, but that said Claude hit some timely ones. I thought RJ, from the second he went in the game, provides energy offensively. He was shooting the ball well down the stretch. Getting 14 points in only 21 minutes was really efficient. It was one of his better games.”

#4 | SILAS DEMARY JR. | FR. | G

On the message amongst the team near the end of the game…
“Mainly just to get stops. We’ve grinded out games a lot. They went on a run, we went on a run ourselves but they took the punch and we had a little bit of adversity. But honestly we just wanted to stay together and get stops.”

On Russel Tchewa’s passing ability…
“Obviously we all knew Russ could pass. He’s one of those guys that’s very versatile at his size, very quick, agile on his feet. Just seeing him make those passes to guards like us, we just know we can trust him with the ball. He’s had a few high assist games recently. Just seeing him make plays out of the post, trusting us to catch his passes and us trusting him to make those, it’s a good thing for us.”

On the emotions leading into the NIT Tournament…
“It was pretty hectic, very up-and-down, very emotional. After the Florida game a couple of the GA’s were very emotional because they were thinking it was the last one. But everybody in the locker room was kind of like ‘we still have a chance, we’ve won some big time games and we’ve been in games. So it’s been very emotional, very up-and-down but I feel like after the game we got back home and were able to reset. We had a good practice on Sunday and yesterday and I feel like that was best for us. Just to come home, relax and understand that we might have something still to play for.”

#15 | RJ MELENDEZ | JR. | G

On winning one of the close matches this season...
“It feels great being able to have a post-season since 2017, It’s amazing being able to see fans coming through and still support us. It’s good being able to stay together as a team and keep that going every single day. We thought the season was over right after the tournament, but we got an opportunity, so we have to take advantage of it. This was one game, we have to keep on building from it, we’re going to watch film on it and keep getting better every single day.”

On what the post-season means to him…
“It means a lot for the team, not just for me. Everybody in here together, so just being able to continue sharing it with my guys, keep on playing with them, and keep practicing with them, it’s just amazing for me being in the post-season to keep doing what I love.”

On how rewarding it is to win the game…
“There’s not much more I can ask for, we got the win, we’re moving now, we’ll keep working tomorrow and stay locked in and focused.”