Bulldogs knock off No. 6 Wildcats, 82-69

ATHENS, Ga. — The Georgia Bulldogs (13-2, 1-1 SEC) knocked off the No. 6 Kentucky Wildcats (12-3, 1-1 SEC), 82-69, in their Southeastern Conference home opener on Tuesday night at a sold-out Stegeman Coliseum. Four scorers reached double figures led by freshman forward Asa Newell’s 17 points on the night.

Fast Facts
• After Asa Newell’s 17-point effort, sophomore guards Blue Cain and Silas Demary Jr. followed with 15 and 14 points while graduate guard Dakota Leffew finished with 11 points.
• Asa Newell has now recorded 14 double-digit scoring performances through 15 games this season, marking the sixth game in which he has led Georgia in scoring.
• The Bulldogs are now 10-0 at Stegeman Coliseum this season, extending their home-winning streak to 12 games dating back to last season, which matches the fifth-longest home winning streak in program history.
• The win marks Georgia’s first AP top 10 ranked victory in five years since January 4, 2020, when the Bulldogs knocked off No. 9 Memphis 65-62.
• The Bulldogs secured their highest-ranked victory since defeating No. 5 Kentucky on Jan. 17, 2004, and their highest-ranked home win since beating No. 3 Georgia Tech, 83-80 in double overtime, on Jan. 3, 2004.
• The Bulldogs have won each of their last three meetings against the Wildcats inside the Stegeman Coliseum.

Key Quotes
“Yeah, a really good win, of course,” head coach Mike White said. “Kentucky is one of the best teams in the country, one of the best offenses in the country. Run great stuff, got really good players. Thought our guys responded in a big way from a tough outing in Oxford against a team that defended us at a really high level. Could have been arguably our toughest performance and bounced back in a really big way.”

Up Next
The Bulldogs will remain in Athens where they will face No. 17 Oklahoma on Saturday, Jan. 11 with tipoff set at 6 p.m. ET at Stegeman Coliseum. The game will be televised on ESPN2.

POST-GAME NOTES

Georgia Head Coach Mike White

Opening Statement
“Yeah, a really good win, of course. Kentucky’s one of the best teams in the country, one of the best offenses in the country. Run great stuff, got really good players. Thought our guys responded in a big way from a tough outing in Oxford against a team that defended us at a really high level. Could have been arguably our toughest performance and bounced back in a really big way. This is, of course, our biggest win. Thought we played with a ton of energy, stayed connected throughout, separated the score a little bit there late half. Kentucky came storming back, of course, had another in-game response, showed a lot of maturity and connection there by staying together, getting some stops down the stretch. Did a lot of good things, did a lot of good things. We’ve got to continue to get better and a lot of things we’ve got to continue to work on. It’s a really good win for us, obviously, but it’s a different SEC these days, and all of these are going to be extremely difficult, so we’ve got to move on to the next one pretty quick.”

On his halftime speech…
“Process, same thing. We always look at some things on film, offensively and defensively, try to keep it efficient, but just focusing on that first round of the second half and maintaining intensity and that connection, of course. We weren’t super sharp early in the second half. I’m not sure either team was, but we got some stops, made a couple shots there mid-second half or five or six minutes in, and I thought our crowd was fantastic. It was a big factor in the win.”

On what this win says about the team…
“Yeah, it’ll all come together, and it’s still early. I mean, we’re two games into an 18-game stretch of battles, but it was nice to see it go in a little bit. Asa steps up and hits two big threes. Blue [Cain] saw it going a little bit. Silas hits two threes, happy for him, man. He just takes good ones.He’s worked really hard at it, and he’s turned himself into a good shooter.”

On how the team keeps up the defensive intensity seen tonight…
“They’ve really embraced it, and Silas [Demary Jr.] has led the way, I think, in our backcourt. Blue Cain’s our most improved defender from last season. Dylan’s [James] a guy that didn’t get a lot of opportunity tonight, but he’s got a lot better defensively as well, and then we’ve got front-court guys that can move their feet, and we’ve got length, and can alter stuff at the rim, you know, in Asa [Newell], of course, and Somto [Cyril] did some really good things. It might have been his best game”. “We’ve just got improved length and speed and quickness, and our guys have embraced trying to be the best defensive team that we can be, which just makes you fit in, and this league is all it really does. It’s the best defensive league in the country.”

On what he is most proud of with the win…
“Their connection. It’s a group that really likes each other, and they’re a group that has really productive huddles, productive timeouts, saying the right stuff. Despite the youth, we’ve got a higher level of maturity than you’d think, you know, and a couple of our younger guys especially stick out. Asa and Somto both stuck it out. You know, these sophomores, they got so much experience there late last season. They’re playing more like veterans, at least tonight. You know, we got to continue to do that. We got a ways to go, of course, but proud of our connection and the defensive intensity. Those guys are hard to guard, and I thought our guys left a lot of energy out there on the floor.”

#5 | Silas Demary Jr. | So. | Guard

On what the game means to him…
“It’s a big-time win in my opinion because there were times last year where we’d get all the way to the end, and we would drop those big-time wins. So I think just second year, being able to get over that hump and win those big-time games against those ranked opponents, those quad one wins, I think it’s just nothing but growth in our program and just the growth in the guys, you know, willing to put in work every day.”

On the team’s aggression tonight…
“I would just say just the attention to detail and the intensity we play against each other every day in practice. I feel like the way we practice, we practice hard. We go for about an hour, hour fifteen every day just because of the season. But I feel like that hour-fifteen is very intent. We’re going hard, and the guys are just making sure we’re trying to get each other better every day because in moments like tonight, we need guys to step up, come off the bench. Like, I feel like everybody picked each other up coming into the game.”

On the fans engagement throughout the game…
“It was amazing. I think there were times when I was yelling, and I couldn’t even hear myself just in the huddle, just communicating with the guys. I mean, it was amazing. I think just the fans being able to stick with us after a tough one this past weekend, just to see their resilience and to still come and cheer us on, we’re just grateful for that.”

#14 | Asa Newell | Fr. | Forward

On the team’s response tonight after Saturday’s loss…
“One thing about this team, we handle adversity extremely well. In practice, in games, and it just showed here tonight. We trusted each other. Coach came in with a great game plan, and we just played really hard.”

On his success in the second half…
“You know, it was just in the motion of the game. My teammates trusted me with the ball and I made plays.”

On the team’s aggressive offense…
“It was really good. We went back after Ole Miss, watched our film, saw how we could get better. We just had really good details coming into tonight.”

Kentucky Head Coach Mark Pope

On falling behind in the first half…
“It’s like the second 10-minute stretch has been really problematic. The first 10 minutes were okay in there, we got it started out well, and then it’s that second 10 minutes, and maybe it’s a little rotational stuff, maybe we’re being a little oversensitive to foul stuff, or maybe it’s when the issues in the game are really starting to seep in. But it’s something we’re super conscious of. We had some much better success in that segment last game, but we just couldn’t produce it tonight.”

On the offensive rebounding by Georgia…
“They had 15 today, and it’s back-to-back games where we get 15 offensive rebounds, and that’s a bell we’ve got to ring. It’s unacceptable for us, and it’s a sign of distraction somehow. There was a lot of – there were so many uncharacteristic plays on the court tonight, and those are – for us as a deciding team, as a decision-making team, those are manifestations of some distraction. And us rooting that out and getting better at focusing on the moment, and exactly what’s happening is especially – part of it is building habits. So, we’re working on that really hard. Sometimes when you start on a project, you take 10 steps backwards before you make progress, and it feels like that’s what we’ve done. It’s almost like the more we talk about it, the more we drill it, the more of a challenge it is. That’s a nuanced conversation among the staff that we have to kind of figure out. But clearly that’s a major, major issue for us is the glass, especially at a game that’s as slow-paced as this is and holding the ball and out of – as much out of rotation as we will. Our ball screen defense at the point of attack was so much better. It really kept us out of rotation, and then we had so many possessions where we had guys taking really tough shots, and we either fouled them unnecessarily or we didn’t come up with a rebound, and it wasn’t a rotation issue. That’s probably one of the things where we have to figure out how we can be insanely high-performance.”