UGA Men’s Basketball: Georgia Treks To Cincinnati For First Road Game

 

2020-21 STATISTICS	GEORGIA	CINCINNATI
Points Per Game	58.0	65.0
Opp. Point Per Game	51.0	43.0
Scoring Margin	+7.0	+22.0
Field Goal Pct.	.351	.455
Opp. Field Goal Pct.	.339	.259
3-Point Pct.	.200	.304
3-Pointers Per Game	3.0	7.0
Opp. 3-Point Pct.	.333	.269
Free Throw Pct.	.714	.471
Free Throws Per Game	15.0	8.0
Rebounds Per Game	46.0	41.0
Opp. Rebound Per Game	36.0	34.0
Rebound Margin	+10.0	+7.0
Assists Per Game	13.0	14.0
Turnovers Per Game	15.0	9.0
Assist-to-Turnover Ratio	0.87	1.56
Turnover Margin	+1.0	+6.0
Steals Per Game	9.0	5.0
Blocks Per Game	2.0	6.0

 

• Tom Crean looks for this 399th career win when UGA travels to Cincinnati for a Saturday night matchup.
• Tom Crean is 7-7 all-time agianst the Bearcats, with 13 of those meetings coming while he was at Marquette.
• Aaron Cook is 18 points shy of 1,000 for his career, scoring 845 at SIU, 127 at Gonzaga and 10 at UGA.
• UGA’s roster features 10 newcomers – five D-I transfers, two JUCO transfers and three true freshmen.
• UGA’s seven first-year transfers combined to score 4,782 points at their previous schools.

Georgia takes to the road for the first time on the young season when the Bulldogs venture to face the Cincinnati Bearcats on Saturday evening at Fifth Third Arena.

UGA and UC opened their seasons on Tuesday with victories. The Bulldogs bested Florida International, 58-51, while the Bearcats beat Evansville, 65-43. Tuesday’s win represented Tom Crean‘s 398th as a collegiate head coach, with 199 wins at Marquette, 166 at Indiana and 42 at Georgia.

Tom Crean is…
• 2 victories shy of his 400th career win

Aaron Cook is…
• 18 points from 1000 for his career

Jailyn Ingram is…
• 60 points from 1400 for his career

Georgia and Cincinnati will meet for the third time ever on Saturday. The teams splitting the previous two match-ups, both in Athens.

Last season on Dec. 19, a 15-0 run to close out the first half propelled the Bulldogs en route to a decisive 83-68 victory over the Bearcats.

With the win, the Bulldogs improved to 6-0 on the season, the program’s best start since opening their 1983 Final Four campaign with a 9-0 record.

After facing a 23-point deficit, Cincinnati opened the second half with a 13-2 surge that narrowed Georgia’s lead to 12. The Bulldogs then answered with back-to-back baskets. Georgia’s lead topped out at 25 points with 2:32 remaining before Cincinnati finished the game on a 14-4 run.

Cincinnati won of the initial match-up, a 57-51 decision on December 2, 2011.

Sean Kilpatrick and Dion Dixon scored 22 and 19 points, respectively, to lead the Bearcats, while then-freshman Kentavious Caldwell-Pope’s 16 points paced the Bulldogs offensively.

Georgia opened up a 30-21 lead at halftime, but the Bulldogs shot just 28.6 percent from the field – and connected on 1-of-7 3-point attempts – after the intermission as the Bearcats rallied to victory.

Wes Miller is in his first season at Cincinnati following a successful stint at UNC Greensboro highlighted by four Southern Conference regular-season titles and a pair of NCAA tourney bids.

Cincinnati’s roster features nine returning letterwinners and seven first-year players.

The Bearcats who are back include three of UC’s top-four scorers from last season – Jeremiah Davenport (11.7 ppg), David DeJulius (9.1 ppg) and Mika Adams-Woods (8.6 ppg).

The septet of newcomers features six transfers – one each from Clemson, Mississippi State and Wake Forest and a trio UNC Greensboro. Two of the transfers, Hayden Koval from UNCG and Abdul Ado from MSU entered the season ranked No. 1 and No. 3 among active career leaders in blocked shots with 337 and 249 swats, respectively.

There are two familiar faces on the Bearcats’ bench. Assistant coach Chad Dollar and director of operations Jake Thelen served in the same roles for the Bulldogs for the past three seasons.

A thorough linescore from Aaron Cook – 10 points, eight assists, six rebounds and three steals – led Georgia in a 58-51 victory over Florida International Tuesday evening in the Bulldogs’ season opener.

Three of Georgia’s 10 newcomers led the Bulldogs offensively, with Braelen Bridges and Kario Oquendo adding nine points each. Bridges also grabbed a game-high eight rebounds.

Junior Jaxon Etter matched his career high scoring output with nine points.

“I thought our guys did a really good job of having tremendous intensity throughout the game,” head coach Tom Crean said. “It certainly amped up in the second half with our defense, even when our shooting wasn’t going the way that it needed to be. We had three stops in a row eight times, which is a huge number for us.”

After FIU led for the majority of the first half and 27-22 at the intermission, the Bulldogs began the second period with a 12-2 run to go up 34-29 at the 16:16 mark.

The Panthers regained a four-point lead twice, lastly at 42-38. Five different Bulldogs scored in a 12-0 surge over the next 4:44 to give Georgia control.

Anyone who knows anything about the athletic programs of Georgia and Cincinnati is well aware that the Bulldogs and Bearcats are currently undefeated in both basketball and football.

In fact, there are only four FBS programs who enter this weekend with unblemished records on the gridiron. In an almost unfathomable coincidence, the other two unbeaten football programs – Oklahoma and UTSA – also will play basketball against each other this Friday night (Nov. 12) in Norman.

Tom Crean is 7-7 all-time against Cincinnati, with all of the match-ups prior to last season’s game coming during his tenure at Marquette from 1999-08.

“When I was growing up as a coach, every day it started with ‘What’s going on at Cincinnati?’ and ‘What’s going on at Louisville?'” Crean said. “My coaching career began with those two programs as a measuring stick. Every day was about how do we compete with Cincinnati.”

Marquette and Cincinnati were conference rivals throughout Crean’s time in Milwaukee, competing in Conference USA from 1999-05 before both transitioned to the Big East. They also were relatively regular NCAA participants, combining for 11 bids to “March Madness.”

Cincinnati won the C-USA’s American Division during each of Crean’s first three seasons in Milwaukee before Marquette displaced the Bearcats to win the 2003 title. The schools also met in the championship game of the 2002 C-USA Tournament.

Georgia head coach Tom Crean is now just two wins shy of his 400th career victory. He compiled 397 W’s in his first 21 campaigns as a collegiate head coach, an impressive average of 18.9 wins.

Prior to arriving in Athens, Crean was 190-96 in nine seasons Marquette’s coach from 1998-2008 and the recorded a 166-135 mark in nine campaigns at Indiana between 2008-17.

Tom Crean‘s Milestone Wins No. 1 – Nov. 20, 1999 – Marquette defeats Chicago State, 62-43, in Tom Crean‘s first game as a collegiate head coach.

No. 100 – March 6, 2004 – Freshman Dameon Mason’s three-point play with eight-tenths of a second left lifts Marquette over No. 25 Louisville, 81-80.

No. 200 – Dec. 8, 2009 – Indiana knocks off Pittsburgh, 74-64, in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge.

No. 250 – Nov. 20, 2012 – A day after beating Georgia, 66-53, in the first round, IU tops Georgetown, 82-72, to win the Progressive Legends Classic at Barclays Center.

No. 300 – Dec. 20, 2014 – Indiana tops No. 23 Butler, 82-73, as Yogi Ferrell became IU’s 48th 1,000-point scorer.

With Tuesday’s win over Florida International, Georgia improved to 84-33 in opening contests of the Bulldogs’ 117 seasons of basketball.

That tally includes an even more impressive 38-6 mark in openers at Stegeman Coliseum.

Georgia’s most significant win in an opener at the Coliseum also was its first. In the Bulldogs’ initial season opener in their current arena on Dec. 3 1964, UGA bested No. 13 North Carolina, 64-61.

The Bulldogs are 4-0 in openers under Tom Crean.

In Crean’s debut outing on Nov. 9, 2018, Georgia raced to a 110-76 victory over Savannah State, the 11th-most points every scored by the Bulldogs and their highest scoring output in the current millennium.

Two seasons ago, Anthony Edwards poured in 24 points – the second-most ever by a Bulldog in their debut trailing only Dominique Wilkins’ 26 versus Troy on Nov. 20, 1979 – to lead Georgia in a 91-72 win over Western Carolina.

Last Nov. 29, in an opener delayed twice by COVID-19, the Bulldogs bested Florida A&M, 85-74.

Kario Oquendo and Dalen Ridgnal have been ranked among the top junior college transfers expected to make the biggest marks following their moves to the Division I level this season.

On August 25, bustingbrackets.com ranked the top-25 junior college players moving to the “high-major” level. Ridgnal was tabbed No. 2 on that ledger, while Oquendo was ranked No. 23.

On Nov. 1, college basketball guru Jon Rothstein tabbed his top-10 “JUCOs to watch,” an unranked ledger that also included Ridgnal.

Aaron Cook arrived in Athens having already partcipated in 133 games. Cook logged action in 103 contests in four seasons at Southern Illinois, including six in a 2019-20 redshirt campaign. He then played in 30 contests last season at Gonzaga.

Cook’s tally of 133 GPs made him the third-most experienced player – game wise – in Division I entering this season as outlined below.

As a point of reference for Georgia Basketball, the Bulldogs’ record for career games played is 133 contests by Marcus Thornton from 2011-15. Thornton’s tally covers five seasons, including a redshirt season with nine GPs.

In addition, Jailyn Cook ranked among D-I’s top-50 players in career outings entering the 2021-22 season, having played in 122 contests at Florida Atlantic prior to joining the Bulldogs.

D-I’s career GPs Leaders
Rk.	Player, School	Games
1.	Jordan Bohannon, Iowa	142
2.	Chevez Goodwin, USC	138
3.	Aaron Cook, Georgia	133
	Garrison Brooks, Miss. St.	133
	Jalen Coleman-Lands, Kansas	133
	Justin Kier, Arizona	133

Georgia’s roster features 10 first-year Bulldogs, while Cincinnati has seven new Bearcats this season.

Georgia’s newcomers is a diverse group eligibility wise, with sixth-year “super seniors” Aaron Cook and Jailyn Ingram; graduate transfer seniors Noah Baumann and Braelen Bridges; junior college junior transfer Dalen Ridgnal; sophomores Jabri Abdur-Rahim and Kario Oquendo; and freshmen Tyrone Baker, Cam McDowell and Christian Wright.

Players in their first season at UC include six transfers – Abdul Ado from Mississippi State, John Newman III from Clemson, Ody Oguama from Wake Forest and the trio of Jarrett Hensley, Hayden Koval and A.J. McGinnis, who followed head coach Wes Miller from UNC Greensboro – and freshmen C.J. Anthony.

Of Georgia’s 10 newcomers, seven are transfers – five at the Division I level (Jabri Abdur-Rahim, Noah Baumann, Braelen Bridges, Aaron Cook and Jailyn Ingram) and a pair from the junior college ranks (Kario Oquendo and Dalen Ridgnal.

Those players arrive in Athens having already scored 4,782 points at their previous schools. That represents the largest addition of scoring by any Division I program for the 2021-22 season as outlined below.

Top Scoring Influx’s In D-I hoops
Rk.	School	Players	Points
1.	Georgia	7	4782
2.	Duquesne	5	4695
3.	Florida	5	4144
4.	Arkansas	6	4125
5.	Penn State	7	5183
6.	Washington St.	4	3785
7.	SMU	4	3733
8.	Kentucky	4	3538
9.	Utah	6	3175
10.	Arizona St.	3	3132

Georgia has been keeping scoreboard operators busy since Tom Crean arrived.

The Bulldogs reached the 90-point plateau 15 times in 90 games during Crean’s first three seasons. That’s a relatively healthy 16.7 percent.

By comparison, Georgia scored 90 or more points just 15 times in 387 games before Crean’s arrival, or .038 percent of the outings in a span that dates back to 2006.

It’s not just a single-game thing.

In three seasons under Crean, the Bulldogs have averaged two of their top-5 scoring outputs of the 2000s as outlined below.

Top Scoring Averages In 2000s
Rk.	Season	Points	Games	Avg.
1.	2002-03	2138	27	79.2
2.	2020-21	1944	25	77.8
3.	2001-02	2444	32	76.4
4.	2019-20	2428	32	75.9
5.	2006-07	2477	33	75.1

You may notice on Georgia’s roster that the Bulldogs have gone away from listing traditional positions – guard, forward and center. All 15 players are now simply listed as “B” for “Basketball Player.”

Tom Crean is a proponent for “position-less basketball.”

“That’s what they are,” Crean said. “It’s not valid to call them centers and power forwards and things like that as much with the way that we’re trying to play. They’re being trained as basketball players, every day… in the sense of how we train with the ball handling, the driving, the shooting – all those type of things. That’s big to me.”