Georgia Basketball: Bulldogs Fall to No. 10 Gonzaga in NYC
Gonzaga defeats the Georgia basketball team 88 – 76 in the NIT Tip-Off semi-finals
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Despite a furious second half effort led by Charles Mann and J. J. Frazier, the Georgia basketball team could not overcome a 12 – 2 Gonzaga game opening run or a 62% – 92% Gonzaga free throw shooting advantage and the Gonazaga Bulldogs defeated the Georgia Bulldogs 88 – 76 in the NIT Tip-Off semi-finals in Madison Square Garden.
“We didn’t get off to a very good start but after that, we played it nose to nose,” Georgia coach Mark Fox told Georgiadogs.com. “We made it a point to try to take away the three-point line, which we did and we knew when we did that, they were really good post players one on one, and they completed those plays inside and that was the difference.”
Kyle Wiltjer scored a career-high 32 points and Kevin Pangos added 22 points, six assists and three steals for Gonzaga (5-0). The Bulldogs will play St. John’s in the championship game Friday night. St. John’s beat Minnesota 70-61 in the first semifinal.
Charles Mann led Georgia (3-2) with 23 points – 16 in the second half, seven rebounds and four assists. Mann shot 15 free throws but made only 9. J. J. Frazier scored 14 in 29 minutes of play, 11 in the second half. Nemanja Djurisic scored 10 and Marcus Thornton 9 despite a significant size disadvantage.
Gonzaga reached its largest lead at 54-35 less than four minutes into the second half, when a technical foul assessed to Fox inspired a Georgia rally that eventually cut the lead to single digits. But in the end, the 10th ranked Gonzaga team proved worthy of its number 10 national rank.
While Wiltjer torched the Bulldogs for a career high, Georgia held the rest of the Gonzaga forwards to less than half their scoring average and below their rebounding average.
Gonzaga entered the game ranked fourth in field goal percentage (56.1) and shot 50% for the game.
Georgia will play Minnesota in the third-place game Friday night and Gonzaga will play St. John’s on Friday in the championship game.