Georgia basketball: Best of the Bulldogs in the 2019-20 season
The 2019-20 Georgia basketball season ended prematurely Thursday morning when the SEC decided to cancel the rest of the conference tournament. It’s time to look back on Tom Crean’s second season in Athens.
The promising post-season run ended before it could even start. Georgia basketball defeated Ole Miss in the first round of the tournament and had a meeting with Florida set for the second round.
Unfortunately, the ongoing issues with the Novel Coronavirus prompted sports leagues everywhere to cancel upcoming competitions, the NCAA and the SEC included. Now that the season is over, it’s time to look back on the 2019-20 Georgia basketball team.
Season review
Georgia, led by superstar freshman Anthony Edwards, started the season with one of the hottest non-conference records in recent memory. Losses to Dayton and Michigan State in the Maui Invitational, and to Arizona State on the road were the only blemishes the Bulldogs suffered before conference play.
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Highlights of non-conference play included a fifth-straight win over the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and an upset over the then No. 9 Memphis Tigers. The Bulldogs entered SEC play 10-3 and was on the verge of being ranked for the first time since January 2011. Unfortunately, the season was about to take a turn for the worst.
With Tom Crean dismissing forward Amanze Ngumezi in early December, Georgia lost one of its best big men. Rayshaun Hammonds had the shoulder all the weight down low while the team waited on a new player to step up in the post.
The result was a skid of 10 losses in 12 games as teams like Kentucky, Auburn, Mississippi State and Florida bullied the Bulldogs in the paint. Georgia did manage to steal wins from Tennessee and Texas A&M to keep NCAA Tournament hopes alive.
By the middle of February, a new force in the paint emerged in Toumani Camara. Thanks to his outstanding last-minute against Auburn, Georgia upset the Tigers at home 65-55. The Bulldogs followed that with a buzzer beater win at Vanderbilt.
Georgia couldn’t keep the momentum going in an overtime loss to South Carolina, but it did bounce back to put a dagger into Arkansas’s tournament hopes. Georgia ended the regular season with a pair of ugly losses to Florida and LSU.
After the regular season, Georgia had a measly 15-16 record overall, a 5-13 record in SEC play and entered the SEC Tournament as a No. 13 seed. Fortunately, the SEC played the first day of the tournament and Georgia got to end the season on a high-note, thrashing Ole Miss 81-63.