Bulldogs suffer first home loss in OT

ATHENS — Georgia scored, and scored, and scored some more Wednesday night.

What it couldn’t do — not nearly enough — was stop anyone.

And in the SEC, that’s how you lose at home.

No. 21-ranked Georgia saw its perfect record at Stegeman Coliseum come to an end with a gutting 97-95 overtime loss to Ole Miss in front of a sold-out crowd Wednesday night, a game that felt less like it slipped away and more like it was slowly handed back possession by possession.

Sophomore guard Jeremiah Wilkinson was brilliant, pouring in a season-high 32 points to lead all scorers and keeping the Bulldogs afloat with a barrage of jumpers. Georgia also got 17 points from Kanon Catchings and 14 from Smurf Millender, and the Bulldogs knocked down 15 3-pointers.

It still wasn’t enough.

“Really tough loss,” Georgia coach Mike White said. “A ton of things we could have done better. Credit Ole Miss. They played well. Their interior defense was phenomenal against us, the best that we’ve seen all year. The physicality, their wall-ups, their attention to detail. Our field-goal percentage at the rim was really low. It was a huge factor in the game.”

Georgia (14-3, 2-2 SEC) came in as one of the nation’s highest-scoring teams, averaging 95.8 points per game. It lived up to that billing again. What it didn’t do was defend — and White didn’t sugarcoat it.

“They shot 60 percent in the second half at home with 10,000 people cheering for us,” White said. “We played with some energy, and we made some shots and got loud in there, but gave up layups, gave up open threes. You can’t just outscore people in this league. We’ve got to be a lot better defensively. I’ve got to do a better job defensively.”

The Bulldogs had chances.

Catchings buried a 3-pointer with under two minutes left in overtime to give Georgia a surge of momentum. But Ole Miss answered — as it seemed to do all night — and eventually won it on a second-chance layup that felt like the final punctuation mark on a night full of defensive breakdowns.

Georgia’s problems weren’t subtle.

“Focus, attention to detail, pride,” White said. “Not buying what we’re selling as a staff right now because you haven’t really had to pay for it. We just paid for it. It just bit us. So I think we got our guys’ attention right now. I hope so, because that was not a very good defensive effort. Really disappointed. It starts with me.”

White rattled off the mistakes: missed switches, blown coverages, a baseline out-of-bounds slip to the rim, a possession where Ole Miss’ Travis Perry ended up wide open in zone, even a moment when Perry grabbed a defensive rebound and went coast-to-coast against five Bulldogs.

“I hadn’t seen that this year,” White said. “Just 94 feet, layup. Unacceptable. We’ll be better than that defensively.”

Wilkinson, who matched his career best with six 3-pointers, didn’t disagree.

“Super frustrating,” he said. “We made 15 threes and lost the game in overtime. Every time we scored, they had to answer, and we have to be better on defense to take some of those away.”

He said the message in the locker room was simple.

“We have to be better and clean up the mistakes we made on defense,” Wilkinson said. “Offensively too, but this game came down to not being able to get enough stops to win the game. We scored enough to win the game, but we didn’t get enough stops to win the game.”

The loss was Georgia’s second overtime defeat of the season (1-2 in OT games) and its first at home, though the Bulldogs still hold a commanding 78-49 all-time edge in the series with Ole Miss.

There were other storylines, too — including reduced minutes for Blue Cain — but White made it clear that wasn’t about missed shots.

“I don’t care about missed threes,” White said. “I care about defensive rebounding, defensive mistakes. And I’m not just talking about Blue, I’m talking about our whole team — led by me. It’s all my fault.”

Georgia won’t have long to sit with it.

The Bulldogs return to Stegeman Coliseum on Saturday to face No. 17 Arkansas in a 4 p.m. game on ESPN2, a matchup that will test both their offense and, more urgently, their resolve on the defensive end.

Because Wednesday night proved something the SEC has a way of teaching quickly:

Scoring gets you noticed.

Stopping people gets you wins.