Bulldogs open basketball season with win over FIU

ATHENS, Ga. — The Georgia basketball season got off to a strong start on Tuesday with a 58-51 win over the Florida International Panthers. Despite the Bulldogs being down 27-22 at halftime, Georgia outscored FIU 36-24 after the break to come out on top. Starting point guard, and Gonzaga transfer, Aaron Cook led the way in scoring, finishing with 10 points on a night where defense dominated.

Despite coming out on top at the end of the night, Georgia only led for 14:22 of the 40 minutes of game time. FIU jumped ahead early, leading by as many as seven in the first half, before the Bulldogs briefly held the lead. Then, in the second half, Georgia used a 12-2 run out of the locker room as well as a later 12-0 run to cut into the deficit, take the lead and never look back.

On the stat sheet, Georgia dominated the boards, out-rebounding the Panthers 46 to 36. That led to an even bigger discrepancy for second-chance points where the Dawgs held a 17-2 advantage. It wasn’t all pretty though. The Bulldogs struggled in various categories, specifically 3-point shooting and turnovers.. Tom Crean’s team shot 3-15 from deep (20%) and committed 16 turnovers, with 11 of them coming in the first half. After the game, Crean gave an explanation for the reason why these problems have occurred and what they will do to fix it.

“For us, when we make it hard is when we don’t try and make the extra pass, or we try and drive into traffic,” he said. “When we make it right, we’re trying to make the next pass, the ball is moving, we’re cutting. We got better at that tonight. We had to make some adjustments in the lineup at times to make sure we had that. Our guys just have to learn that that is how we play. The ball sticking or the ball not being thrown to the cutter, not reversed from side-to-side, not going through the paint are things that we can’t do. We have to continue to get better at that. Our shooting will get better, but tonight it was our defense. It was our rebounding. They are a very good team, a very good three-point shooting team. Our guys, for the most part, did a pretty good job of the adjustments we were trying to make to guard them over the last few days.”

While there were many standout performances in the game, the most impressive may have come from Aaron Cook, who was playing in his first game as a Georgia Bulldogs. Cook, who played a team-high 34 minutes, led the team in scoring (10), assists (8), steals (3) and was third in rebounding (6). Crean gave his thoughts on how Cook affected the game tonight.

“I thought he did a really good job. The rebounds were big, the eight assists, the 10 points. He came out, and he was really moving,” Crean said. “Aaron has a lot to do with that because he can get out. We put him on the other team’s best 3-point shooter, No. 4 to start the game. He’s getting dogged the entire way up the court with the pressure. Sometimes we brought a screen up, sometimes we didn’t. He played a lot of minutes, and he never wore down. That shows the kind of veteran that he is.” 

Despite Cook’s great game individually, when he was asked about the team’s difference between the first and second halves, he gave the majority of the credit to his coaches and teammates.

“Our coaches made a really good adjustment going into the second half,” Cook said. “We knew that they liked to drive and kick so they told us to stay home on shooters and really forced them to take tough shots. Once we locked in on that our defense started our offense and that’s what got everything going.”

Another thing that got the team going in the win was the Stegeman Coliseum crowd. Without limited capacity this season, “The Steg” was ready to go for the season-opener. That something that played a big impact in the game according to Cook.

“Having that crowd in there was definitely a big help for us, just their energy kind of brought our energy up and made us want to play even harder,” he said. “Our team did a really good job of coming together defensively, and we really just got it going defensively and that’s what got our energy going and got us going on offense.”

Georgia’s next game will be on the road, traveling to Cincinnati this Saturday to take on the Bearcats (7:00 p.m. ET, ESPN+). Then, the Dawgs will be back home in Athens next Tuesday to face off against the South Carolina State Bulldogs.