Georgia vs St. Louis Breakdown For March Madness

Georgia is in the NCAA Tournament for the second straight year, but the path is anything but comfortable. We break down how the Georgia Bulldogs end up as an eight seed after an ugly SEC Tournament performance, why the first half against Ole Miss can’t happen again, and what the numbers actually say about Thursday night. The opponent is the St. Louis Billikens, a team most SEC fans don’t watch much, but one that brings a dangerous profile: elite three-point shooting, tough shot defense, and a style that can turn the game into a track meet.

We dig into matchup specifics with tempo, three-point percentage, and KenPom efficiency as the backbone. Georgia’s offense grades out high, yet the shooting volatility is real, and St. Louis thrives at making teams miss. The conversation keeps coming back to identity: Georgia is at its best when it presses, forces turnovers, and turns defense into quick offense instead of grinding in the half court. We also spotlight the players who can swing the outcome, especially Kanon Catchings as the most important shooter, plus the supporting shotmakers who have to stay aggressive.

Then we switch gears to Georgia baseball’s opening SEC series against the Tennessee Volunteers, where the weekend flips from frustration to pure chaos. The Sunday game features a huge comeback, a key Bryce Callaway homer, and a viral moment when freshman Cole Johnson robs a would-be go-ahead home run for the final out. If you want a single highlight that captures how fast sports can turn, it’s that play.

Subscribe for more Georgia coverage, share this with a friend who’s filling out a bracket, and leave a review if you want more quick-hit episodes during March. Are you picking Georgia or St. Louis, and what worries you most about the matchup?

Transcript

Georgia Focus And Show Plan

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Alright, we're in Georgia's N the NCAA tournament. That's all that matters right now. So welcome back to another episode of the show. Today's going to be a little bit shorter episode where we just focus on Georgia basketball, Georgia baseball. We'll have a separate show for the World Baseball Classic, which will be another short episode. And then I'll have an episode this week where we talk about the NCAA tournament, my bracket projections, stuff like that. And that'll be another short episode. We'll do all of these separately. So on today's show, just about the dogs. You're not a dogs fan, maybe not your favorite episode, but so Georgia, not a great showing in the SEC tournament. That's putting it lightly. However, all of that is irrelevant. Georgia had an opportunity to probably move up to a seven seed, maybe even a six seed, if they had performed well in the SEC tournament. That is not what happened. They had their worst game of the season far and away, especially on offense, in the SEC tournament against Ole Miss. Now, what nobody expected was for Ole Miss to go on a run that saw them beat South Carolina, Georgia, an NCAA tournament team, Alabama, a four-seed in the NCAA tournament, and nearly beat Arkansas. It took them to overtime a four-seed in the NCAA tournament, two ranked teams. Nobody saw that from Ole Miss. I will say that at times this season, Ole Miss has looked like a pretty good team. The record never showed that. And it took them a long time this year to really get going. The middle of the season seemed to be a really big drop-off for Ole Miss. However, inexcusable performance for Georgia. We will talk about that a little bit more here later, but the first half really killed them. You couldn't come back from that poor a shooting performance. Not extremely rare for an SEC tournament team that had a buy to go into the SEC tournament and not shoot especially well, particularly in the first half of an SEC tournament game, but that was next level bad. So again, talk about that some more here in a second. And as bad as that was, Georgia is still an eight-seed in the tournament. This is one of the best situations Georgia has been in in a long time for the NCAA tournament. Now, it would have been nice to be a higher seed because then you would not have had to play a one-seed if you get out of the first round against a nine-seed, which I don't know if you knew this. Uh, nine seeds actually win more games against eight seeds than the other way around. You would think the eight-seed would be the favorite there, but nine seeds perform very well against eight seeds. It's usually more like a toss-up type game. So Georgia is the eight-seed. St. Louis is the nine-seed. If you don't know a lot about St. Louis, uh not surprising. SEC teams, bigger programs don't really come across St. Louis very often. The St. Louis Billikins, uncommon team, uncommon mascot. They are pretty good at basketball. This is not their first trip to the dance. Um, they've had a fairly good history. So the matchup, there are good things and there are bad things if you're a Georgia fan. The good things, we're not seeing Ole Miss beat us twice or a similar, slower-paced team that is able to really slow down the game and take Georgia out of the up-tempo game that they want to play. Saw Ole Miss also do that to Alabama. Alabama plays very similarly to Georgia, and Ole Miss was able to slow them down and win that game. Georgia's also not going to play a team like Florida that rebounds very well, which is what I've been saying. If Georgia had gotten matched up against a team that could rebound anywhere near as good as Florida, which pretty much nobody rebounds that well, they were going to be out. There was no way Georgia was going to win a game against a team like that. They just don't match up well against it. But St. Louis, on the other hand, plays a very similar style to the Bulldogs. Uh the similarities go pretty deep. Well, look, Georgia is fifth in scoring points per game. St. Louis is 11th. So you have two of the top 11 offenses in all of college basketball going head to head in this game. Both teams shoot a lot of threes. The difference is there that St. Louis is a lot more efficient. St. Louis is a lot better at hitting their threes than Georgia is. St. Louis is uh third in three-point percentage. Georgia is 182nd in three-point percentage. We've talked about that throughout the season that Georgia likes to shoot a lot of threes, but most of the year has not shot the three well. That came up against Ole Miss. Uh St. Louis is also 10th in assists. So they're making good passes, they're taking good shots. Uh according to Ken Pomeroy, Ken Pom efficiency ratings, which are pretty, pretty good at predicting who is going to win in the NCA tournament. If a team is not in the top 15, top 20 in offensive and defensive efficiency in the Ken POM ratings, they're not going to go deep in the tournament. That's that's pretty much been the rule statistically. However, Ken Pom actually has Georgia as a more efficient offense, as Georgia is 16th in offensive efficiency, St. Louis in 51st, which goes against the three-point percentage. However, um defense, St. Louis has a better defense than Georgia does if you're just comparing who they've played. St. Louis is 42nd in defensive efficiency, Georgia is 80th. So that's really Georgia's obstacle in going deep in the tournament if you're looking at Kemp Palm is Georgia has the offense to go deep in the tournament. They typically have not had the defense. But we talked about Georgia's really good performance down the stretch. That's a good enough defense to go deeper into the tournament. But the defense that Georgia has had most of the season and the amount of points that they've been giving up most of the season and not really generating turnovers and not getting rebounds, that's not going to cut it. Also, tempo-wise, to go further into these teams being similar. Georgia is 16th in tempo per Ken POM. St. Louis is 21st. Very similar in tempo. So this is going to be an up-tempo game. There's going to be a lot of threes. It's probably going to be sort of similar to the situation Georgia had playing Alabama just a couple weeks ago. Of course, that was at home. That was one of Georgia's best performances. So my main concern for the game is that St. Louis is the number one defense in the nation in field goal percentage. They are number five in three-point percentage on defense. So they are not letting you have easy shots. And Georgia often struggles to shoot well. They just have all year. We saw that in the first half of the Ole Miss game. Georgia scored 20 points in the first half of that game. That was the lowest total Ole Miss had allowed in the half the whole season. And clearly Georgia was not, should not have been the worst offense they played. Should have been probably the best offense or one of the best Ole Miss played the whole season, yet they only managed 20 points. That is because sometimes Georgia goes ice cold on offense shooting the ball. And sometimes Georgia doesn't play very good defense. So the bad news is St. Louis plays exceptional percentage defense, makes shooting the ball very difficult, and they shoot the three extremely well. That is not a good combination for the team playing them. And as we've seen in the NCAA tournament in the past, good shooting teams, particularly good three-point shooting teams, if you can get hot in the tournament, you can sink a lot of teams. And so what Georgia cannot have is another game where they start slow, not shooting well. They will go home. They will go home if that happens. However, there are some things about the matchup that actually work in Georgia's favor, in addition to Georgia's going to be a more athletic team than St. Louis. St. Louis has not played anybody, the level of athletes that Georgia has, hardly anybody in the country has the athletes that Georgia has on this team. That's why you see so many dunks. That's why you see so many blocks, and why you see such a up-tempo high-scoring offense. The good news in the matchup is St. Louis is 240th in offensive rebounds. That could be because they're nailing a lot of the threes. They don't need offensive rebounds and taking a lot of threes, maybe they're not getting them. However, they're third in defensive rebounds. So that is going to be a little bit of a struggle for Georgia. However, what works really well in Georgia's favor beyond St. Louis not being quite as good of a rebounding team, which has been a major problem for Georgia, St. Louis's style is going to help that. Georgia plays much better defense when they are pressuring the ball, playing full court press, and then that creates the offense. Getting the steals, shooting threes in transition. Georgia, the last several games of the season, was a much better three-point shooting team, a much better shooting team in general because they were running, because the games were up-tempo, because they are getting turnovers and they were hitting the threes in transition rather than trying to hit the threes in a half-court offense. That does not work for Georgia. Now, St. Louis, in an addition to already playing an up-tempo offense, which will help Georgia, the Billikins are 275th in turnovers. So you can make them turn the ball over. If Georgia traps, if Georgia plays full court press, you would expect that Georgia's going to get some turnovers in this game. That all fuels what Georgia needs, the perfect recipe to have a successful day. So that all will help Georgia a lot. The when we're comparing strength of schedule, Georgia has uh, according to Ken Palm, Georgia has the 61st rated strength of schedule. St. Louis has 130th. Both teams have abysmal out-of-conference strength of schedule. So there's not really a lot to compare out of conference. Wins, Georgia has wins over SEC champion and four seed Arkansas, a win over Missouri, a win over Kentucky. Missouri's a 10-seed. Kentucky's a six-seed, Texas, they're an 11-seed, and four seed Alabama. St. Louis's best wins are over Santa Clara, who is a 10-seed playing Kentucky, and VCU, who is an 11-seed playing North Carolina. So Georgia has the better wins. Also, if you look late in the season, Georgia ended the season probably better than St. Louis did, if you don't count the old miss game. Both teams lost their last game, and either one of these teams walked away as their conference tournament champion. St. Louis had two losses late in the season to Dayton, who they beat once earlier in the season, but both of those games were low-scoring games. That is not the style that Georgia's going to want to play. Georgia's last game, as I've said, that was it was horrific. The first 25 minutes of the game, that was pure nightmare. And then Santo Surreal gets thrown out about 25, 30 minutes into the game, which looked like an absolute disaster. Actually, for some strange reason, seemed to get the team going. Everybody was ice cold in the first half. You had a little bit of scoring out of Smurf Millender and Kareem Stagg, who I want to make a note, if there is one positive about this game other than that Georgia just fought back in the second half, is that Kareem Stagg played extremely hard the entire game. So want to give him his props. But it took until the second half to get anybody else rolling. And then Georgia was still shooting pretty terribly, even when they gained some more confidence and started being more aggressive taking the threes. Cannon catchings kind of is the key offensively for Georgia. And what I mean by that is like when you saw Georgia really excelling in a lot of these games that they've had good games, Cannon Catchings is hitting shots. And that really showed itself the last few games of the season. He looked like one of the best players in the conference, one of the better players in the country. He was very cold in the first half of the old miss game, and uh really didn't look to be his aggressive, confident shooting self. That changed in the second half. Cannon catchings shot much better in the second half. Uh and that was really more what we were used to lately. Georgia's gonna need him to shoot well. Cannon catchings is the best shooter Georgia has. Smurf Millender makes shots uh very well, especially in clutch situations. Jeremiah Wilkinson can make shots. The best shooter on Georgia's team is Cannon Catchings, and they are going to need him to shoot well to win this game. Also, are dogs getting turnovers? Are they confidently taking shots? If we get in a slow half-court, not aggressive mode, we're not gonna win. Georgia's not gonna win that. And you saw in the Ole Miss game, a lot of guys didn't want to take the shots, especially in the first half. You can't have that mindset with this team. If you are, you've got to have the confidence that you're going to hit the three and got to be willing to take those threes. Georgia will have to play the way it did against Alabama, the way it played against Kentucky, not the way it played against Ole Miss, not the way it played against Oklahoma earlier in the season, where he didn't play any defense. If Georgia has its top game against St. Louis, I certainly expect Georgia to win this game. If not, I think they're gonna lose. St. Louis has not played a team with the type of talent Georgia has, but a team that shoots 40.1% from three, they are, like I said, third in three-point percentage, is a team you don't want to see in March. Uh it's been over 20 years since Georgia won a game in the NCAA tournament. Uh, you had a berth under Dennis Felton, you had a one or two berths under Mark Fox, and uh lost to Washington, lost to Michigan State, had a berth last year, and got matched up against Gonzaga. That was an unfortunate draw. So a lot of these times Georgia's gotten matched up against a team that it's not really a good draw. This is a little bit better situation for Georgia. However, St. Louis can really shoot and they can really defend the shots. So that's gonna be uh that's gonna be a difficult matchup. If Georgia gets out of this game with St. Louis, well, your reward is probably gonna be Michigan. And Michigan has been one of the top four teams, top five teams all season long. And overwhelmingly was one of the favorites to win the national championship. Michigan looks slightly more vulnerable going down the stretch, um, had some injuries. Not sure how that's gonna play. And I'll talk about this when I talk about the uh do my NCAA tournament episode. A lot of the top-level teams, Duke, Gonzaga, uh several other teams, have had some injuries. North Carolina thinks had some injuries. Just a lot of teams have got guys banged up. Texas Tech. And so that's gonna make it difficult to really know how these teams are gonna respond. Michigan uh played well in the Big Ten tournament. They had some very close wins, got to the final, lost to Purdue. That's a game that you would have expected in the regular season in Michigan to win that game. Not that Purdue's not a good team, but you would have expected Michigan to win that game. And so you're wondering, are they getting worn down? Is or is the injury taking its toll? But whether Georgia beats St. Louis or not, whether Michigan has a little bit of injury trouble or not, that's gonna be an incredibly difficult matchup. Michigan is extremely efficient on in on offense and defense. They're far and away one of the favorites to win the national championship. So, you know, guys, this is why you didn't want to be the eight-seed. You didn't want to be an eight-seed because you didn't want to have to play a nine-seed, who very often wins that opening round game, and you didn't want to play a number one seed. That's why you had to win a game in the conference tournament. But Georgia's got a tough task. We'll see if they can do it. I do think if Georgia plays their A game, they can play with anybody. I think they can really play with just about anybody, especially if we can avoid teams like Florida that have the front court that they have and the rebounding ability. However, we'll just have to see how it goes. I'm gonna I'm gonna stay positive, and I think Georgia's gonna get a win on Thursday night. That's gonna be a late game, especially if you're on the East Coast, um, be 9.45 Eastern time. So see if Georgia can do it. I think it's gonna be a really good game. I think it's really probably gonna be one of the better matchups. We'll we'll see. Will the athletes win or will the percentage win? But St. Louis hasn't played the teams that Georgia has played. So hoping that's gonna make a difference there. So, transitioning to baseball. Georgia baseball began conference play Friday against Tennessee. So we had talked about that a little bit on the show, that that was really where the competition was ramping up significantly. Georgia went in and college baseball has several different ranking systems. It's you're you're gonna see different numbers beside each team's name. Georgia went in ranked eighth, while Tennessee was ranked 19th. So this is a really good test for Georgia. On Friday, dogs lost four to seven. Uh, they gave up three home runs. Georgia had all of its runs in the fifth inning. So not a great start, especially considering Georgia was at home. Saturday, Georgia won four to two, so did a much better job pitching, playing defense, uh limiting the big crooked numbers. But the story on this series was really on Sunday. I want to be honest with you. I was feeling pretty down about the game on Sunday and the series most of the game. Uh it was a rainy day. Tennessee jumped out on Georgia early with three runs in the first inning and was leading five to nothing through four innings. Georgia just looked anemic on offense, really couldn't get anything going. Uh Dogs finally took, uh got back into the game with two runs in the fifth, one in the sixth, but then Tennessee scored in the seventh inning. And this, my friends, is where I made a critical error. In the seventh inning, after Tennessee scored that run, went back up um six to three. I decided we had some very bad weather coming in. And so I wanted to try to walk my dogs before a possible tornado hit. So I said, well, Georgia's not going to win this game. They aren't looking good this series. I'm going for a walk. And I did not turn the game on the radio on my phone. When I got back, Georgia had scored five runs in the seventh inning to take the lead, including a home run from Bryce Callaway. They're up eight to six. Then also while I was gone, I saw that Georgia had not only come back, but the highlight that is sweeping the sports world. I I happen not to be paying any attention here. So uh if you haven't seen it, Tennessee made the game eight to seven in the ninth inning with two outs. They had a runner on um and looked what was going to be the go-ahead run from pinch hitter Stone Lawless. So he is going viral for he really celebrates the home run, slams his bat to the ground, and gets really fired up. Tennessee's coming out out of the dugout. But that was a little premature because freshman Cole Johnson went up and robbed. Over the fence, uh reached over the wall, whole team runs out into the outfield celebrating. Both the TV and radio calls were fantastic, going berserk. This was to win the game, the last out of the game, and he robs the home run. So it was it was incredible. So in the span of a few innings, it went from a huge letdown to a series, to a great series for Georgia, a series win. So you went from uh two out of three, losing two out of three at home to Tennessee, not really looking that great, to staging a huge comeback, winning the final two games of the series, and on a very emphatic note. So Georgia takes two from Tennessee. That looks totally different. That looks totally different. So that's very exciting. Good win. Would like to see Georgia be a little more consistent on offense and a little more consistent on the pitching. We'll see how that goes the rest of the way. They'll play the Citadel on Tuesday before going to Texas AM over the weekend. So that'll be another challenge for Georgia. So that's all we're talking about on this particular episode. Just little Georgia basketball, little Georgia baseball. So let me know what your thoughts are on Georgia's matchup with St. Louis. Are you excited about the matchup? Do you think it's favorable? Uh, are you concerned? Do the statistics, the field goal defense, does that worry you? Does the three-point shooting of St. Louis worry you? Let me know what you think. Let me know what you think about Georgia baseball. Did you catch that crazy highlight? Did you catch those few innings? And uh any other input or whatever you have, let me know. And we will be back. This week is gonna be a little bit crazy. Um, like I said, we're gonna have some world baseball classic content. We're gonna have some NCAA tournament content, shorter videos, podcasts. Whatever happens in Georgia's game to St. Louis, we'll talk about that and obviously see how far they go. But uh we'll definitely talk Georgia some more. Um, might not get as much Georgia baseball content in the rest of this week and into next week, but we will check back in on Georgia baseball for sure. So thanks for listening. Uh, if you're a Georgia fan, go dogs. Really hope, really hope we get it done. Really hope we get it done this time. I I just want to see Georgia win a tournament game. Because that has not happened since I was a little kid. And I would really like to see Georgia win at least one game, and you never know. You never know what could happen. So it's March, so we'll see what happens. So thanks for tuning in. See you guys next time.