Georgia basketball rallies to avoid SEC Tournament upset by Missouri

The Georgia basketball season isn't over just yet.

The Bulldogs kept it going late Wednesday night by rallying to a 64-59 victory over Missouri by scoring the final 12 points of the game in an SEC Tournament first-round matchup.

That helped the Bulldogs avoid doing something no team had done since December, losing to a Tigers team that went 0-18 in league play this season

The No. 11 seeded Bulldogs moved on in Bridgestone Arena in Nashville to face No. 6 seed Florida at approximately 9:30 p.m. Thursday. It was the 19th straight loss for No. 14 seed Missouri (8-24)

Georgia (17-15) took a 60-59 lead on a 3-pointer from Justin Hill (17 points) with 1:43 to go and the Tigers didn't score again while missing their final seven shots.

"We know this could be it," Hill said. "We have a lot of seniors and grads on the team so we tried to trap the ball and just see what happens."

Georgia won its first SEC Tournament game since 2020 when the tournament was halted due to COVID.

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Georgia led 21-9 in the first half, but the Tigers rode a 12-0 run to push ahead 35-31 early in the second half. The lead grew to 43-35 as Georgia started the second half 1-of-9 shooting and went more than five minutes without a field goal.

"We've gotten off to a lot of really good starts in league play like we did again tonight," Georgia coach Mike White said. "Hopefully we'll get off to a good start tomorrow. Adversity will hit and we'll see what we do down the stretch. Boy, we responded as strong as you possibly can."

Georgia played its third straight game without second leading scorer Jabri Abdur-Rahim due to an ankle injury.

Freshman guard Blue Cain scored a career-high 19 points and buried 5 of 9 3-pointers to help bring Georgia back. The Bulldogs trailed 53-52, but the Tigers scored the next six. Cain's steal – he had four ‒ and feed to RJ Melendez cut the Tigers lead to 59-57 and then Hill hit his three.

"We knew it was a game of runs," Cain said. "Whenever they made theirs, we just had to respond and make our run back."

Missouri was led by guard Nick Honor with 14 points.