ATHENS, Ga. – The No. 21 Georgia Bulldogs defeated the No. 17 Arkansas Razorbacks, 90-76, on Saturday afternoon at Stegeman Coliseum in front of raucous sold-out crowd. Sophomore guard co-led all scorers with 20 points, matched only by Arkansas’ Darius Acuff, Jr.
 
Fast Facts:

• Georgia moves to 12-7 against Arkansas in games played in Athens while the Razorbacks maintain a 28-18 all-time series lead.
• To go with Wilkinson’s 20 points – his eighth of the season and 18th of his career – Blue Cain added 18 points, and Kanon Catchings and Jake Wilkins each contributed 15 and 11 points, respectively. Wilkins’ 11-point outing marks his best scoring display in conference play and his highest point total since scoring 14 against Florida A&M on November 17.
• With the game tied at 70 with 5:52 to play in the second half, Georgia went on a 10-0 run to help close out the game. During the 10-0 run, Cain and Wilkinson combined for all 10 points.
• Somto Cyril recorded a career-best seven blocks in the win. This season, Cyril has blocked four or more shots in five games, and he now sits 14th overall in program history with 103 career blocks. Further, through 18 games, Cyril has now topped his season total in blocks from last season (51) with 52 swats.
• Georgia remains one of the nation’s leaders in points per game, still averaging just over 96 points per outing.
• The Bulldogs led the Razorbacks blocks (11-8), steals (17-11) and assists (15-13).

 
Key Quotes:
Georgia Head Coach Mike White
On the 10-0 run late in the second half…
“A couple stops. A couple loose balls in the paint. So much different than the way we’ve played in the last three years, as opposed to, ‘Let’s really call something here, and let’s think about what we’re doing and walk the ball up.’ It’s a huge possession. We’re effective in huge possessions, playing in tempo, playing with pace and space, and sprinting the corners and pitching it ahead and getting into some of our conceptual stuff, or just putting your head down in space, right? If you can see the rim, let’s get to the rim. Get the defense behind, moved it a little bit, fell into a couple open jumpers and shot it and finished.”
 
On Jake Wilkins’ early impact in the game…
“We thought it would be a pretty high-tempo game. We hadn’t, without naming names, we’ve struggled a little bit, at those couple spots there on the wings, just a little bit at times. We just wanted to give him an opportunity. We went really hard in practice the last two days, and he’s a guy. He’s fresh, right? He hasn’t played a ton lately. Believe in him. He had two really good practices, but it’s not like he’s a freshman that was achieving success, that all of a sudden just has had a bad attitude, you know, for two, three weeks, which is common. Freshmen do this. I did it at 18, right, and that’s not him. He just continued two days ago. He was really good, yesterday he was really good. He’s got some – I said this in the summer – he reminds me of Asa [Newell] a little bit. His path and his journey, his process is totally different. He’s running his own race, but a similar characteristic in that he loves to play. He comes to compete every day. comes to work, and he was ready to have a good game today.”
 
On Blue Cain’s mindset coming into the game…
“What he expressed to me a couple days ago was ‘I just got to get lost in the game, I got to play with joy, I got to stop putting pressure on myself.’ All these young people go through stuff like that, and today, he started the game with just making winning plays. You go back and watch the first defensive possession, and he was phenomenal.”
 
#0 Blue Cain | Jr. | Guard
On responding after the loss to Ole Miss.
“Yeah, like he [Wilkinson] said, we had a tough two days of practice. We just wanted to stay together whenever they went on their run, and then luckily, we were able to bounce back.”
 
On Coach White’s message to him…
“He just told me he just believed in me. Obviously, I had a tough night. Been struggling a little bit, but he’s told me he believed in me, the team believed in me. I had a bunch of guys on the team come and tell me just keep going. It’s going to balance out. Everybody was just telling me they believed in me.”
 
#5 Jeremiah Wilkinson | So. | Guard
On the team’s mentality in the win…
“We talked after last game just how are we going to respond to a tough game, tough loss that we know we should’ve won. This is the way we come out and respond. We’ve had a tough two days of practice, trying to lock in on a lot of things we did wrong. I feel like we really got after it in practice, and it showed on the court today.”
 
On the 11-0 run to start the game…
“We just want to go play the game, and today, we know if we come out and do the right things, good things will happen. Today was an 11-0 run, and we just tried to keep that same energy the whole game. Not come out slow, not come out sluggish, and just play hard the whole game.”
 
Arkansas Head Coach John Calipari
On the game…
“Credit to Georgia. I’m just disappointed in the start of the game. The stuff that we talked about, how we were going to tackle the press. We talked about it, we went over it. Then you start down seven, eight, nine nothing. I’ve got to call a timeout. Obviously, if they’re not responding, then I’m not communicating as well as I need to in that situation. What I love is that we fought, tied the game. I thought we were going to win the game, and then we made errors. But to get it to where it was when we were down as much as we were, that was a pretty big deal.”
 
Up Next: The No. 21 Georgia Bulldogs go on the road to take on the Missouri Tigers next Tuesday, Jan. 20 at the Mizzou Arena. Tip-off is set for 9:00 p.m. ET on SEC Network.
 
Secure your tickets for future Bulldog home games here.