Georgia begins their home basketball schedule with a challenging test against Wake Forest on Friday at 7 ET. Georgia fell to Wake Forest 81-71 in Winston-Salem last season and they hope this year will provide a different result.

The dawgs are looking to bounce back after their season opening loss to Oregon and have a decent challenge ahead of them as they look to avoid an 0-2 start to the 2023-24 campaign. Wake Forest comes into Athens 1-0 as they roared back to defeat Elon by 23 after trailing at the half by 12. Wake put up 101 points in their opening game, so they will look to continue their offensive success on Friday Night.

Wake Forest will provide Georgia with a much different look than Oregon showed the dawgs on Monday, as they bring in a guard heavy scoring attack opposed to Oregon’s interior attack. Andrew Carr is Wake’s best big man but he plays a decent amount on the outside and is not nearly as physical as Dante. That should be a relief for Georgia because they really struggled to defend the big man but will now have to switch their focus to having solid perimeter defense all around. Wake Forest’s starting guards (Cameron Hildreth, Kevin Miller, and Hunter Sallis) combined for 69 points in their game Monday and Georgia can not let that happen or they will be in for a long night.

For Georgia, the keys for this game are having solid perimeter defense and getting off to a good start. Georgia really struggled at the beginning of the first game, missing easy shots, not guarding the ball well and not rebounding well early in the game. Georgia cannot afford to do that again and needs their starting guards (Noah Thomasson and Silas Demary Jr.) to start the game well. They will also look for Russell Tchewa to provide more physicality down low and rebound the ball better than he did last game. As far as perimeter defense, that will be the task of Silas Demary, Noah Thomasson and RJ Melendez. I thought the outside defense was average at best the first game and I think it will look much improved on Friday night. Look for Jalen DeLoach to get a little more playing time too. He is a solid defender that will provide Goergia with some defensive versatility guarding bigs and guards.

The biggest area Georgia needs to improve from the first game is playing together a little more and being able to trust everyone on the floor. They went iso-ball a little too much throughout the first game, and that is when the offense really stalled out. When they were moving the ball, Georgia got open 3 pointers and were able to claw back in the game. I expect Georgia to be around that 30 3 points shots per game mark all year (Mike White said this was a positive after the Oregon game) ,when they are moving the ball ,and more open ones will go down in the upcoming games. It is a make or miss sport after all. I would also love to see Georgia attempt to play Deloach at the 5 spot some as we continue the season. I believe he would be a X-factor defensively at that position and allow Georgia to play a bit more aggressively on that end with his ability to switch. The concern would be if he could hold up physically but I think we at least need to see it.

Injury Update

I do expect Georgia to be without RJ Sunahara again Friday Night as he continues to recover from his leg injury. I think the earliest we see him is the Miami game on 11/17.

Projected Starters

Georgia	Wake Forest
Silas Demary Jr (6′ 5”, 190)	Kevin Miller (6′ 0”, 175)
Noah Thomasson (6′ 4”, 210)	Hunter Sallis (6′ 5”, 185)
RJ Melendez (6′ 7”, 215)	Cameron Hildreth (6′ 4”, 195)
Jabri Abdur-Rahim (6′ 8”, 215)	Andrew Carr (6′ 10”, 220)
Russel Tchewa (7′ 0”, 275)	Matthew Marsh (7′ 1” 250)

This should be a fun one and is extremely important for Georgia to avoid a 0-2 start. There probably will not be a recap after but I will have a weekend recap on Sunday Night recapping this game and the game against NC Central on Sunday. See you then!