Outside Stegeman Coliseum | Kentucky at Georgia

There was a certain buzz around Athens, Georgia earlier this week.

As soon as the Georgia Bulldogs dismantled Missouri last Saturday, the town’s focus shifted to Tuesday’s home finale against none other than Kentucky. Yes, those Wildcats who are kind of good at college basketball (29-0 at the time, No. 1 in the nation and expected to steamroll the field in the NCAA Tournament).

Long before the regular season reached the home stretch, several pundits said Georgia had the best shot at ending Kentucky’s perfect run. While the Wildcats are a super team full of McDonald’s All Americans, the scrappy Bulldogs use enough motion on both ends to where it could throw that kind of team for a loop.

Everybody wanted to see if those pundits were right — and I mean, everybody.

  • Students began lining up for tickets at 8 a.m. — in rain, no less — for a 9 p.m. tip. Word had it that wristbands weren’t given out until 2 p.m.
  • The game had been sold out for months and single tickets went for upwards of double face value on StubHub.
  • Charles Barkley, Bill Belichick and Ashley Judd were there.

Take a look at the crowd.

Kentucky at Georgia | Tyler Mayforth

Well, the game lived up to the hype as Georgia and Kentucky treated the capacity crowd to a classic in the Classic City.

For a while it looked as if the Bulldogs would do the unthinkable. Georgia actually led by nine late in the second half — and then the Wildcats said enough was enough. Like I alluded to in my sidebar, it was almost like watching a boxer use the rope-a-dope tactic. Kentucky closed the game on a 16-2 run and won by eight.

On a personal tangent, I had never been so excited to cover a game before in my career. After covering Texas State for seven years and watching that brand of basketball, how could I not be champing at the bit for an opportunity to watch a slugfest between the Bulldogs and arguably the greatest team in recent memory?

Because of this, I put some added pressure on myself and missed “deadline” (Don’t worry, we went online only since it started so late). I wanted to craft the best story. I wanted it to match my page design from the previous day.

Remember how I talked about hitting a groove? Yeah.

I think I made the right choice to move to Georgia.