Off to quick begin, Georgia welcomes skidding Notre Dame

A pair of programs better known for their play on the gridiron will face off on the court on Tuesday when the Georgia Bulldogs host the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the second edition of the SEC/ACC Challenge in Athens.

Georgia (7-1) can match its best start to a season since the 2006-07 campaign, when it won eight of nine games to begin the year.

The Bulldogs are coming off a 102-56 stomping of visiting Jacksonville on Saturday. It was their highest point total since scoring 102 in an overtime loss to visiting Alabama on Feb. 8, 2020.

Against Jacksonville, the Bulldogs shot 66.7 percent from the field, including 14-for-24 (58.3 percent) on 3-pointers, en route to their second 46-plus-point win this season. Dakota Leffew came off the bench to lead six double-figure scorers with 16 points.

“The assist-to-turnover ratio, the way the ball moved, the extra passes, the shot selection and the unselfishness offensively was at an all-time high,” Georgia head coach Mike White said.

After winning at Florida State in last year’s inaugural ACC/SEC Challenge, White hopes to see an impressive crowd showing in Athens on Tuesday.

“We’d be appreciative of a great turnout to give us a chance to play well against a high-level program,” White said. “(Notre Dame) is very, very good, extremely well coached. They’re just a solid team and program. For us it’s all about how we prepare for them.”

Five-star freshman Asa Newell leads Georgia in points (15.4 per game) and rebounds (6.0). Silas Demary Jr. chips in 14 points and Leffew adds 13 per game.

Notre Dame (4-4) is desperately hoping to flip the trajectory of a current four-game skid.

Adding insult to injury, preseason All-ACC pick Markus Burton injured his right knee in Notre Dame’s 85-84 overtime loss to Rutgers on Nov. 26 in the Players Era Festival tournament in Las Vegas. Burton will miss several weeks.

“We’re short-handed right now, but it’s not like that’s changing,” Fighting Irish coach Micah Shrewsberry said. “We need to continue to have belief, we need to continue to find different ways to win. Whether that’s a high-scoring affair, or knockdown, drag-out game, I think we can kind of do both. We just have to find different ways to have success.”

In Notre Dame’s latest loss, an 80-76 defeat to Creighton on Saturday in the seventh-place game in Las Vegas, Braeden Shrewsberry and Tae Davis each scored 17 points.

Behind Burton’s team-leading 18.2 points per game, Shrewsberry averages 15.4 per game and Davis 14.5.

–Field Level Media