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Georgia wants more after latest win: 'I know we can do better'

Jeremy Johnsonby: Jeremy Johnson12/19/25JeremyO_Johnson

Georgia center Somto Cyril walked into Georgia’s press conference after Thursday’s 112-82 win over Western Carolina wanting more.

Cyril put up a career-high 14 points on Thursday night. Georgia was ranked No. 25 in the latest Associated Press Poll earlier this week.

That means nothing to the sophomore center.

“I don’t care about rankings,” Cyril told reporters following the game. “I don’t care about where we’re at. It looks good on paper. The people who do the rankings, that’s their job, that’s not mine. My job is to show up and play basketball.”

Cyril is looking toward what the standard is for the 10-1 Bulldogs. The number that had Cyril and head coach Mike White’s interest was 82.

Georgia allowed 82 points on Thursday night.

“We gave up 82,” Cyril said. “People are like, ‘oh, you won and got triple digits,’ and whatever. I know we can do better than that. People think that it’s a good thing that we beat Western Carolina, no disrespect to their program, but I know what I see every day in practice. I feel like the bar and the standard are too low. I know what we can and how we can do it. We do it every day in practice. The potential we have to be up there is high.”

Georgia is looking to take pride in their defense as well as offense

White echoed Cyril’s frustration and observations. Georgia’s head coach was admittedly disappointed in the effort defensively, in particular. The Bulldogs continue to lead the country in scoring, averaging 99.5 points per game so far this season.

The defensive effort on Thursday left more to be desired by White.

“We didn’t guard very well,” White said after the game. “We wanted to take a step defensively in the right direction. I’m a little disappointed in our effort overall defensively. There was a lack of communication, some miscues. It’s just not as important to us right now. It’s got to be more important defensively. We’ve got to be more committed if we’re going to guard some of the offenses in the SEC. We’ll get back to work tomorrow.”

White was not fully ready to point out a reason for the lack of effort on Thursday.

“I’m not into giving our guys excuses, but the positivity, the rankings, the positive noise that can be poison at times, especially for young people, it’s hard to respond to that positivity,” White said. “We’ve talked about it adnasuium. What’s wild is that we’re really working at practice. We had a sharp shootaround. Guys competed the last couple of days in practice at a really high level… We’ve got to take more pride in what we’re doing. In everything, but especially defensively.”

Georgia will return to the court on Monday. The Bulldogs will host West Georgia at 2 p.m. at Stegman Coliseum.

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