For a second year, the same former UK recruit led an upset win over the Wildcats
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- For a second straight season, UK basketball suffered an upset loss to Georgia.
- A key factor in both defeats was the play of Georgia center Somto Cyril.
- Cyril is a former UK basketball commit under previous coach John Calipari.
For a second straight season, the same former UK basketball recruit led an SEC rival to an upset win over the Wildcats.
Georgia sophomore center Somto Cyril — all 6-foot-11, 260 pounds of him — threw his physicality around in UGA’s 86-78 triumph over Kentucky on Tuesday night inside Rupp Arena.
Cyril — who was originally committed to play at Kentucky as part of John Calipari’s 2024 high school recruiting class — totaled 14 points on 6-for-8 shooting, along with eight rebounds, two steals, one assist and one block in 26 effective minutes on the floor. He was a plus-nine in the game, which tied for the second-best mark among Bulldogs.
“He was a different kid the last two days in practice, and he was a different guy the first few defensive possessions of the game,” fourth-year Georgia coach Mike White said of Cyril. “He set, or was part of setting, a tone for us defensively with his ball pressure on the perimeter. His ball-screen defense was better than it was (in Georgia’s most recent loss at Oklahoma).”
Kentucky had seen this before.
Last season as a freshman, Cyril was a driving force behind another upset win by the Bulldogs over the Wildcats. In Mark Pope’s first SEC road game as the Kentucky coach, Cyril had six points and eight rebounds as UGA sprung a surprise win over UK in Athens.
Cyril, who is from Nigeria, has morphed into an every-game starter for UGA this season. He looked every bit the part of a bruising SEC enforcer as Georgia pulled away Tuesday for a rare Rupp Arena win.
“(He) was just hard to block out, you know?” White said. “He’s got a unique level of tempo to him. When he’s playing in a crowd, he keeps the ball up.”
After falling behind at halftime for the 13th time in 19 games this season against high-major opponents, UK pieced together a second-half comeback that had the game’s outcome in the balance in the closing minutes.
That’s when Cyril met the moment.
With 43 seconds to play and Georgia clinging to a three-point lead, Cyril stood to the side of the basket as UGA junior guard Marcus “Smurf” Millender drove to the hoop. Millender’s layup attempt wasn’t close, thanks in part to a shot contest from Kentucky junior forward Brandon Garrison.
But as the ball banked high off the backboard, Cyril knifed between UK junior forward Mo Dioubate and sophomore guard Collin Chandler to carve out space on the interior. Cyril leapt and grabbed the ball from behind Dioubate for his fifth and final offensive rebound of the game.
Cyril then muscled through a foul by Dioubate to bank in a shot, which touched every part of the rim on its way in. Cyril’s body vibrated with emotion as he celebrated while stretched out in the painted area.
This broke a nearly three-minute scoring drought for Georgia. It extended the visitors’ advantage to five points, giving the Bulldogs needed separation on the scoreboard. The game was never within one possession again.
“That was one of those examples where he makes a big play when you’ve got three defenders around him,” White said. “If he misses that one, they’ve probably got numbers going the other way. So that was a timely basket for us.”
While Cyril failed to convert on the potential and-one free throw, his basket began Big Blue Nation’s exodus out of Rupp Arena.
It also solidified Cyril’s growing reputation as a Wildcat killer.
Cyril was Kentucky’s first recruiting pledge in the class of 2024. He committed to Calipari and the Cats way back in June 2023, the first of what became a six-player high school recruiting haul for Calipari in that cycle.
You know where the story goes from there. Kentucky’s 2023-24 squad lost as a No. 3 seed in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Calipari left his post at Kentucky to become the coach at Arkansas. The recruiting class crumbled, with only in-state guard Travis Perry initially sticking around from that group to play for Pope at Kentucky.
Cyril found a landing spot at White’s Georgia program, where he’s developed from a bench contributor as a freshman into one of the most intimidating frontline players in the SEC as a sophomore. Cyril’s 2.5 blocks per game rank in the top 10 nationally and are the most among SEC players.
“If he’s not the biggest player in the league, he’s close to it,” Pope said of Cyril on Pope’s weekly radio show Monday night. “... He’s an elite-level offensive rebounder. He causes some real pain in there. They’ll let him sit in a drop for some part of the game and really clog up the middle. He has a huge impact.”
Kentucky felt that impact for a second straight season. Despite outrebounding Georgia 43-36 overall, each team had 15 offensive boards in Tuesday’s game. It was the Bulldogs who claimed a 17-15 advantage in second-chance points.
This marked only the third win in 10 games for UGA this season when it failed to win the overall rebounding battle.
“We could have just come up with the 50-50 balls. There was a lot of those that they won,” Dioubate said. “Just winning the possessions, finishing the possessions with rebounds. Just being the enforcer. I didn’t feel like we were the enforcer tonight.”
Why was that the case?
“It’s just bad habits we had tonight. Just some lazy habits. We know we’re better than that,” Dioubate said. “We’re at the point in the season where we know what our standard is, and we could have lived up to it better. Worry about the next possession and not be so caught up in the past few possessions where we made mistakes. We’re at the point in the season where we’ve got to keep moving forward and not let the past mistakes affect us.”
When Calipari left UK, Cyril went with a college choice that was familiar to him. He played prep basketball for the Atlanta-based Overtime Elite program. UGA is located less than 90 minutes away.
Thus far, that decision has borne fruit. Georgia made the NCAA Tournament last season and is tracking to do so again next month.
Perhaps most rewarding for Cyril? He’s now 2-0 against Kentucky.
