The saying goes “you can’t make your next shot if you don’t take it.”

The Georgia men’s basketball team knows this saying all too well.

It is no secret that the Bulldogs have been in a predicament offensively all season.

With very little interior help, Georgia has been forced to try and put points on the board a different way — a much more streaky way.

Junior guard Sherrard Brantley and the Bulldogs have found points hard to come by this season, as they rank last in the SEC in field goal percentage. FILE/The Red & Black

“We accepted the fact it was going to be harder for us to score inside with the loss of so many guys from last year’s team. [But] the one thing we felt that we would be able to do more consistently is shoot the ball,” Georgia head coach Mark Fox said. “When your interior game is not as strong as you need it to be, it puts a lot of pressure on your perimeter shooting and our perimeter shooting has been very inconsistent.”

But the ball-shooting consistency has been non-existent, and it’s shown.

Georgia is last in the Southeastern Conference in nearly every offensive category.

But the No. 1 statistic that separates the Bulldogs from the rest of the pack is clear — its shooting percentage.

The Bulldogs are shooting just 38.8 percent this season, last in the SEC and a far cry from the 45 percent they shot just a season ago.

And their shooting behind the 3-point arc has been even worse, as they connected on 32 percent of their attempts.

“I think all our shooters are just a little frustrated. That’s what happened the other night [against Auburn],” Fox said. “We don’t handle frustration very well and it snowballed on us. You have to be mature enough to play through a miss or two. The only way you’re going to make your next shot is to take it and we’ve got to handle frustration better than we have.”

The reason for the team’s shooting woes seem obvious — defenders no longer have to emphasize guarding near the paint.

Without the presence of Trey Thompkins, Travis Leslie, Jeremy Price and Chris Barnes — who all commanded double teams near the bucket last season — opponents are free to wander around the perimeter, making life difficult for the Bulldog shooters.

“[Leslie, Thompkins and Price] attracted a lot of attention last year [near the post],” Sherrard Brantley said. “Trey got double teamed a lot. JP [Price] got double teamed a lot. Chris Barnes got a lot of attention too.”

That quartet of big men averaged a combined 43.8 points per night, while the combined points of the top four scoring big men this season is 18.2 points per contest.

The player that has been affected the most with the departure of last season’s offensive stars has been Brantley.

Last season, he was Georgia’s 3-point specialist.

This season, he has been anything but.

Brantley — who shot 31 percent from behind the 3-point arc during last season — has connected just 22 percent this season.

“I think [defenses] have been playing me a bit differently [this season] because of me being a shooter,” Brantley said. “Sometimes I feel like I get pushed out a little further than I did last year.”

Brantley, however, isn’t afraid to try and shoot himself out of the cold streak, something his teammates don’t have a problem with.

“Sherrard’s a guy, he’s as true, true shooter as they come,” Dustin Ware said with a laugh. “That first, second or third one doesn’t go in, it means that fourth, fifth and sixth one have to. They ain’t got a choice.”

Ware is another Bulldog who has not seen his his shot go through the net as often this season.

Ware was top in the league last season, shooting the ball at almost 50 percent during league play. This season, he has shot just 25 percent from the 3-point line.

“Dustin would be the first to tell you that he hasn’t shot the ball well,” Fox said. “He’s a 40 percent 3-point shooter last year, and he had a point earlier in the season where he didn’t shoot it well. [So] we brought him off the bench and he got hot as fire [but now] it’s kind of turned the other way on him. But it’ll come back. We just got to keep him taking the right shots.”

Ware said his recent issues have not dampened his confidence in his shot, which he believes is the key to turning things around.

“I think the biggest thing for me is knowing that the ball is going to have to go in eventually and keeping that confidence. I know I am too good of a shooter. I’m one of the best at it,” he said. [I have to] keep that in mind and the ball is going to have to go in eventually.”

And despite all their struggles shooting the ball, the Bulldogs believe that it is a simple case of bad luck, not necessarily bad shots.

“We look at the film and a lot of the time we are getting a lot of good looks,” Ware said. “I don’t think anyone can deny our looks. They just haven’t gone down, but basketball is just that way sometimes… basketball is a fair game. You treat it right and play it right, stuff is eventually going to go your way, and that’s what we’re looking to keep doing.”