That’s our new basketball coach?

Oh, wait . . . Mark Fox. Well. O.K. Still, though . . .

Judging by the fact that he’d never set foot on campus when he took the job, it appears likely that Damon Evans took my advice, but, either way, as long as Paul Westerdawg is happy, I’m happy.

Welcome to Bulldog Nation, Coach Fox!

Go ‘Dawgs!

There is a distinct limit to the extent to which I care about basketball at all, and much of the basis for what limited concern I do have is the fact that basketball is holding Georgia back. MaconDawg and the Georgia Sports Blog’s Paul Westerdawg know and care a lot more than I do about basketball, but here is one relatively ill-informed fan’s opinion on the events of recent days.

First of all, this situation stinks. Alabama got Anthony Grant, the candidate I preferred, and it never appeared that Georgia was on his radar screen; it was a question of whether he wound up in Gainesville (if Billy Donovan left for Kentucky) or Tuscaloosa. Athens never appeared to be seriously among the options Coach Grant was considering.

Next came Mike Anderson. Richard Pittman predicted that Coach Anderson would laugh in our face, and, while I don’t believe he regarded Georgia’s offer with derision, he took less to stay put and Missouri fans never seemed seriously worried that he would leave for the Peach State. Their focus always was on Memphis as a possible alternative destination.

Where, then, does that leave us? I greatly respect Damon Evans’s commitment to swinging for the fences in making what could be the hire by which his tenure as his alma mater’s athletic director is judged. Now that going for the home run ball has produced a strikeout and a flyout at the warning track, though, it is time to revise our short-term expectations.

I don’t like writing that, but I do so because others (namely, the aforementioned Pittman) are writing things like this: "Georgia may be the worst basketball coaching job in the conference. Georgia really has no tradition of success and it is even more firmly entrenched in football than other football powers in the conference." To that, the best retort I can offer is what Quinton McDawg wrote in January:

Before the 1990-91 season, Georgia basketball had two conference championships, cracked the AP top 25 in four seasons, and made four NCAA tournament appearances (although one was later vacated because of NCAA violations). Until that same season, Florida had won one conference championship, appeared in the AP top 25 four years, and had three NCAA tournament appearances. The two programs were virtually identical. . . .

So what happened in 1990? UF hired Lon Kruger to bring them from irrelevance to mediocrity. Kruger did just that. He also guided the Gators to a Final Four appearance. Kruger's results were spotty, but his hiring put UF basketball on a distinct upward trend. Then, when Kruger left, Billy Donovan came in and made the Gators a national power. All it took was good coaching hires and the commitment to the program that great coaches demand.

UF, a school with no appreciable basketball tradition, went on to win back-to-back national titles after their program's long history of losing. UGA, meanwhile, has remained stuck in its past, watching lots of upstarts with far fewer resources, a much smaller native talent base, and much less potential for national appeal pass the Dawgs by.

It’s hard to argue with that, which is why I argued this in response to Pittman:

Georgia is to S.E.C. basketball in 2009 what Florida was to S.E.C. football in 1989. (Actually, the Bulldogs have had more success in basketball than the Gators had enjoyed in football 20 years ago; Georgia has been to a Final Four, but Florida had never won a conference title.) With funding available, facilities improving, and a huge recruiting pool an hour’s drive away, Georgia is the "sleeping giant."

Unfortunately, we are where we are, and the widespread perception focuses much more on the present reality of the slumber than on the future prospects for being a force. While the status of the Georgia basketball program is not as bad as many outsiders imagine, the stature of that program is worse than we in Bulldog Nation could have conceived. Right now, Georgia is the sixth-best basketball program in the S.E.C. East by a wide margin and ours is the weakest basketball tradition in what historically has not been (with the obvious exception of Kentucky) an especially tradition-rich league for roundball.

The sad fact is that the present sorry state of affairs likely leaves us here:

At this point, I’ll be O.K. with not landing our Billy Donovan, as long as we land the equivalent of our Lon Kruger, who sets us up to land our Billy Donovan five years down the road. Maybe this job is just that bad at this point, and what we need is someone who can get us to crawl consistently so this job will become attractive to coaches who can teach us how to walk.

We tried to hire our Billy Donovan, or at least our Bruce Pearl. It didn’t work. We simply aren’t at the level of being able to entice the next Billy Donovan or Bruce Pearl to Athens; the last time we accomplished anything like that was when Vince Dooley hired Tubby Smith, and Georgia proved to be only a way station for Coach Smith along the road to Kentucky.

The guy who can take Georgia basketball to the level it is capable of occupying is out there, but, right now, he won’t return Damon Evans’s phone calls. That guy is choosing Tuscaloosa and maybe even Memphis over Athens. Trying to hire that guy now is folly and can only end in embarrassment.

Our Billy Donovan isn’t interested in being our Billy Donovan right now. Nevertheless, our Lon Kruger is out there---heck, our Lon Kruger may even be Lon Kruger---and it’s time to go hire him. He’s not the long-term solution, but he will get us from irrelevance to mediocrity. His results will be spotty, but he will put Georgia basketball on a distinct upward trend.

Then, and only then, will the giant have shown sufficient signs of being ready to awaken. Then, and only then, will Georgia be able to hire an elite basketball coach. The dorkiest kid in class just asked the head cheerleader to the senior prom on the theory that she might think he one day would be the next Bill Gates. The rejection was predictable. Now, rather than sulking and feeling sorry for himself, and rather than setting his sights on another cheerleader, that kid needs to ask the cutest junior in the band, in the hope that she’s at least somewhat in his league, that she will say yes, and that, once he’s been seen at the prom with her, the cheerleaders will start to take notice of him.

That’s where Georgia basketball is right now. We shouldn’t like it, but we have to accept it. The first step to finding a solution is admitting that there’s a problem. I applaud Damon Evans for failing while daring greatly. I respect him for going for the big hire. It was admirable, but it was overreaching. We can compete for a top-of-the-line coach in literally every other sport in which the Bulldogs take part, but basketball is the lone exception in which we languish pitifully far behind our peers.

We shouldn’t be looking for the Joshua who will lead us to the Promised Land while we yet remain in bondage in Egypt; first, we need the Moses who can guide us through the wilderness. It’s time to hire a coach we can get, one who’s good enough to make the Bulldogs good enough to stand a chance next time with the sorts of guys we should have known would turn us down this time.

Go ‘Dawgs!

Listen, I’m not any happier about having to do this than you are, but we’ve ignored this long enough, you and I, and the first step towards solving the problem is admitting it exists.

Tipoff of the Georgia men’s basketball team’s first (let us be positive here) conference tournament game in Tampa is expected around 3:15 this afternoon, so consider this your game day open comment thread. If you don’t want to comment about the game, at least feel free to ask what the heck the tournament is doing in Tampa, a location which is convenient to exactly one of the league’s twelve member institutions.

Let’s end this season with another magical run, or put it out of its misery and get on with hiring a new coach. Either way works, really.

Go ‘Dawgs!

While I never thought as highly of Dennis Felton as I did (and do) of Tubby Smith, I also never called for the Bulldogs’ most recent previous head basketball coach to be fired with anything approaching the vehemence with which I have called for the heads of more than one defensive coordinator. The fact that the guy was more of a clothes horse than a team player rubbed me the wrong way, but that’s not the sort of thing over which you want to see a guy lose his job.

Paul Westerdawg’s coverage of this has been thorough and ongoing, so much so that anything I could add would be redundant to a great extent. However, a reaction was expected, so a reaction I shall give:

1. This was the right move at the right time. The Jim Harrick fiasco has long since ceased to be an excuse and whatever progress has been made since then stopped a while back. There was no point in prolonging the inevitable, and, given Georgia’s limited hoops heritage, there was nothing to be gained and a lot to be lost in waiting to enter the market along with all the other teams that will be looking for new basketball coaches in short order.

2. As exciting as it was, last year’s S.E.C. title run was a total fluke. As much as Coach Felton complained about having to play so many games in so few days while dangerous weather systems forced his team onto an archrival’s home court---seriously, you can’t make this stuff up---the fact is that, when the team had time to settle down, collect its thoughts, and realize what it was doing, the magical run ended after a single half in the N.C.A.A. tournament. Coach Felton’s most noteworthy achievement on the hardwood also was his least representative. It was nice and it was fun, but it was a chimera.

3. It’s time to find a bold new coach who has proven some but needs a larger stage on which to prove more. Now is not the time to promote from within or find someone with a lengthy track record; we have done both of those things in recent years, and neither worked. We need to re-learn the lesson from the best Georgia basketball coaching hire most of us can remember (Tubby Smith) and recall what our rivals to the south did to boost their own weak roundball tradition by going out and getting Billy Donovan. It’s time to bring in someone young and hungry who has done all he can do at a lower level and is ready to perform at the highest level.

I didn’t care about basketball in the slightest back when the only S.E.C. teams that cared about hoops also happened to be the ones that were no good at football. There was a coach at my high school who wore a T-shirt that read: "It is better to have wrestled and lost than to have played basketball." Change wrestling to football and you had my basic attitude . . . but, now that our rivals are serious about basketball, we have to be serious about it, too. Heck, we at least have to get our men’s basketball program to the level of our women’s basketball program. I suspect there is a ceiling on Georgia basketball, but I’m ready to be convinced that there’s at least a floor; I want the Bulldogs to be good on the court, but I need them not to be an embarrassment.

There are a number of good candidates to do that, but, if I were asked to make the call, I’d go with Anthony Grant.

Go ‘Dawgs!

MaconDawg and I have shied away from writing too much about Georgia basketball, and, gosh, can you blame us?

This, though, is a truly unnerving detail from Wednesday night's hoops loss to the hated Gators:

• Florida outscored Georgia by a 42-30 margin in the first half. In the 11-2 football season of 2007, the Bulldogs beat the Gators by a final margin of 42-30.
• Florida outscored Georgia by a 41-27 margin in the second half. In the 10-2 football season of 1976, the Bulldogs beat the Gators by a final margin of 41-27.

Really, our Gator overlords are just mocking us now. I expect the next roundball battle between the two S.E.C. East squads to end with a final score of 126-0 . . . 75-0 in the first half, in retribution for what happened in Jacksonville in 1942, and 51-0 in the second half, as revenge for the 1968 Cocktail Party.

Go 'Dawgs!

It was brought to my attention by Bruins Nation that Rivals.com recently ranked college athletics programs based upon their combined success at baseball, basketball and football.

Rivals.com’s methodology was somewhat confusing---the formula, for instance, states contradictorily that a team gets five points for a third- or fourth-place finish in the College World Series but receives three points for the selfsame third- or fourth-place finish in the College World Series---but, assuming that we are all agreed that intercollegiate athletics are superior to professional sports, I thought it was worth exploring how the Bulldogs fared according to these rankings.

Rivals.com reports that Georgia ranks 17th overall since 1974, half a point behind No. 16 Notre Dame. The ‘Dawgs and the Irish were tied with 65 points apiece in football, but Notre Dame’s eight straight N.C.A.A. tournament appearances from 1999 to 2006 boosted the Golden Domers to 28 points in men’s basketball, whereas the Red and Black’s 25-year-old Final Four berth got Georgia only as far as 12 points. The Classic City Canines made up the difference with 32.5 points in baseball, far more than the 17 the Irish received on the strength of their 2002 trip to Omaha.

In the three biggest sports in the B.C.S. era, Florida finished third, Louisiana State fourth, Tennessee eighth, Georgia Tech eleventh, Alabama twelfth, Auburn 13th, and Arkansas 20th, but Georgia did not make the top 20 since 1998.

It is not hard to see where the deficiency lies. On the gridiron, the Bulldogs are tied for eleventh since 1974 and tied for ninth since 1998. On the diamond, the Red and Black are the country’s twelfth-best team over the last decade. On the hardwood, however, the Classic City Canines are nowhere to be found.

I believe my position on basketball has been made abundantly clear: it is an important sport and I understand why fans of it enjoy it as much as they do, but I personally regard it with something approximating indifference.

Surveys like this one, however, explain why it matters to me to see Georgia improve at men’s basketball. As I wrote last March:

If, instead of collecting an anemic 12 points in basketball since 1974, the Classic City Canines had amassed 25.5 points---equal to the totals earned by Alabama and Oklahoma State in that same span---Georgia would have finished with a cumulative 123 points in the three sports combined. That would have been good enough to boost the Bulldogs from 17th overall since 1974 to 13th. If Georgia had matched Florida’s 42 points in basketball during that period, it would have put the Bulldogs in the top ten.

To some extent, of course, these numbers are arbitrary. Georgia’s 2002 S.E.C. championship squad compiled a resume of achievement equal to or better than that of more than a couple of the national champions who have been crowned since Richard Nixon left office, but the Bulldogs received half as many points (5) for Mark Richt’s second season in Athens as the Gators received for Urban Meyer’s altogether comparable second season in Gainesville (10).

Even this crude calculation by Rivals.com, however, offers meaningful insights into the state of what otherwise is as strong an athletics program as any in the conference. The Georgia football program is on top of the world and happy about it. David Perno has the Diamond Dogs on sound ground.

It’s time for our men’s basketball program to step it up to the next level. No, Georgia basketball doesn’t enjoy Kentucky’s tradition, or even Arkansas’s, but there’s no reason why the Bulldogs can’t improve their stature in the sport in the same way Florida and Tennessee have in recent years. At a minimum, Mississippi State- or South Carolina-level success ought to be a given.

Georgia’s sensational run through the S.E.C. tournament last spring got us all excited, but the euphoria has worn off and it is time for us to expect more than a long weekend’s worth of excellence. An early lead over Xavier in the Big Dance was a nice baby step, but it is time to begin making real strides.

Rivals.com’s numbers may be somewhat skewed, but they do not lie at the bottom line. The Georgia men’s basketball program has been a liability and should be a strength. We have passed the point at which progress any longer ought to be an expectation; starting next season, it must be made a non-negotiable demand.

Go ‘Dawgs!

While considerable attention is paid annually to National Signing Day for college football, far less attention is paid to basketball's signing rituals. I think several reasons exist for this. One is that basketball signing is an ongoing process, with an early signing period and a spring signing period. Good players routinely stay on the board well past their first opportunity to sign a letter of intent. There's just not the frenzy that surrounds football's signing day.

But arguably, any given signing period in college basketball is far more significant than any given football signing day. The reason is that football players must stay for three seasons before turning pro, and there are a lot more of them. One good football signing day isn't going to revolutionize your football program. Ask Jim Donnan. Ask any South Carolina Gamecock fan. But one great basketball signing period can totally change your basketball program. Two or three good ones can have the same effect.

And that''s what Dennis Felton is banking on. Obviously there was a lot of buzz last year regarding the 2007 class consisting of Jeremy Price, Jeremy Jacob, Troy Brewer, Chris Barnes and Zac Swansey. This year's group consisting of Georgians Trey Thompkins, Ebuka Anyaora, Travis Leslie, and Dustin Ware (and Serbian Drazen Zlovaric) is equally touted.

One aspect of the recruiting news that hasn't drawn nearly enough attention however is where Felton is recruiting. The F-Bomb has made explicit his effort to put a fence up around the state, and especially basketball rich metro Atlanta. The AJC talked to him about it recently, and his comments are worth taking note of. Coach Felton opines that "we can literally dominate the nation and win championships with just Georgia players. That capability exists because of the level of coaching and talent in this state. It's just a fantastic area for basketball. This is a basketball hotbed."

At this point in this program's trajectory, we're not going to outrecruit Wake Forest and Duke for guys in New Jersey and California. But we can do very, very well just by getting the best players in metro Atlanta. Coach Felton deserves praise for recognizing this and responding with a recruiting strategy that can work.

Anybody who follows college basketball recruiting in the state of Georgia can attest to the fact that the University of Georgia has missed out on enough top flight, in-state, Division I basketball talent in the past two years to put together a veritable All-Star Team. It's been frustrating. But I think any keen observor realized that Dennis Felton didn't really have a lot to sell here recently. But now he does, and he's found the appropriate target audience. While it might be hyperbolic to say Georgia can "dominate the nation" with just Georgia players, for now I would settle for being a perennial tournament team with Georgia players. That can be done. Until later . . .

Go Dawgs!!!

Because I know that what follows is bound to be unpopular, I begin with the shameless fulfillment of a three-week old promise and offer the following photograph of my children in an effort to invoke your sympathy for my position:

Now that the excitement is over, certain animadversions must be answered. While we all are proud of the Georgia men's basketball team for making the S.E.C. tournament run that won it an automatic bid to the N.C.A.A. tourney, my longstanding criticisms of playoffs in general (and of the big dance in particular) received a snide broadside after Dennis's Dogs went on their title run.

Likewise, a prominent and well-respected member of the intercollegiate athletics blogosphere sent me a congratulatory e-mail in which he opined, "I assume we'll be getting a 'We Didn't Deserve It' post and an apology to Kentucky or whichever winning team UGA knocked out."

While this is not that posting exactly, the point bears making that Georgia's late-season hot streak, while generating considerable excitement, did not produce much in the way of a legitimate conference title. Through and including the S.E.C. tournament championship game, these are the conference records of the league's twelve teams over the course of the 2007-2008 basketball season:

Over the course of the regular season and the postseason, Georgia went 1-0 against Alabama, 2-0 against Arkansas, 1-0 against Auburn, 0-2 against Florida, 1-2 against Kentucky, 0-1 against Louisiana State, 1-1 against Mississippi, 1-1 against Mississippi State, 1-1 against South Carolina, 0-2 against Tennessee, and 0-2 against Vanderbilt. Of the seven Southeastern Conference squads that got to the end of the tournament with better overall league ledgers than Dennis's Dogs, Georgia had a winning record against one of them and, even counting S.E.C. tournament contests, the Red and Black were winless against three of them.

For those of us who have criticized the sorts of systems that produce such dubious champions as the 1997 Florida Marlins, the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals, and the 2007 New York Giants merely because they happened to win the games that really counted despite having been comparatively undeserving over the course of the entire campaign, this year's Georgia men's basketball team, while exciting to watch for four days in March, is a pretty undeserving conference champion at 8-12 in league play.

Yes, it was fun to watch. Yes, I am looking forward to next basketball season. At the end of the day, though, even counting the Bulldogs' S.E.C. tournament wins, Georgia's conference record earned the Red and Black a fifth-place finish in the East. There's a reason why we were wishing for a swift resolution to Coach Felton's uncertain job situation barely over two hours before the start of the title run.

Snarky sarcasm about how "disappointing" it was "to see the entire regular season rendered moot by a 4 day run in the SEC tournament" aside, the fact is that any system that can produce a conference champion with an 8-12 league ledger and an 0-2 record against the best team in the conference is a system in which the term "champion" has become sufficiently disconnected from reality as to be essentially meaningless.

Am I wrong about that? You can let me know in the comments below and give me your take on Georgia's S.E.C. tournament title by voting here, but I feel like I'm in pretty good company with the wise man who wrote these words:

Go 'Dawgs!