We’re a basketball school now. The 2010 college football season made me want to puke, the Georgia Bulldogs just recorded their biggest win of the Mark Fox era, and we’re all getting better educated about roundball, so it’s time for the haphazard ill-informed roundball preview of tonight’s opponent, the Vanderbilt Commodores.
Against the Music City Mariners, depth is a concern for the Classic City Canines, who have been forced to rely more heavily upon their starters than other SEC squads. Georgia is one of just two teams in the conference to have four first-teamers who average more than 30 minutes per game.
The Commodores historically have presented an especially daunting challenge for the Red and Black in Nashville. The newly-ranked Bulldogs will be the seventh Georgia squad to have faced Vanderbilt on the road as a member of the AP top 25, and five of the first six such squads went down to defeat.
Memorial Gym has been one of the league’s more unfriendly venues for the Athenians, who have carded just 13 of their 48 series victories over the Commodores in Nashville while sustaining 50 of their 82 setbacks to Vanderbilt on the Black and Gold’s home court. Fortunately, Coach Fox actually has a respectable record in road games, having gone 49-32 on opponents’ home floors in spite of last season’s woeful 0-11 ledger in true away games. The Bulldogs bring a three-game road winning streak into Memorial Gym, where they have not won in five years, and they hope to continue to build momentum by carding their first SEC road win since March 2009.
In the last meeting between these two teams, Vandy eliminated the Hoop Hounds from the SEC Tourney to end the Athenians’ slim hopes of landing a postseason berth. A win in the Music City tonight would go a long way toward cementing Georgia’s prospects for an NCAA Tournament invitation in March.
Go ‘Dawgs!