Georgia forgets how to inbound basketball, loses to Texas A&M clock operator 63-62.

Victory extended its hand in the direction of Mark Fox’s Georgia Bulldogs on Saturday in College Station. They spat upon it, turned around, and fell down a flight of stairs.

I could recap what happened for most of the game, but it wouldn’t be at all surprising or really very interesting. For the most part Georgia shot the ball well enough, going on a 6-0 run to start the game before the Aggies tied it up at 10. Nine different Bulldogs scored in the first half, staking the Hoop Hounds to a 39-29 lead at the break. Georgia led comfortably for the first eighteen minutes of the second half as well.

Georgia was staked to a nine point lead with two minutes remaining, when the Aggies began pressing. And the ‘Dawgs responded . . .poorly. Like, haven’t ever seen a basketball before badly. Four straight turnovers, two of them by senior guard J.J. Frazier, led to ten unanswered TAMU points. Georgia got the ball back with sixteen seconds left on the clock, down by one.

Then, well, things get a little murky. To the untrained eye, it appeared that Frazier passed inside to Yante Maten with 5.6 seconds left on the clock, Maten went up and was fouled. Or so it seemed. Because, you know, the official game clock had 5.6 seconds on it when Maten got the ball. Which would lead a moron like me to believe there were 5.6 seconds left in the game. Apparently clocks are for amateurs, however.

Apparently one of the officials on the floor had a “belt pack malfunction” (you really can’t make this crap up), stopping the clock with 5.6 seconds left. Let’s allow the chuckleheads from the SEC office to take it from there (click through the Katz tweet).

A few points. For one, I’ve worked the clock in high school games, though not in the SEC. Even I know that it’s the clock guy’s job to notice when clock malfunctions happen and call that to the attention of the official. So that person messed up, allowing play to continue. The officials were also apparently unaware. And finally, Frazier apparently has no mental clock, which is not a great deficit for a college basketball point guard. Did the officials apply the rule correctly? Maybe. But if so, it’s a really dumb rule brought into relevance by a boatload of human incompetence.

But in the end, the game got there because Mark Fox apparently still can’t coach inbounding the basketball. At this point, well, these things are getting a little frustrating. It’s one thing to lose, it’s another to give a game away. Georgia gave one away to a bad basketball team, this afternoon. At this point, anything Fox says beyond that is window-dressing and shinola.