UGA basketball heads west

In tonight's NBA draft former UGA players Travis Leslie and Trey Thompkins were both drafted by the LA Clippers. While there are better teams the two could have gone to and I am sure they both would have liked to have been drafted a bit earlier it is nice as a fan for them to go to a team that I can cheer for because really what could anyone have against the Clippers. It is also nice that they are both on the same team so that I can cheer for them together.

Hooray for playoffs.

Basketball has an 82 game regular season. After 82 games the Spurs were 15 games better than Memphis. Now the Spurs are headed home and Memphis keeps playing, if they somehow make it through and win the title game that makes them the best team around. Yup gotta love playoffs because it is decided on the court. The 82 games before apparently don't count as deciding it on the court. Again I say, Hooray playoffs.

(full disclaimer, yes I am a bitter Spurs fan at this moment but that doesn't change the facts of the situation).

Life as a coach - Mark Fox

Having been a coach (soccer) since I was 14 I am sometimes harder on coaches than others and other times I am much easier on them. I tend to look at how a team plays and the big picture more so than an individual play, or call. One of the biggest times I can remember a decision of mine backfiring on me was when I was coaching at a small school in Valdosta, GA. We had just qualified for the state semi-finals and had our last day that we could really go hard and I had a choice to make. We could do some running and along with some light work or we could have a very tough practice to try to prepare us for the game. I chose to go with a tough practice knowing I was risking injury but feeling like we needed to challenge ourselves as our run through the playoffs had been surprisingly easy up to that point, winning games by an average of 6 goals. My choice worked out great until about 5 minutes before the end of practice when our top scorer got his ankle rolled challenging for a ball. He was still able to play the game a few days later but was not close to being 100%. The team was never itself in the whole game and we lost the game. I will never know if the teams spirit was down at its best player being injured or not.
Mark Fox is taking a lot of heat for calling a time out in yesterday's game against Alabama when the timeout he called cost UGA the win. If the shot had ended up an air ball then the timeout would have been great, instead it ended up made and the timeout took away what would have been the game winner.
When Richt was guiding his team to a last minute comeback against UT in his first season in Athens his calm demeanor was considered a huge asset as a head coach. When he was leading UGA to 2 SEC titles in 4 years his steady hand was seen as a big reason why. The bad things that happened never got to him and so his teams didn't panic. Now that he had his first losing season in ten years that same calm steady demeanor is considered by many to be a glaring weakness because he shows no fire.
I say all this just to make a simple point that many know but that our emotions often let us forget, the difference between winning and losing is often so slim that 1 play in 100 will decide the game. Sometimes the game is decided by a ref spotting a ball to where his left foot is when it should be spotted to where his right foot is. Coaches and players will, and should, be judged on wins and losses but often we as fans over react to one moment when we should take time to look at the big picture and judge them on that. As for me, I am judging Fox on where the team is now, versus where they were when he took over. Make the NCAA tourny or settle for the NIT, I know that the basketball team is in much better hands under Fox than they have been at anytime since Tubby Smith left.

Defense leads way in blowout game over Carolina

For all the improvement shown by the basketball team this year there was still one big area for improvement, putting a team away after jumping out to a big lead. The game tonight against Carolina started to have that same feel as a 20 point lead a couple minutes before half had dwindled down to 11 just 3 minutes into the second half. However the Dawgs defense tightened down again and allowed Georgia to win by double digits despite two long stretches by the offense of going ice cold. Despite scoring one point in the last 6:36 of the game Georgia won by 16 points. They held Carolina to 28% shooting from the field and just 1 of 19 from behind the 3 point line.
This is huge going toward the NCAA tournament as the offense has led the way for Georgia all year. If (when) the Dawgs get into the big dance it is going to be 40 minutes of focused defense that is going to decide how far they can go.

Big win for basketball team

UGA winning at UT was big for several reasons. The biggest is getting a quality road win and earning a split with UT on the season. If they take care of business against LSU and USC at home they end up with a winning record in conference. This win is also big for UGA mentally. After holding a double digit lead against Vandy and blowing it to blow another big lead but be able to hold onto it could be huge if the Dawgs get into the NCAA tournament. At some point teams are going to make a run against you. How a team handles those runs against you is huge for determining how good your team is going forward.