Senior Day in Athens and strong senior guards Kenny Gaines and Charles Mann don’t want to sail off into the ol’ sunset without ever making a late season run.
Three years ago, I was working on the SLINGSHOT FESTIVAL promo and press team and shook off a late night of Classic City working-sic-imbibing in time to catch most of an unusually early NIT game at Stegeman Coliseum the next morn. The score looked like a misprint as LA Tech had jumped all over Georgia before the clock struck noon. Then our basketball Dawgs awakened around late lunch and made a run behind then-frosh JJ, before finally fading into the offseason. Our affable SID Claude Felton politely asking me to give the team and coaches plenty of room after, as I scribed away on a pad with pen in the hall, he saying you never know what coach may do…he may throw a chair. (I was fairly impressed.)
Last year we made the Big Dance and drew Tom Izzo and Michigan State. I was working F&B and couldn’t watch the contest but followed along the score as one slipped away. It was one and done. Tough draw.
Ten SEC wins again, three years running, which is epic at UGA, and not that much of note otherwise to show for it. We sit on 17 wins and perhaps the precipice of the bubble – how big is the bubble? We may need to get hot in Nashville to get close, may need to get a whole lot hotter to go dancing. We have played the third toughest schedule in the country and have a three-game winning streak rolling after whipping the Tide, sweeping Carolina. But we suffered a three-game skid directly before. Lots of stretches of win won lose one, win two of four. We play great D, usually, but struggle with scoring.
Could we get hot at the right time and make a run in the Music City? Could we finally make a run under Fox in the big tournament? He was one and done once before, losing a late heartbreaker to Udub. Could we become a consistently better than mediocre basketball program at the nation’s oldest public university? Seems strange to dream so small while watching a neighboring state battle on TV – Duke is hosting Carolina, and that can’t mean Cocks. We were talking about big time collegiate athletics.
This year’s iteration of hoop hounds have ridden little win streaks to five games over .500 twice before and immediately tanked. Here we sit on plus five again. Fox, whatayagot?
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