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Saturday, March 22, 2008
Dogs’ final week put fun back in season
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Well, I’ve got my “Team of the Year.” All sports. Major or minor. Amateur or pro. Never have I enjoyed basketball as much as the last two days of last weekend, some tenuous minutes of it in a rental car Saturday night, trying to squeeze the squeaky sound of the Georgia-Mississippi State game out of an underpowered radio. With its last fading whimper, the news finally got through that the Bulldogs had won.
Playing twice in one day, something no other SEC team has had to endure since 1952, Georgia won the games that put them in the tournament final, and you know the rest of the story. On a floor, by the way, with Bobby Cremins’ name on it.
Frankly, I’ve paid little attention to college basketball this season. Not much to inspire a fellow, either at Georgia Tech or Georgia. In Athens, football drowns out the sporting glee out of all other campus games, of course. Since Mark Richt sent his team a-swarming onto the field after the first touchdown of the Florida conquest, the football Bulldogs have commanded undivided attention. Already the table is being set for a national championship run next season.
Basketball has always been the ugly stepchild. For years home games were played in a leaky old barn named Woodruff Hall, and when I use the term “leaky,” it is not misapplied. It did leak. Big posts were situated near enough to floor surface to endanger the athletes. It was the only indoor court, the late coach Red Lawson said, in which wind direction and velocity had to be taken into consideration. Basketball was taken so lightly that a coach was hardly ever fired, just moved around. Sometimes a football assistant took the job for an extra paycheck.
Not so in this age, and therein lies the heart of this story. As the season ground down into the grit of an unhappy run, there was much ado about Dennis Felton and hints that not much longer would the losing be tolerated. Here was a man, Felton, who was hired to follow Jim Harrick, whose program was rotten to the core. Georgia was on probation, and what Felton did was clean house and give the place a good fumigation. He doesn’t play thugs. In the past two seasons he has lost three leading scorers.
What he does he does right. He is a beacon light among college coaches, but that didn’t muzzle critics. The very fact that Damon Evans, the athletics director, had thrown down the gauntlet, that at the end of the season there would be an “evaluation” of the basketball program threw up a red flag. Conjecture was that Felton would be the victim.
So you see why the results of the weekend in storm-wreaked Atlanta set off such a stirring rally to the side of this decent man. In three days, the Bulldogs beat Kentucky at noon Saturday, Missiissippi State that night, then on Sunday afternoon shot down Arkansas and cut down the nets at Alexander Coliseum. They took it all, these guys who came into the tournament with the SEC’s worst record. Two seniors led them, Sundiata Gaines and Dave Bliss. It was a diverse team, players from New York, Wisconsin, Virginia and a sprinkling of Georgians. (On that line, take the coach himself. Felton was born in Tokyo, where his father was serving in the Air Force.)
Felton is a patient man where patience is merited, and heaven knows, it was stretched to the extreme this season. Then at the end, when it was done, after doing nothing to assuage the threat of a firing, the AD Evans came charging out of the stands and swamped his coach with reassurance and affection. The loss to Xavier was tainted by a flood of fouls that sent the Musketeers to the line 33 times to Georgia’s five. Where there is such a discrepancy, it leads one to suggest that something is amiss.
Even The New York Times made note of it. “That gaping disparity and the clock stoppages that go with it allowed the Musketeers to come back,” wrote Pete Thamel.
It was maddening. One of the Georgia players said it felt like someone was after them, more than just the five players on the court.
When asked if Felton would be back, Evans cheerily said, “Of course he’s going to be back. He’s our basketball coach.”
Sorry, Damon, not a heartwarming show.
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