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March 2008
To each sports columnist his own blog
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
AJC
Our sports columnists now have their own blogs. So bookmark these new urls for Furman Bisher, Mark Bradley, Terence Moore and Jeff Schultz:
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We hope you enjoy finding your favorite columnist faster, as well as occasionally talking directly with them through commenting on the blogs.
Problems with the change? Contact ldonosky@ajc.com.
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Tradition going, going .. almost gone
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
This is so ridiculous. The first couple of Major League Baseball games this season ended before many fans could yawn their way out of bed.
It’s bad enough that Opening Day is years removed from its rightful place in Cincinnati, only the birthplace of professional baseball.
But Japan?
There is no way the Boston Red Sox and the Oakland A’s should have started the season during the last two days anywhere but Fenway Park, McAfee Coliseum or any other diamond that sits between the Atlantic and the Pacific.
Then again, there is now way this madness involving American professional sports leagues playing games that count on foreign soil is going to stop.
It’s all about the potential for the greedy folks involved with these leagues to add megabucks to their megabucks. So, while the NFL already is holding regular-season games in foreign lands, the NBA is thinking about it, and baseball has joined its football counterpart by actually doing it.
I understand what’s happening here and why it’s happening. I just don’t like it, especially when the most endearing part of what was our national pastime keeps getting belted a few steroid-induced swings toward the ozone.
Tradition.
Once, the baseball opener always was in Cincinnati, and it always was the only game played that day. Now you’ve got this Japan mess, and then you’ll have the Braves becoming part of the “United States” opener on Sunday night against the Nationals in Washington D.C.
Then, on Monday, you’ll have 1:05 p.m. starts for the Kansas City Royals against the Tigers in Detroit and the Toronto Blue Jays against the Yankees in New York.
Then the Reds will play the Arizona Diamondbacks at 2:10 in Cincinnati as mostly an afterthought.
Night games in the World Series starting later and later. The DH rule. Lights in Wrigley Field. Interleague play and wild cards. The Dodgers bolting Dodgertown and the Yankees bolting Yankee Stadium. Opening Days near Tokyo Bay instead of the Ohio River.
Yes, look toward the ozone.
Tradition in baseball is going, going, almost gone.
Not that those greedy folks care.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Sayonara, baseball tradition
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Baseball used to be a game played with nine men to a side, two managers, four umpires, and the major-league season always opened in Cincinnati. Come to think of it now, that would be sort of like “Gone With the Wind” opening in Valdosta. But Cincinnati had a deal, see.
The first “major league” baseball game was played in Cincinnati on June 1, 1869. The locals, the Red Stockings, eked out a 48-14 victory over Mansfield, whoever Mansfield was. So, several years ago — even the league office isn’t sure when — it became a custom that every major-league season opened in Cincinnati. Nobody played before the Red Stockings, now shortened to Reds. It was just that way. That’s how baseball is, very long on tradition. It just gets into a habit it likes and stays there.
Well, not any longer. Money can change any habit. Eight springs ago the Mets and Cubs opened the season, not in Cincinnati. Guess where? Tokyo. That Tokyo, the guys who gave us Pearl Harbor. Some people don’t like you to bring that up, trade with Japan is so hot. But I’ve got a long memory. I saw what a few bombs can do to our property.
Oh, well, ‘scuse me. It’s just tough to get away from it when you turn on your TV in the morning there are the Boston Red Sox playing the Oakland A’s in the Tokyo Dome. Not only that, but the Red Sox pitcher is Daisuke Matsuzaka, who didn’t grow up in Wampole.
Why not? A Japanese newspaper chain, Yomiuri, foots the bill for this Oriental excursion. Yomiuri is not exactly the Chicago Tribune of Japanese baseball. Yomiuri owns several teams. The Tribune owns only one team, and that team hasn’t been in a World Series since World War II. (Sorry to have to bring that up again.) Yomiuri’s team has been the Yankees of Japan, and I’m not sure, but I think they call themselves the Giants.
About Cincinnati and its dibs on opening day, that went on for years. Then the major leagues expanded from coast to coast, cramping the schedule. Television came in spreading money around like fertilizer, and things began to change. The Reds no longer had a monopoly on opening day. So they were allowed to throw the first pitch before anybody else. That privilege is gone now, but one priority remains — the Reds are always allowed to open the season at home. So much for tradition, of which about all that remains is that the baseball hides are actually sewed together by hand by ladies in some Latin American country.
They no longer play a Hall of Fame game in Cooperstown. The All-Star Game ends when the commissioner says it’s time to go home, even if the score is tied. World Series games start about my bedtime. The schedule is so jacked around that the Braves open the season with a one-game “series” in Washington, where a new ball park is being opened. There, one other tradition still prevails: Presidents still throw out first balls. George Bush gets to start the last game of his eight-year career on the mound.
It would be my guess that in Japan, emperors don’t throw out first balls, or even have any kind of presence at such a sweaty game. I saw a game in the Tokyo Dome once, but it was more dome-shaped then. It now appears to have gone oblong to oblige the new long-ball society. Managers are interchangeable, it seems. Bobby Valentine is still managing a team in Japan, and Trey Hillman, who managed five seasons in Japan, is now managing the Kansas City Royals, which, on the surface, appears to be a demotion.
So that’s where major-league baseball stands today, geographically. Not here in the USA, not in Cincinnati, not even in Kauai, but on the other side of the International Dateline. Heaven only knows where it’s headed next. They tell me they’re building a state of the Soviet stadium in Vladivostok, complete with a video screen as high as the sky, and beer sales. Oh, I forgot tell you this about Cincinnati’s sin. The Red Stockings were expelled from the league in 1880 for selling beer at the park. Think of that!
Permalink | Comments (192) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
Mature Braves need no big talking
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
As strange as this sounds, the Braves have a better attitude now in regard to October than they did along the way to a record 14 straight division titles. They’ve finished third in the National League East during the two seasons since ending that streak, but for several reasons they’ll return to the playoffs this time around.
Too much hitting. Just enough starting and relief pitching.
A lot of Bobby Cox.
That new attitude.
Well, let’s just say these are mentally different Braves, but only if you join the enlightened in believing Chipper Jones, their prolific slugger who also is their overall leader.
“It’s almost like, in the past, we got satisfied with just winning the division,” said Jones, recalling how the Braves managed only one world championship through the 1990s and the early 21st century, while finishing most seasons during their playoff run with a slew of flips, flops and chokes. Added Jones, “We were just trying to keep the string going each year back then when our belief and our focus should have been a lot higher.”
The point is, according to Jones, the Braves finally get it, and their primary competitors in the NL East still don’t. Just listen to the amateurish words coming from Philadelphia and New York. Before last season, shortstop Jimmy Rollins rushed out of nowhere to proclaim that his Philadelphia Phillies were the team to beat in the division. He said so, despite the Phillies’ reputation as an “almost team” in recent years, and despite the Phillies reaching the playoffs just twice in 25 years, with their last trip in 1993.
The Phillies did take the division, with much help from Rollins as the NL’s Most Valuable Player. It’s just that the Phillies also needed the Mets to do the impossible by butchering a seven-game lead with 17 games left to play.
Speaking of the Mets, center fielder Carlos Beltran forgot this spring that he is normally soft spoken when he boldly said after the Mets acquired the great Johan Santana that his team had replaced the Phillies in the NL East as the one to beat. Teammate Carlos Delgado agreed, adding that he and other Mets have Beltran’s back.
Somewhere, Jones is chuckling between his crooked grins. “The Mets won [the division] in ‘06 and still feel like they should have won it last year, and then you’ve got the Phillies who took advantage of the Mets’ collapse after that, and now everybody is just brimming with this confidence,” Jones said. “My whole thing is, you’ve got all these guys chirping over one division championship, and we won 14 in a row and didn’t say a word.
“Let them talk, but honestly, we’ll set our sights higher. It doesn’t matter to me whether we win the wild card or the division. Been there, done that. We need to set our sights higher than just that.”
There is the NL pennant, for instance, and then there is the World Series, and then there is winning it all after that.
The Braves must settle on making the playoffs first. No problem there, because they have a big three of starting pitchers in Tim Hudson, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine, with nice potential everywhere else. At the plate, Mark Teixeira, Jeff Francoeur, Brian McCann and Jones can rip with anybody. The bullpen has a decent setup man in Peter Moylan and a superb closer in Rafael Soriano.
That means Cox just needs to take the temperature of two players every morning: Soriano, who is recovering from a sore elbow after missing large chunks of three of the past four seasons due to various aches and pains; and Jones, who has spent a bunch of time watching instead of playing for monster stretches since 2004.
“There are just certain people that this team is built around, and if you take them out of the lineup, there’s going to be a major hole,” Jones said. “But, all in all, we’ve got a lot to be encouraged about.”
Yes, the Braves do, and unlike others, they don’t have to yap about it.
Permalink | Comments (45) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
The Tuesday Countdown
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
10: Like I said: North Carolina-Memphis-UCLA-Davidson.
9: So if I understand this correctly: If I’m an 18-year-old blonde female from Gwinnett County and I rob a bank, there’s probably only a 50-50 chance I’m going to have to go to jail. Sure. Seems fair.
8: I read four NFL mock drafts the other day and three of them had the Falcons taking quarterback Matt Ryan. Look, I realize no team has a greater quarterback need than the maligned local franchise. But a general manager (Thomas Dimitroff) who came from the New England Patriots (Tom Brady, sixth round, 199th overall) is not going to spend the third pick in the draft on a quarterback, let alone one who’s not considered a lock for success.
7: Hunch: The Falcons will take a quarterback no earlier than late in round two. Before then, they’ll take linemen for both sides of the ball.
6: Atlanta defense attorney/agent Manny Arora is having a hard time creating a market for Adam “PacMan” Jones. The good news: Jones will have no problem getting his next signing bonus in $1 bills.
5: If the NBA playoffs opened today, the Hawks would lose to the Celtics.
4: I think the Braves have a pretty good shot to get back to the playoffs. But somebody apparently doesn’t share in local optimism. According to BetUS.com, Atlanta is 28-1 to win the World Series, which ranks only 13th among all teams and seventh among National League clubs. The top dozen: Yankees and Red Sox (9-2 each), Tigers (11-2), Mets (11-2), Angels (10-1), Indians (12-1), Dodgers (14-1), Cubs (15-1), Phillies (16-1), Diamondbacks and Mariners (20-1) and Rockies (25-1).
3: Leftover from a chat with Hank Aaron on baseball’s opener in Tokyo: “I’ve probably been there five or six times but I really don’t like traveling that far. You’re sitting in that little seat on the plane and you can’t go anywhere or do anything. The first time I was in Japan was for the home run derby with Sadaharu Oh. I just remember traveling all day and night. Then I got there and I realize I didn’t have my bats. So I had to use one of the bats from a Mets player [the team was there for an exhibition]. I got of the plane, went to the hotel for a short time and then went to a press conference. I’ve never seen so many cameras in my life. There must’ve been 2,000 or 3,000 cameras there. Then we went right from there to the ballpark and participated in the home run derby. I was completely drained. I was out of it.”
2: Tampa Bay is four points behind the Thrashers with two games in hand. Why should you care? Because if the Lightning pass the Thrashers, Don Waddell’s team officially will go from first-to-worst. (Scheduling note: The two play each other April 5 in the finale.)
- The baseball players union is hinting at collusion because nobody’s signing Barry Bonds. Let’s see. He’s old and can’t play in the outfield. He can DH but is universally hated by teammates and general managers don’t like what he does to a team’s chemistry. He’s under indictment for perjury (four counts) and obstruction of justice (one count). The charges carry a maximum of 30 years in jail. The trial may start during the season. Just guessing here: teams aren’t colluding, they’re just smart.
Permalink | Comments (94) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
Baseball’s sold its soul
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Good morning. You just missed Opening Day.
The Boston Red Sox and the Oakland Athletics played the first game of the major league season Tuesday morning (normal baseball earth time) in Tokyo. I imagine Japan will reciprocate this breach of tradition by opening the sumo season at Fenway Park.
“You’re taking something many consider like a national folk festival and moving it overseas,” said Roger Kahn, baseball purist and author of several books, including the classic, “The Boys of Summer.”
“They just dumped it.”
Opening Day. It merits capital letters.
It’s self-contained, needing no explanation.
It is less a game than a coronation.
William Howard Taft threw out the ceremonial first pitch in 1910, beginning a tradition for presidents. Jackie Robinson became the first African-American player in the major leagues in 1947. Aaron hit home run No. 714 to tie Babe Ruth’s record in 1974.
Take all of those Opening Day moments. Now move them to Japan.
“I don’t guess that any baseball fan really likes it,” Hank Aaron said. “It’s just that everything has gone so global. But I haven’t really caught on to this. Maybe they’re doing it in Tokyo because they have a dome.”
(Pause.)
“No, on second thought, we’ve got domes here.”
I get the whole global marketing thing. I don’t get taking one of the few special traditions remaining in sports and turning it into some infomercial like a Vegematic.
The first pitch for A’s fans was scheduled for 3:05 a.m. Pacific time. Advantages?
“There are a lot of bars that’ll still be open in Oakland,” Kahn said. “Jack London used to drink there all the time.”
Baseball officials want to grow the game in the Pacific.
Shouldn’t they be doing a better job nurturing the sport closer to home?
Now there are kids asleep before the first pitch of the World Series and the first pitch of the season.
Cincinnati, Boston, St. Louis … Tokyo. Feel the tradition.
This is MLB’s third Opening Day venture in Japan (Mets-Cubs in 2000; Yankees-Devil Rays in 2004). Yomiuri, a Japanese media conglomerate whose properties include a baseball team, is footing the bill.
While we’re at it, perhaps commissioner Bud Selig should have Yomiuri weigh in on the DH, the All-Star Game and Roger Clemens.
Aaron is still a player at heart. He thought about the Boston and Oakland players first — the disruption to start their season, the jet lag they’re feeling over there, how their bodies will feel upon returning.
“I used to get tired just when we went to L.A.,” he said.
But the wrecking ball that MLB’s marketing department has taken to the sport’s tradition confuses him most.
“I don’t guess there’s a lot of people who really like it,” he said. “If you ask anybody, ‘Where would you like to open the season?’ everybody would say in their own ballpark. But the game has gotten so crazy now with the schedule. Now teams are playing in Mexico and Japan. But I have to say I really don’t know how good it’s been.”
The Braves open Sunday night in Washington, a made-for-ESPN event in the Nationals’ new stadium. They return home after one game. As unconventional as that is, at least they’re in the same time zone. And continent.
Opening Day was special for Aaron. “No matter how many years you play, when that bell rings, you get jitters,” he said.
He tied Ruth in 1974 with a homer off Jack Billingham in Cincinnati. But his fondest memory came in 1956 as a Milwaukee Brave. It was another home run, but this one came off the Chicago Cubs’ Bob Rush in extraordinary circumstances. The Farmers’ Almanac database indicates a low of 33 degrees in Milwaukee on that April 17, with some rain and snow flurries.
“It was cold — I mean, freezing cold,” he said. “The manager, Fred Haney, had a meeting and said, ‘If anybody talks about how cold it is, it’s going to cost you $50.’ That was a lot of money back then. Then we beat the Cubs and I hit a home run. I’d have to say I remember that opener more than any other just because it was so cold and I was able to hit a home run.”
Now, we have memories. Japan gave us Daisuke. We gave them Opening Day. Nice trade.
Permalink | Comments (76) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Jeff Schultz
A ranking of teams that consume us
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
In the past several months, Atlanta sports fans have witnessed the firings, scorched-earth reassignments or sudden exits of three coaches and three executives, which is a remarkable achievement considering the Hawks’ season hasn’t even ended yet and the Thrashers’ general manager isn’t going anywhere (except, of course, the draft lottery).
If you’re wondering why the masses are counting down to Opening Day and already getting lost in 2009 BCS dreams, it’s because the landscape otherwise looks like desert. For that reason, we submit our inaugural rankings of the eight area sports teams that most consume our thoughts. Should indoor football or women’s basketball unexpectedly raise a pulse in the coming months, we’ll adjust to a top 10 next year.
Until then, the countdown begins at …
8. THRASHERS
Before being hired in 1998, Don Waddell made his mark building minor-league organizations in San Diego and Orlando. The problem: He’s still building minor-league organizations. Other than retaining Ilya Kovalchuk (for now), the Thrashers fail in every conceivable category: ownership (Bruce Levenson, the “hockey guy” in the Atlanta Spirit group, has fumbled in management and public relations), roster building, player development, coaching, franchise stability, direction and fan development. The worst news isn’t that things are bad now, but that there’s no reason to believe they’ll get better any time soon. Oh, and ticket prices just went up.
7. GEORGIA BASKETBALL
Now that we’re past Euphoria Weekend, a question: was the SEC tournament a jumpstart or an aberration? Coach Dennis Felton deserved to return for another season regardless of last week. But one improbable run doesn’t discount that the program had significant issues. If Felton’s players don’t go to tutoring sessions or they obliterate the conduct code, that’s on him, not athletics department policies or the result of a Jim Harrick hangover. If fan support doesn’t increase, it’s at least partly because Felton needs to throw himself into more pep rallies. But if Felton’s players suddenly are tuning him in and this recruiting class is as good as he thinks, they won’t need any more miracles.
6. GEORGIA TECH BASKETBALL
Four years ago, the Yellow Jackets reached the national finals. The fact that it wasn’t the start of something big doesn’t mean Paul Hewitt can’t coach or recruit. But it does mean he has failed to accomplish the one thing we presumed was a lock: building a consistent, winning program. Never mind going to the Final Four once in a while. The Jackets lost to UNC-Greensboro and Winthrop in the first 10 days of this season. They are 27-37 in the ACC with one NCAA tournament win in the past four seasons. Not good enough. Hewitt, notwithstanding his oversensitivity to criticism, certainly knows it. We’ve seen his upside. But the upside is collecting dust.
5. HAWKS
Here’s the dichotomy: The Hawks have a good starting five and a solid bench. But it’s almost like having nice oriental rugs under a leaky roof. Players can’t win if they’re poorly coached (Mike Woodson). Since GM Billy Knight dragged his feet in getting a point guard, he needs to draw some blame for this playoff scramble and the team being slow to gel. Knight’s also the one who hired Woodson, only to decide belatedly to fire him, only to be shot down by owners. Who will be in power after this season - and what gives you confidence the right decisions (starting with Smith’s contract) will be made? Until then: wet rugs.
4. GEORGIA TECH FOOTBALL
Ran into Paul Johnson at the airport the other day. Saw him charm a Georgia fan, who then wished Johnson good luck this fall (other than in the season finale). So there’s one step up the mountain. Credit athletics director Dan Radakovich for trying to shake up a sleepy athletics department and apathetic fan base. His decision to fire Chan Gailey probably had more to do with that than seven-win seasons. But Johnson still has to prove he can: 1) recruit in a major conference; 2) win with his triple-option offense in the ACC; 3) excite the masses. If he can do the first two, the third will follow.
3. FALCONS
I know: Why so high? Thomas Dimitroff gets a blank slate. In this town, the unknown trumps the known of others. An NFL team can change its fortunes quickly if it makes the right moves, and Dimitroff’s off to a good start. He has trimmed payroll, dumped gimpy veterans and malcontents and stockpiled draft picks. He signed running back Michael Turner. Six wins next season would be an accomplishment. But Dimitroff seems like he knows what he’s doing. The big unknowns: the quality of the draft picks, the head coaching abilities of Mike Smith and the ability of owner Arthur Blank to actually let his football people make football decisions.
2. BRAVES
They’ve had a longer run of success than any other Atlanta sports entity, even with missing the playoffs the past two years. This season, either the starting rotation explodes or they’re in the World Series. But they’re in the conversation again. John Schuerholz-to-Frank Wren has been a relatively seamless transition. Bobby Cox: still here. The lineup: Chipper Jones-Mark Teixeira-Jeff Francoeur-Brian McCann hitting 3-4-5-6. The operation: Still a model for anybody looking to start a franchise. If there’s one question, it’s ownership’s payroll limitations that could submarine the chances of re-signing Teixeira.
1. GEORGIA FOOTBALL
Yes, preseason projections have mutated beyond even the usual absurd Georgia standards. I believe AJC.com now has a rule that we must have at least a five-inch blog every time somebody burps in Butts-Mehre Hall. That said, this program has no flaws right now. The Dogs are north of everybody in money, fans, stability and direction. Mark Richt, who always had the ability to recruit, last year became a better coach. Gauge the program this way: It’s not merely that this year’s Bulldogs will be in the national-title hunt, but that it’s difficult to project when they won’t be. They stand alone.
Permalink | Comments (13) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Jeff Schultz
Georgia can build on ‘history’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Washington D.C. — As tough as it has been to put what Georgia just did in perspective, the truly tricky part comes next. Was the Bulldogs’ rise from last in the SEC East to being, as Xavier’s Derrick Brown told the Washington Post, “the best 14th seed ever,” an eight-day blip or the sign of a page having at last being turned?
“We made history,” said the freshman Jeremy Price, and nobody rose to object. And then, even more to the point: “We came over a big hump.”
While the history part was, and forever will be, nicer than nice, eight days in March 2008 will cut no ice when it’s January 2009 and the Bulldogs are playing in Thompson-Boling or Rupp or the O-Dome. But what Georgia learned about itself in those eight days will. It learned it doesn’t have to be a second-rate program. It learned it has the resources to compete and win at the highest level.
And that’s huge. For five years Georgia had Harrick Hell to brandish as an excuse for failure. (Even Dennis Felton, who started out saying he wouldn’t make excuses, was pointing toward the mess he’d inherited midway through Season 5.) But the Tony Cole scandal has now been replaced by a fresher, cleaner memory, and Felton can stop making the case for his stewardship and can simply tend to stewarding.
He’s a good coach. He proved as much at Western Kentucky, where basketball is taken far more seriously than the masses realize and where he won with teams both big and small, and he proved it when he turned Harrick’s not-always-receptive remnants into a decent team. But he’d hit a barrier, or so it seemed, and he needed something extraordinary to happen to surmount it. At what might well have been the last possible moment, he got it.
Jim Donnan once called this writer and asked: How does a team know when it’s ready to break through? Now as then, this writer had no real answer, except to suggest that you can’t really know — a team either does or it doesn’t. (Donnan’s teams, alas, never quite could.) Felton’s team just did. With every successful coach, there comes a moment when he takes his men to a place even they weren’t sure they’d reach. (For Mark Richt, see “Auburn 2002.”) Felton took his men to a title.
Felton can now visit recruits without having to apologize for Georgia’s failure to reach the NCAA tournament. He can point to the soon-to-be-raised championship banner as proof this school indeed cares about men’s basketball. He can present himself as the coach who just cemented his job, not one in imminent danger of losing it. If this coach hadn’t gone out of his way to make friends and sow good will in his first five years in Athens, those four days in Atlanta did it for him.
The SEC East is in flux. Kentucky is no longer the gold standard, and Florida just missed the Big Dance. Vanderbilt loses its best player. South Carolina is looking for a coach. Tennessee is ascendant, but there’s room to move in this division. Georgia has the opportunity to be one of the prime movers. It has good recruits — Howard Thompkins III and Dustin Ware — on the way and should be able to use its heightened profile to get better ones.
“To have the experience of winning a championship is almost priceless,” Felton said, and the doings of those eight dizzying days — four wins in the league tournament plus a meritorious loss to a No. 3 seed — changed everything we’d come to think about Georgia basketball. The program that just couldn’t get over the hump soared above and beyond in one Bob Beamon-esque bound.
What Felton called, even in his post-Xavier briefing, “the most difficult period in Georgia basketball history,” belongs to the past, and good riddance. He and his team have an SEC championship to protect and defend. There’s no reason this program can’t take these eight days and run with them for … oh, the next eight years.
Permalink | Comments (62) | Categories: Mark Bradley, UGA / SEC
Felton’s team shows it merits big stage
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Washington — They groused about the officiating, but the gripes weren’t heartfelt. They might have lost the game, but the Georgia Bulldogs knew full well they’d won the month and the season and their longstanding struggle for credibility. They won’t be national champions, but they’re no longer the program that, just five years ago, removed itself from the NCAA tournament in shame.
Georgia returned to the national stage on Thursday and exited with its dignity not just intact but enhanced. The team that finished last in the SEC East gave a No. 3 seed a rough ride — “We had control of the game,” Dennis Felton said — yielding to a late Xavier surge and a barrage of free throws. No dishonor in that.
“We’re content with the fact we won the SEC,” junior guard Billy Humphrey said. “But we definitely weren’t ready to go home.”
About here, we must step back and try to put this in context: The team that entered the SEC tournament expected to lose its first game and then its coach not only played its way into the NCAA tournament but led a heavy favorite by nine points at halftime, by 11 four minutes into the second half, by seven inside the final 10 minutes. The team that was 4-12 in the SEC regular season was this close to Round 2 of the Big Dance.
And where, everybody was wondering, had this tough and resourceful bunch been a month ago, when Georgia was completing the 10-losses-in-11-games slide that put Felton’s job in clear and present danger? Had the coach found five new guys on the waiver wire?
“I have a pretty simple answer,” Felton said. “We’ve always been pointing in this direction. But there’s such a fine line between winning and losing, and so many games we competed well enough to win except for a moment or two at the end. And then we started making timely shots, and we began to develop confidence instead of wondering.”
We saw that Thursday. We saw Georgia, afire with a convert’s belief, take the fight to Xavier. We saw a No. 3 seed so rattled that it burned three timeouts in the first 23 minutes. “We had enough energy,” Humphrey said. “We thought we could steal a game … [But] once the whistles started going in their favor, you could feel [the Musketeers’] motors running.”
It came undone in the space of six possessions — two Georgia turnovers, two missed shots, eight blurry-fast Xavier points in transition — that took the 14th seed from five points ahead to three behind. But even near the end the Bulldogs had a chance, down three with 1:24 remaining, and then the noblest Dog of all did a silly thing: Sundiata Gaines fouled Drew Lavender 30 feet from the goal.
“That was an absolutely critical point,” Felton said. “I almost fell out of my chair.”
There’s a greater point, though: Felton enters the offseason still having a chair in Georgia’s athletics department, and in the course of eight days he and his program finally emerged from Harrick Hell.
“As we continue to progress and be a member of this tournament on a regular basis,” Felton said, “we’ll remember this as a starting point.”
A man asked Felton if, for all he accomplished at Western Kentucky and all he might still accomplish, this coach could ever win anything bigger than those four games in Atlanta. “Yeah,” he said. “The national championship.”
Felton was smiling, but he wasn’t kidding. “We want to be consistently in the NCAA tournament picture all the time,” he said. “We want Georgia to be a fixture at the top of the food chain.”
Georgia. At the summit. In men’s basketball. A week ago the questioner would have laughed out loud. Now he simply thought to himself, “Hey, stranger things have happened.”
Because one just did.
Permalink | Comments (39) | Categories: Mark Bradley, UGA / SEC
Falcons must draft Jake Long
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
It’s a no-brainer, really. Come the NFL draft, the definitive choice at No. 3 overall for the Falcons isn’t any of those quarterbacks with potential, especially since this is a franchise that needs players of now instead of tomorrow.
You also could have Glenn Dorsey and Chris Long sitting there next month as wonderful defensive linemen, but here’s the problem for the Falcons: Dorsey and that Long aren’t wonderful offensive linemen.
Two words: Jake Long. The Falcons should draft the nearly flawless Michigan man of 6-foot-7 and 313 pounds, stick the guy at left tackle on their offensive line and then move on with the rest of their lives for the next decade or so. Just to make sure that neither the Miami Dolphins nor the St. Louis Rams snatch Long at No. 1 or No. 2, the Falcons should trade up or do whatever they can to make this happen.
It’s got to happen.
Here are two more words: Cleveland Browns. By drafting Long, the Falcons would have a decent chance to evolve into a Cleveland franchise that went from nothing to something in a hurry. That’s because Browns officials had the foresight to use their No. 3 pick overall last year to draft Joe Thomas as their nearly flawless Wisconsin man of 6-foot-6 and 313 pounds. They stuck Thomas at left tackle, and then they watched all sorts of splendid things happen.
With Long, the Falcons could have Thomas-like results.
“Hey, you know. I could not agree with you more on that,” said Thomas Dimitroff, showing considerable wisdom with such a comment after barely two months on the job as the Falcons’ general manager. “I know [Browns general manager] Phil Savage well, and I’ve lauded him on his approach last year, because what he did with Thomas was really help the quarterback [Derek Anderson] out who was sort of still in the growth process.
“An offensive lineman can really set the tone. You can continue to build, and [we could] sort of refine what we have along the offensive line, and I think it could open up a lot of possibilities.”
Glad that’s settled. So, is it OK to tell the world right now that the Falcons definitely will use their first pick on Jake Long, a noted perfectionist who was associated with only two penalties and two sacks in his four seasons at Michigan?
Dimitroff replaced his answer with a hearty laugh, before saying, “He’s definitely a heckuva talent.”
For one, Thomas solidified what was a ghastly offensive line. The Browns went from ranking among the worst NFL teams in sacks allowed two seasons ago at 54 to one of the best last season at 19. In case you’re wondering, the Falcons spent last season ranking among the league’s worst teams in sacks allowed with 47.
Thomas also helped the Browns discover the run when Jamal Lewis woke up his dormant career to become only the second 1,000-yard rusher for the Browns in 23 seasons. In case you’re wondering, the Falcons ranked among the NFL’s worst rushing teams last season after leading the league for three straight years.
There was the Browns’ shaky quarterback situation, too. Since the talented Brady Quinn was just a rookie, the Browns were forced to use the unheralded Anderson. It didn’t matter. He stayed erect long enough behind Thomas to become a Pro Bowl alternate. In case you’re wondering, the Falcons also have a shaky quarterback situation. They have career backup Chris Redman, former Georgia star D.J. Shockley, who is recovering from a damaged knee, and Joey Harrington, a flawed veteran.
Mostly, there was Thomas operating last season as the Browns’ main catalyst along the way to a 10-6 finish after they had four victories the year before.
In case you’re wondering, the 2007 Falcons also had four victories.
Need we say more? With Long, the Falcons could have their Thomas and instant hope. Said Dimitroff of Long, “Not only do you have his skills and his ability to be both a left and right tackle, but also what he brings to the table as far as his intelligence and his intangibles.”
They’ll draft him.
Well, they better.
Permalink | Comments (212) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Blogging live from UGA-Xavier
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Washington, D.C. - In the 20 minutes that separated Georgia winning the SEC tournament and the announcement of the NCAA pairings, I’d pretty much decided the Bulldogs were going to Anaheim to play Stanford in Round 1. (Why? Because Georgia, owing to its tepid RPI, was apt to be a 14th seed, and Stanford, which I’d penciled in as a No. 3, would surely be placed in the only Round 1 California venue.)
I was right about the seeding, wrong about the locale.
For Georgia, that seemed a big fat break.
For today’s story about the history of No. 14 seeds, I interviewed the famous Dick Vitale, and he’s picking the Bulldogs to beat Xavier. He also said this: “I’d rather take my shot at Xavier than Louisville or Stanford.”
Louisville and Stanford (and Wisconsin, which beat Georgia this season and last) are the other No. 3 seeds. The Musketeers are good, but they’re the least imposing of that set of four. And if the Bulldogs could somehow win today, neither Purdue nor Baylor would seem impregnable in Round 2. (Baylor versus Georgia would be the Up-From-Scandal Bowl.)
But this is getting way ahead of things. The Bulldogs have to beat a No. 3 seed to stay in the tournament beyond 3 p.m. today, and I’m on record as picking them to lose. I am, as you know, often wrong. We’ll see what happens. Check back for live updates.
Permalink | Comments (294) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Quick Hit
You’re a good fit for Raiders, MeAngelo
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
It seemed a departure from the man’s makeup and objectives late last season when DeAngelo Hall said: “I don’t want to be the highest-paid cornerback in the league and losing every game. Money only gets you so much happiness.”
How unfortunate when such pure thoughts get flattened by a Winnebago.
Hall is nearing a seven-year, $70 million contract with the Oakland Raiders. If the Raiders aren’t the worst franchise in professional sports, it’s only because nobody really counts them anymore. In the past five years, they’ve gone 4-12, 5-11, 4-12, 2-14 and 4-12. That makes 19 wins. The Falcons in that same span: 35 (and a playoff berth).
This is where DeAngelo Hall ends his pursuit of happiness?
Now, there’s no denying that Hall is a great athlete. He’s almost as good a cornerback as he thinks he is. So logic says this potential trade makes the Raiders better and the Falcons worse. But given the state of the Falcons franchise, Hall was more likely to be an obstacle than an asset in the immediate future.
The Falcons will be generally devoid of stars next season. When a team doesn’t have tangibles (players), it needs to make up for it with intangibles (effort, unity, chemistry). Hall only gets in the way — not because he’s talented, but because his words and actions have screamed that his priorities are elsewhere.
Coach Mike Smith preferred not to comment on Hall on Wednesday, partly because there’s no closure, yet. But his philosophies and his values don’t suggest a lot of overlap with the player who’s likely headed out the door.
“What people might not know about our defense in Jacksonville is we didn’t have a lot of guys who got much publicity throughout the league,” Smith said. “We had a solid group of physically tough guys who enjoyed playing together. Even in Baltimore, we only had a couple of bell cows. We had a lot of guys who understood about the team concept. That’s what we’re trying to establish here.”
Smith was an assistant with the Ravens before going to Jacksonville. The key to Baltimore’s Super Bowl team, he said, went far beyond the Ravens’ great defense.
“We had five games in which we didn’t score an offensive touchdown, and we won three of those,” he said. “That’s not just about the defense. It’s about the defense, the offense and the special teams staying together. It’s about the team staying together. There wasn’t any bickering or players pointing fingers. Nobody spoke out. When we won the Super Bowl, it was a testament, not just to the athleticism of the team, but to the heart, the determination and the mind-set of the players.
“It’s a culture we need to establish here, starting next week with the OTAs. Everybody has to be accountable toward each other. When you have that culture, that’s when you succeed.”
Hall did not make the Pro Bowl last season. If only that was the biggest problem.
Before the season, he told new coach Bobby Petrino he wouldn’t return punts or play snaps at wide receiver. (So much for that team concept.)
In the third game against Carolina, he melted down with three penalties totaling 67 yards (pass interference, personal foul, unsportsmanlike conduct) that led to a touchdown — and a loss. Then he yelled at coaches who dared to suggest he might want to calm down, leading to a $100,000 fine and being benched from the starting lineup the following week.
It’s noteworthy that teammates were consulted before the discipline was handed out.
In a late-season Monday night game, Hall ripped the scab off the Michael Vick soap opera when he walked onto the field carrying a Vick poster and wearing “MV7” under his eyes.
What was the purpose? To start a bonfire?
Two weeks later, while his teammates were merely trying to hold things together and finish the season, Hall held court for the media in front of his locker. Why? To squawk about his contract. But remember: It’s not about the money.
Oakland is willing to part with two draft picks for Hall. At least the Falcons will have a choice of personalities to choose from.
Hall’s future in Atlanta has been dead for some time. It needs to be. This franchise needs leaders and bonding agents. Hall has other objectives.
Permalink | Comments (98) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz
DeAngelo Hall needed to go
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
He has to go, and it’s a shame. It really is, because DeAngelo Hall has so many positive attributes.
First, he can play. He is at least a good cornerback, and it’s difficult in the modern NFL to find even decent ones. Yes, he had several meltdowns against the big boys at wide receiver. Most notably, there was that time when a one-shoed Hines Ward outran the supposedly fastest man in the league (you know, Hall) to the end zone.
But Hall can play. And maybe you’ve heard: He also can talk.
As a result, Hall’s often flapping tongue hides the fact that he is a harder worker than you think on and off the field. He loves football so much that he is a rarity among veterans. He attends everything from Senior Bowl practices to lowly events at the scouting combines each year. And, despite that flapping tongue, he isn’t a problem in the locker room, where he gives playful jabs and gets them back.
He has to go, though, for a couple of reasons. For one, the Falcons need all the draft picks they can get to help a heavily flawed roster. They’ll receive a couple of nice picks from the Oakland Raiders in this trade for Hall, and that will give the Falcons 11 picks, including four in the top 48.
Still, here’s the biggest reason why Hall has to go: Courtesy of a contract squabble and the Falcons’ losing ways, he doesn’t want to be here.
Case closed.
Permalink | Comments (172) | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
Once again, Cox has a luxury of lefties
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Lake Buena Vista, Fla. — It has been long ago that the Braves could check down their roster and consider themselves southpaw-rich. Once they had Tom Glavine, but he had been allowed to take a left turn to the ruddy enemy, the Mets, with barely a goodbye. But who needed him? Didn’t they have Mike Hampton?
That was before Hampton’s $15-million arm broke down, not once but twice. Two and a half years on the payroll without a payoff pitch, which leads us into the spring of ‘08. Glavine returned. He’d put his pride on the back-burner, taken a deep pay cut and come back to where his heart is. He has his 303 victories and one might suspect that he would be one of the three left-handers on hand, and so it was that St. Patrick’s Day was of considerable greater significance around here than a Green Beer Day.
Not only was Hampton making the start that could establish his presence, but so was Chuck James, the left-hander from Mableton. James finished last season with a “tired” arm, which had something to do with that mysterious portion of the body known as the rotator cuff. While Hampton had been oh-for-oh the past two seasons, James had won 22 games and filled a crying vacancy.
So Monday was final test day. Hampton pitched into the fifth inning against the Cardinals over in Jupiter, and graded out well. Meanwhile, back in the Magic Kingdom, Chuck James was being tested out of the glare. He was pitching on one of the outlying diamonds, where the Braves farmhands frolic, against a lineup of Cleveland farmhands.
It’s away from the raging throng, hidden behind hedges and fencing. Spectators, the few who show, usually kinfolks and wives, are seated in two sets of bleachers, each about the size of a choir loft. No concession stand, no scoreboard, no public address system. You’re on your own, and there was little cheering, except for an occasional yelp of glee. Grass roots baseball at the very roots. Two fences away, high school kids from the north were running up their lacrosse game.
Bobby Cox had left James there for a vital check-out. While the Indian farmhands lofted a few high-risers to the outfield, James went along smoothly, and was treated to a 2-0 lead when a Georgia Tech alum, Michael Fisher, cleared the fence with a man on. He grew more impressive with each inning.
“I had a little trouble at first, but I feel good now, ready to roll,” James said. No pain, no twitches, no tweaks.
Bruce Dal Canton, once a Braves relief pitcher, now a farm system pitching coach, saw it this way: “His location was good. His change-up got sharper as he went along, and that’s his bread-and-butter.”
It having been an informal atmosphere, friends, family and autograph collectors came out of the wee stands to share in James’ moment, far from the milling throng. Now with Glavine on hand, this gives the Braves three left-handers who start, which is one more than there would appear to be room for. With John Smoltz, Tim Hudson and three left-handers, not to mention the rookie from Curaçao, Jair Jurrjens, to sort out, this is a luxury Cox hasn’t been able to revel in for quite a spell.
Permalink | Comments (30) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
UGA’s miracle stuff of legends
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
You can rank them in any order that you wish, but 1a, 1b, and 1c works nicely, thank you. Whatever the case, the greatest miracles in local sports history were those Braves leaping out of nowhere to begin their worst-to-first journey in 1991 and the Dirty Birds flying all the way to the Super Bowl seven years later.
We’re in the midst of the third one, and if it continues a while, it will slide ahead of the other two. After all, that was a reeling Georgia basketball team that just spent four days going from joining Auburn with the worst record in the SEC to watching its coach sit just shy of losing his job to experiencing a tornado to having one of its bus drivers suffer a heart attack to tournament champions to dribbling on Thursday in March Madness.
“This is pretty awesome,” said Mark Lemke, who is qualified to speak on the subject. He was the spark plug of a second baseman for those ‘91 Braves who kept shocking reality. Before long, they finished just a key hit shy of a world championship in a classic Game 7.
Which begs the question: When you’re among those Braves — or, in this case, these Bulldogs — at one point do you know you’re living a miracle?
“Geez, that’s a great question,” Lemke said, pausing, before pausing some more. “I really don’t think you know. We were just happy at that time to be even contending. It’s like, ‘Nobody expected us to be here, so let’s just go with it.’ And then all of a sudden you start thinking to yourself after a big play, or maybe a big shot in Georgia’s case, ‘You know what? Maybe we can win this thing.’ I don’t know if the Georgia club is feeling that same way or not.”
The Bulldogs haven’t time for such feelings. First, that tornado forced the SEC tournament from the Georgia Dome to Georgia Tech’s Alexander Memorial Coliseum. Then the Bulldogs faced three games in two days, including a couple on Saturday before they played and won Sunday’s championship game.
Then Georgia left Tuesday for Washington, D.C., to prepare for its first-round game in the NCAA tournament on Thursday against Xavier. So the Bulldogs’ miracle didn’t evolve over weeks and months. That’s in contrast to the 1998 Falcons who used every bit of their season to end decades of joining the New Orleans Saints and the Cardinals (Chicago, St. Louis and Arizona) as the NFL’s joke franchises.
Even so, Terance Mathis, a key wide receiver for those Dirty Birds, sounded like Lemke on the subject of when you sense a miracle around you.
“The kicker for us is that we never looked at what we were doing as being a miracle, because if you ask every guy on our team, after a while, we expected to win,” said Mathis, whose Falcons won 11 straight near the end of that season, compared to the franchise’s total of just 10 victories during the two previous seasons.
Added Mathis, “We were loose. We were having a good time. It got to a point where nobody else expected us to win, so there was no pressure on us. We just went out and played football. The thing that held us was that we stayed together. It was just a numbing feeling. Maybe it was after we beat Minnesota [for the NFC championship] that we looked at each other and said, ‘Wow. We just won 11 in a row!’ “
Georgia would settle for enough in a row to reach the Sweet 16, or maybe the Elite Eight, or who really knows?
Mathis chuckled, saying, “My advice to Georgia is to do everything you’ve been doing, keep it the same, don’t change. Just play hard.” Added Lemke, “In this situation, you have to remember that you’ve gotten there for a reason. I would just keep believing in yourself and not really start thinking about the moment. Although I have to admit that, after we got off the plane after finishing Game 7 [of the NLCS] in Pittsburgh, we weren’t in Atlanta, we were in Minnesota for the World Series. That was kind of a shock.”
Kind of like everything surrounding Georgia hoops right now.
Permalink | Comments (74) | Categories: Terence Moore, UGA / SEC
Raiders will regret signing DeAngelo Hall
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
THE TUESDAY COUNTDOWN:
10: South Alabama, Gonzaga, Austin Peay and Western Kentucky. I mean, duh.
9: There’s a tendency in these parts to believe college basketball doesn’t exist outside of the ACC. But forgive me, for these be my roots: California has six teams in the NCAA tournament: UCLA, USC, Stanford, Cal State Fullerton, San Diego, St. Mary’s.
8: North Carolina might be the best team, but the state’s three tournament teams (UNC, Duke, Davidson) were surpassed also by Tennessee (five), Indiana (four), Pennsylvania (four) and Texas (four). Because of this past weekend’s miracle, Georgia finished tied with West Virginia (1) and ahead of Hawaii and Alaska (0).
7: What’s the over-under on how long before DeAngelo Hall would be miserable as a Raider?
6: When Hall gets his money, it will sooth his ego for a time. The problem is, he’s a great player on a good team but a divisive player on a bad team. He will alienate teammates and drive his coach and owner crazy (although in the Raiders’ case, he probably can’t do Al Davis any further harm). It is unfortunate that the Falcons have to say goodbye to their best player. The problem is, Hall’s not a leader. He is immature, egomaniacal and petulant. The ego part isn’t unusual for a great cornerback. But the other aspects of his personality make him a bad fit for the Falcons, Raiders or any bad or rebuilding team.
5: Notre Dame, Oral Roberts, Brigham Young and UNLV. Just looking to start a holy war.
4: Item: Bruce Levenson suggested it wouldn’t make sense to fire Thrashers general manager Don Waddell now because the team has too many big decisions to make. Question: Isn’t that a reason a team usually changes general managers?
3: Item: Heather Mills received a $48.6 million divorce settlement for four years of marriage to Paul McCartney but complained about a paltry annual allowance for their 4-year-old daughter, Beatrice, commenting: “But Beatrice only gets £35,000 pounds ($75,350) a year. And so she obviously is meant to travel B class while her father travels A class — but obviously I will pay for that.” Question: Does Heather Mills know Bruce Levenson?
2: There seems to be some confusion about Dennis Felton’s contract on airwaves and on message boards. It’s not expiring after this season. Nor does he have one year left — he has three. But college coaches generally have at least four “live” years left. Otherwise it makes it difficult to walk into a recruit’s living room and tell their mother, “I’ll take care of your son for four years.”
1: North Carolina, Georgetown, Pittsburgh and UCLA.
Permalink | Comments (110) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
Fiasco’s best guess? I’ll take UCLA
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
The 21st annual Final Four Fiasco begins with a woozy confession: I’m still dazed by Georgia. In one tornado-tossed weekend the Bulldogs won as many games against SEC opposition (four) as they had over the two-month conference season. Which only goes to show …
You never know.
The genesis of the Fiasco was, way back in 1988, to get a peek at other people’s brackets. I’ve seen a slew of them over these two decades, and from experience I can tell you: When it comes to college basketball in March/April, we’re all just guessing. That in mind, here are this year’s guesses:
Three No. 1 seeds will reach San Antonio. Two No. 1 seeds will meet for the NCAA title. And the least likely name on the grid — that’d be Georgia, above and beyond Coppin State — won’t win another game. (Then again, I didn’t think the Bulldogs would win a game in the SEC tournament.)
Even a roll as giddy as the Bulldogs’ eventually reaches an end. Remember Syracuse and Gerry McNamara storming to an improbable four-games-in-four-days Big East title in 2006? Remember what the Orange did in its first NCAA game? Lost to 12th-seeded Texas A&M.
The worst thing that can happen to a hot team is to sit for three days and ruminate over what it just did. Owing to the delirious events on two Atlanta courts, Georgia’s season will be a success even if it ends at 17-17 against Xavier on Thursday. The belief here is that it will. Feel free to disagree.
Feel likewise free to disagree with the pick to win the South Regional — fourth-seeded Pitt. I’m going against Memphis on principle: I don’t believe any team that can’t make 3-pointers or free throws is a Final Four team. And I’m going against Texas, which will be playing the regional in Houston, because I don’t think geography negates size and tenacity.
I’ve liked Pitt’s toughness for years but was always chastened by the Panthers’ inability to make shots come March. With the return of Levance Fields from injury, they have their shotmaker back. (His trey beat Duke in December, you’ll recall.) I see the South final as a cage match between Pitt and Stanford, and I see the Panthers doing to the Cardinal what they just did to Georgetown in the Big East title game.
In the Midwest, I’m breaking a vow broken many times over the breadth of the Fiasco: I’m picking Kansas. I’ve taken the Jayhawks and been wrong so many times that every March I swear to myself, “I’ll never trust those guys again.” But I’m trusting them this time because I trust everyone else in the region even less.
Clemson has to steal the ball to win, and that never works for long in this tournament. Georgetown isn’t as good as it was a year ago, and the Hoyas will face a tricky Round 2 game against Davidson, which will beat Gonzaga. Assuming Georgetown gets past the Wildcats, it’ll have a brutal semifinal against Wisconsin, and Kansas will pick off the winner — let’s say the Hoyas — in the final.
As I type, the ESPN crew is going on about North Carolina’s rough road in the East. Let the record show that road is still Tobacco Road — Rounds 1 and 2 in Raleigh, the regional semis and final in Charlotte. (When it’s geography coupled with talent, I feel rather differently.) I don’t like Tennessee for the same reason I don’t like Clemson, and the Tigers at least have inside scorers, which the Vols lack. Tennessee will exit in Round 2 against South Alabama, which will then be dismissed by Louisville.
The most intriguing matchup on the board will be the Carolina-Washington State semifinal. The Heels want to go really fast, and the Cougars prefer to go slow. I can see Carolina getting frustrated and falling behind. I can also see the Heels, as they seem always to do when playing in their home state, winning at the end.
The Heels will beat Kansas in the Final Four — hey, didn’t Roy Williams used to coach the Jayhawks? — because Carolina has two men capable of making the big shot (Tyler Hansbrough and Wayne Ellington) and Kansas has only Mario Chalmers. Having just watched Carolina win the ACC tournament, the temptation is mighty to take the Heels to win it all. I’m resisting because of four little letters.
U-C-L-A.
The West Regional should be easy pickings for the Bruins. Fading Duke will lose to West Virginia in Round 2, which will beat Xavier in the regional semis. Connecticut might have given UCLA a run a month ago, but not now.
The Bruins were derailed by Florida in the past two Final Fours because they couldn’t score against the Gators. The advent of Kevin Love changes that. UCLA still defends as well as any team anywhere, and they now have an offensive complement. Love can score inside and can fuel the break with outlet passes, and Darren Collison is the best point guard in the land.
Love won’t necessarily conquer Hansbrough in the championship game, but he’ll score enough to approximate Psycho T’s output. And the rest of the Bruins are slightly better than the rest of the Heels. So make it 12 NCAA titles for UCLA, which won its 11th under Jim Harrick, who used to coach Georgia, which just played its way into the Big Dance.
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
Permalink | Comments (35) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC, UGA / SEC
Felton takes UGA worst to first in 4 days
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
We saw things that previously existed only in hallucinations.
A conference punching bag wearing championship hats and T-shirts (somebody actually had those ready?). The maligned coach smiling, climbing a ladder, cutting down a net and waving it in front of the student section.
A sign reading, “Worst To First (in four days).”
All wrong-way signs lead to this.
Georgia: from 4-12 to SEC tournament champions. On a court with “ACC” painted in the lanes. On the campus of its rival.
Georgia: from smoked by 14 points on its home court to close the regular season, to four wins in four days — three in a span of 29 hours.
Georgia: from program perceived in disarray to NCAA tournament berth.
Do we even have to ask about Dennis Felton’s future?
“Of course he’s going to be back,” said Damon Evans, the athletics director. “He’s our basketball coach.”
Special upsets in sports have had “miracle” attached to them. The U.S. Olympic hockey team over the Soviet Union. Buster Douglas over Mike Tyson. Villanova over Georgetown.
This was simply Bulldogs over Logic.
Felton said his team was “kicked in the stomach” before it ever played a game this year. Academic suspensions, injuries and defections wrecked the program. When Evans gave ambiguous answers to questions about Felton’s future, it was clear disenchantment had risen well north of the fan base.
Felton tried to stay cool. As he stood Sunday in Alexander Memorial Coliseum, fans screaming around him, the NCAA tournament selection show blaring on a video screen up above, he admitted he was worn down by the speculation on his future.
“It’s been difficult,” he said. “It’s the first time in my life I was in that position. I pride myself on keeping my composure and staying poised. But it’s difficult when you can’t answer the questions. I always felt I was doing a good job to build Georgia basketball, so it was hard for me to defend myself, when I didn’t feel the need to defend myself. The honest truth is, it’s incredibly difficult to stay focused through all of that. As hard as I worked at it, there were moments when I was distracted by it. I feel like I’m a pretty tough guy. I feel I can handle anything. But it was very tough.”
We’ll never know how close Felton was to getting fired. Asked afterward when exactly it became a non-issue, Evans smiled. “I’ll just say it this way: It’s a non-issue now.”
The Bulldogs beat Mississippi, which humiliated them at home on “Senior Night.” They beat Kentucky, which went 12-4 in the conference. A few hours later, with tired legs, they beat Mississippi State, which started the day 22-9. They beat Arkansas, 66-57, the day after the Hogs stunned fourth-ranked Tennessee.
Dennis Felton doesn’t deserve a contract extension any more. He deserves a statue (maybe even next to the arena).
“I saw a team jell,” Evans said. “They looked like they were having more fun. It was as if something just clicked. And I saw our coach a little more relaxed. Dennis is intense but he somehow found a button to push with these kids and they started believing.”
They were dragging in the second half. Their lead, once as much as 19 points, was trimmed to five. Evans watched Felton. He saw the coach yell and stomp his feet, as usual, but he also noticed an encouraging, nurturing side.
“The players felt he could get them there if they would just listen to him — and Dennis got them there,” he said.
“By pulling the team together, by rallying the troops, by getting the fans to believe — I couldn’t be more proud of him. When you coach at this level, it’s not just about the X’s and O’s. There’s so many things that go into managing a program, and he showed that this week.”
It had been 25 years since Georgia had won the SEC tournament. People would have laughed at Melanie Felton, the coach’s wife, if they knew she was claiming destiny a few days earlier. Their 10-year-old son, Nile, was given a project by his teacher to research square pyramids. It was kismet. “I went to ‘[SEC] Fanfare’ and I took a picture of the trophy,” she said. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, the SEC trophy is a square pyramid!’ My girlfriend said, ‘It’s a sign! It’s a sign!’ ” The team posed with the same trophy Sunday. Rub your eyes, then look at the picture. It’s real.
Permalink | Comments (92) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, UGA / SEC
With one putt, Woods separates self from field
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Orlando — Tiger Woods and four other guys, some you don’t know too well, played into the last round at Bay Hill Sunday on even ground. Vijay Singh — you know him— Bart Bryant — you may have forgotten him — Sean O’Hair and Bubba Watson stood in a row at the top of the leaderboard, 6-under par. Each had his shot. This could be his day. Beat Tiger and take home Arnold Palmer’s Invitational trophy, to be presented by Arnie himself. There were some exciting possibilities on that scoreboard before us.
Not only just those five overnight leaders. But as the day wore on and warmed up at Bay Hill, more challengers began to join the firing from the wing. Tiger couldn’t shake the crowd. If it wasn’t one, it was another, and he was showing signs that he might be had. Bryant had seen it before, and he had taken him — by six strokes in the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club in 2005.
As it turned out, it would be Bryant who stuck to him like a barnacle down to the final stroke. Along the way, though, challengers kept rising up, firing and falling back. Hunter Mahan, former national amateur champion, came on like a runaway train before finding trouble. Ken Duke, a 39-year-old sophomore on the tour, rose up and made a flourish. But coming from farther out was a local veteran, Cliff Kresge, a last-minute addition to the field. He shook his cloak of journeyman and with a round of 67 turned in the best finish of his pro career, a tie for third at 273.
But the challenger who never gave ground was Bryant, ranked No. 137th in the world. It was the same Bryant who had known the feeling of taking Tiger in the Tour Championship. He was in the pairing just ahead of Woods and finished his day with a 67, 9-under-par 271 for the weekend at Arnie’s place.
Then there was nothing left but to wait for Tiger’s finish, and put a finish on it, Tiger did. His putting had been somewhat erratic over the day, and on the 18th green he faced about a 25-footer for the whole shebang. Bryant waited in the scorer’s tent.
“I didn’t have to see it,” he said. “I knew the crowd would tell me, and they did.”
It was the second such finish for Woods on the same hole, same tournament. In 2001, he sank the winning putt on the 18th green, and that time his victim wasn’t the 137th in the world, it was Phil Mickelson. Mickelson was here this week, but far out of the running. Woods finished with a 10-under 270.
Woods was on the edge of his game most of the weekend, and said so. He three-putted the 10th green from seven feet, and the chase was on. Bryant bogeyed the 11th, birdied the 12th, then the 15th, and the sprint to the wire was on. When Woods sank the deciding putt, he flew in a state of exhilaration, cap came off and he flung it to the ground.
Later, he said, “Stevie [his caddie] handed me my cap and I said, ‘How the hell did my cap come off?’ ” He was, indeed, lost in the exhilaration of it all.
Standing in the scorer’s cabin, watching it all, was Bryant with the man who had been his official scorer. And when the roar of the crowd split the air, Bryant said to his companion, “Man, that guy is good.”
And the curtain dropped on another dramatic scene at Bay Hill, starring Eldrick Woods.
Felton’s Dogs defy all logic
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
There weren’t many Georgia fans in the building, and some of those carried a tuba. But if anything, that probably made this team feel right at home.
Anonymity seems to work for the Bulldogs. So, apparently, do nonsensical story lines, natural disasters and blind, spinning 3-point shots by backup freshman guards.
Functioning on guts and running on fumes, the Bulldogs swept a basketball doubleheader Saturday. They have won more games in 72 hours of this borderline freakish SEC tournament (three) than they did in the final seven weeks of the regular season (two).
“We made history,” said guard Sundiata Gaines.
Yes. And they’re defying logic in the process. They upset Kentucky in overtime 60-56. They returned hours later to dump Mississippi State 64-60. They have landed in the SEC championship game for the first time since 1997, with a chance to go to the NCAA tournament.
I’m not sure what the odds are on today’s game against Arkansas.
Does it matter?
The Bulldogs did more at the Alexander Memorial Coliseum than merely create the college basketball oddity: the day-night doubleheader. They reaffirmed that the program — battered this season by suspensions, injuries, defections and rumors of a head coach possibly being nudged off a cliff by his athletics director — isn’t nearly the mess that many believed.
They have eight scholarship players. Somehow, this formula is working — even among only 100 fans in the first game and 200 in the second. (Wow. They’re getting a following.)
You know what else works for Georgia? Dennis Felton.
If this guy isn’t given a warm embrace by his athletics director, his university and the student body after what has happened in the past few days, then there’s something really funky in the air in Athens.
“He’s been great,” said Georgia senior Dave Bliss. “He’s believed in us the whole time.”
The day started with the win over Kentucky. The less than 100 Georgia fans in attendance were outnumbered by the some 500 blue-clad Kentucky fans, prompting former Auburn coach Sonny Smith to crack: “Kentucky’s known for horse-breeding, but I didn’t know they could get this many family members in a 24-hour period.”
It was announced that the general public would not be allowed into the game. But Kentucky fans don’t take rejection well. Outside the arena, a female security guard surveyed fans trying to talk their way into the Coliseum and said, “There’s going to be a fight out here soon.”
And then: “You know, somebody already offered me $5,000 for my [yellow] jacket [as a disguise to get in].”
Inside the arena, Kentucky fan Gary Riley, who is white, said, “Ramel’s my brother.” The Wildcats’ Ramel Bradley is African- American.
As it turned out, each school was given 400 tickets to distribute as it pleased. The idea was that they would go only to school officials and the like. But the Wildcats made certain their entire allotment was distributed.
What of Georgia’s allotment? Athletics director Damon Evans said only, “My understanding is everybody got the same. But it looked like they had more. Hey, it is what it is.”
It didn’t seem to affect the team.
You expected the Dogs to drag their limbs onto the court for game two. Felton seemed either to be conceding defeat or trying to anger and fire up his own players when he ripped the format following the morning win, saying, in part: “I think everybody understands that this tournament is our only chance to make it to the [NCAA] tournament. I can’t help but feel that when that decision was made, they made it knowing well that they were basically eliminating our chances of winning the [SEC] tournament. …”
Whatever his motives, the Dogs didn’t look dead. They jumped out to a 15-4 lead before Mississippi State realized this wouldn’t be easy and rallied to tie it before the half, 33-all.
The Dogs hung around for most of the second half. Gaines fouled out with 7:18 left for the second time of the day.
But a jumper by Billy Humphrey with a minute remaining gave them a 61-60 lead — and they never fell behind again.
Against Kentucky, Georgia trailed 56-54 with 8.8 seconds left. Following a timeout, backup guard Zac Swansey — who entered the game after Gaines fouled out in regulation — dribbled to the front court, then turned, spun and fired a trey over Kentucky’s best perimeter defender, Ramon Harris, with 1.2 seconds left.
During a timeout, the pubic-address announcer reminded fans not to storm the court. It was kind of funny.
Swansey was supposed to pass to Humphrey, but he thought better of it.
He said later, “It wasn’t a typical SEC tournament game.”
I’m still not sure which of the 97 possibilities he was referring to.
Permalink | Comments (120) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, UGA / SEC
‘Psycho T’ all about effort all the time
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Charlotte — Even before you knew who’d get the ball, you knew who’d get the ball. Even before you could sort out exactly what was happening on the right baseline in the tied game’s final moments, you knew how this would end: Tyler Hansbrough was going to will the ball into the basket, and North Carolina was going to win.
And that’s what happened. The best player in the country made the biggest shot of his collegiate life, and the nation’s No. 1 team danced merrily away.
Actually, the dancing was done by Hansbrough himself. Pyscho T, as he’s known, made the winning shot with eighth-tenths of a second remaining, and he spent the next 15 seconds flailing his arms and kicking his legs and scaring the wits out of his teammates. Said Wayne Ellington: “I was going to give him a high five, but he kept going [with the manic dance], and I started backing up.”
Some people don’t like the way Tyler Hansbrough plays. There’s a word for such people. That word is, “moronic.”
If everybody played like Hansbrough, the basketball world would be a better place. It would be a place where effort is a greater determinant than talent, a place where the best player isn’t the guy who jumps the highest but the one who tries the hardest.
Asked Saturday what makes Hansbrough so good, Roy Williams said: “His heart — I’ve had players more gifted, but I’ve never had a player who wants it more. That jump shot [the game-winner from the baseline after Hansbrough ran down Ty Lawson’s miss] — he’s made that jump shot a lot of times. He’s out there before practice every day, working on his shooting.”
Fighting to gain entry to the NCAA tournament, Virginia Tech outplayed the mighty Heels in a not-exactly-neutral setting. As Seth Greenberg, the Hokies’ distraught coach, said afterward: “The game played out the way we wanted … We basically controlled the game for 39 minutes and 59 seconds.”
That final second was the difference. Tech could have seized Lawson’s rebound. “We had a good chance of grabbing it,” said Tech’s A.D. Vassallo, but so long as Hansbrough is on the floor nobody else has the best chance. He pursues everything, grabs everything and holds on. He has the best hands, the keenest instincts, the biggest heart.
“The ball had a pretty good roll out to me,” Hansbrough said, understating his part hugely. “I picked it up and let it fly. I was pretty glad it went in.”
That one play beat Virginia Tech, but without a dozen early Hansbrough plays the Heels wouldn’t have been within 10. He scored 26 points and took nine rebounds. He followed a missed Wayne Ellington free throw to tie the score inside the final three minutes. He tipped away Malcolm Delaney’s dribble on what could have been the go-ahead fast break inside the last minute.
Williams again: “I’d be the best dadgum coach who ever lived if I could put that heart in all my players, but I’m the luckiest coach who ever lived because I have one like that.”
Until Saturday afternoon, Hansbrough’s younger brother had been involved in the weekend’s wildest doings. Ben Hansbrough plays for Mississippi State and was on the floor when the storm lashed the Georgia Dome. Asked if he’d spoken to his sibling since the SEC tournament was halted and then moved, Tyler Hansbrough said: “I’ve called him four times and sent him a text, but he hasn’t answered. But I know he’s all right because I’ve talked to my dad. He’s down there.”
At this stage in Ben Hansbrough’s life,
it would be hard to imagine him being fazed by anything wind-related. He did, after all, grow up in the same household as Psycho T, the human cyclone.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
Slow greens? Just stroke it a little harder
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Orlando — Going into the locker room at Bay Hill Golf Club on Saturday afternoon, Tiger Woods happened into the host, Arnold (himself) Palmer. “And what did he say to you?” somebody asked Tiger.
“He said ‘Get off your butt and play a good round today,’ ” Tiger said, and he grinned amiably, with visions of the 66 he had just posted rolling around in his mind.
After the first two rounds of Arnie’s Invitational, Woods was somewhat less than sociable. It was the greens. Woods just doesn’t go taking his game around to any old tournament, like the Pods, or the Wyndham, or even Sugarloaf. But he never misses one of Palmer’s shindigs. It’s the least a guy can do for the man who says, “Don’t call me ‘The King.’ “
For the first four years of the 2000s, Bay Hill belonged to Woods. He won them back to back to back to back. Hasn’t won since. Last year he stormed out of the gate with a 64, but never broke par the rest of the week — and polished it off with a roaring 76.
After the first two rounds this week, he was only 2 under par, grinding and growling. It was the greens. Some kind of bug had made a feast of the old greens, and Bay Hill agronomists had overseeded, to the displeasure of several contestants, especially Woods, who was not particularly diplomatic about it.
Problem was, the greens were slow, and no two greens were alike, as he saw it. “Is the practice green like the greens on the course?” he was asked.
“No,” he said.
“No correlation?” He answered, “Zero. It [the practice green] is the best green on the property.”
Saturday, Woods had found a solution to his case against the greens: hit the ball closer to the hole, then hit the putts a lick harder. There you had it, and under the sun’s lowering rays, he left Bay Hill in a much more sociable mood and hovering in a cluster around the top of the leaderboard, 6 under the most popular number.
Vijay Singh lost his lead with a double bogey on the 6th hole. Nick Watney filled the gap with an eagle on the 12th, then threw it right back when he hit his tee shot out of bounds on the evil 16th. Bubba Watson, the left-handed rustic from Panhandle Florida, aroused a colony of excited guests at the end, but all he had to do was post a series of six birdies in a row finishing up. Singh chipped in the 15th and saved his place among the leaders.
At the end of the day, though, Sean O’Hair led the choir. He was also 6 under par, but he had to shoot 63 to make it, lowest round of the week, and so you had O’Hair, Tiger and three other guys breaking from the inside post at 6 under, Singh, Watson and Bart Bryant — not to be taken lightly. Remember, Bart is the Bryant who took Tiger to the cleaners in the final round of the Tour Championship by six strokes in 2005.
So, after three days the grumping about the greens had subsided somewhat, which indicated that just about everybody had decided they should hit their putts harder. And straighter, and get off Arnie’s back.
After all, it’s his tournament, his course, and if they don’t like it, all they have to do is stay home, or take it to “The King.” Sorry, your highness.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Furman Bisher
Braves miss their cockiness
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Lake Buena Vista, Fla. — The key to the Braves’ season isn’t whether John Smoltz, Tim Hudson and Tom Glavine pitch in the vicinity of Cy Smoltz, Cy Glavine and Cy Maddux. It isn’t whether Chipper Jones keeps his bruises to a minimum. It isn’t whether Rafael Soriano is the definitive closer, or whether the Phillies and the Mets are more vulnerable than they seem, or whether Andruw Jones left some of his magic in center field.
It is all of those things, along with the following: whether the Braves can get their swagger back.
The Braves did have a swagger, by the way. It wasn’t one of those loud and gaudy things, exemplified by the storied likes of Jack Tatum’s Raiders, Patrick Ewing’s Hoyas or any given edition of the old Yankees. It was quiet, subtle, dignified, but it was there. You’ve probably forgotten about it since the Braves finished third in the National League East the past two seasons after 14 straight division titles.
Glavine hasn’t forgotten. He helped invent that Braves’ swagger during his 16 years with the franchise through the 2002 season. Afterward, he spent five years with the Mets watching that swagger evolve from something potent to nothing worth mentioning. “From being on the other side, it wasn’t there last year,” said Glavine, now back at Disney’s Wide World of Sports this spring to help resurrect it with his presence along with his Hall of Fame arm.
Added Glavine, “Looking at that [Braves] team last year, for the first time that I can remember, it wasn’t there. Even in 2006 as a Met, when we won our division and we were ahead by how many games, I can remember coming into Atlanta, and they were pretty far out of the lead on Labor Day weekend. But there was still that feeling in the back of your mind that these guys are still dangerous.”
Swagger does that.
Swagger makes you appear more deadly than you really are, because swagger gets into the psyche of your opponents.
Swagger also gives you a sense of entitlement, no matter what.
The thing is, swagger can disappear in a flash when you go from a mostly established roster to one that has been a haven for youth and inexperience during the past three seasons. There was the fluke of 2005, when the Braves won their last division title despite using 18 rookies. It’s just that the Braves’ swagger was destined to vanish in the aftermath for a significant reason: No Cy Smoltz, Cy Glavine and Cy Maddux. That’s in the vintage sense and the literal sense, with Glavine in New York until this year and Greg Maddux bolting after the 2003 season for the Chicago Cubs.
“You know, it’s easy to have that swagger when you’ve got three or four guys going out there on the mound and just dominating,” said Jeff Francoeur, who hasn’t experienced as much during his two seasons as the Braves right fielder with a prolific offense and just flashes of the Braves’ past in the starting rotation. “If we can keep our pitchers healthy, I think we can get that swagger back knowing that, hey, all we have to do is score three or four runs and play good defense, and we can win 100 games. I think that’s what those Braves teams had in the past.”
That’s definitely what those Braves teams had through the 1990s and into the early part of this century. They also had Bobby Cox as their highly capable manager, and he hasn’t left. So you have to figure that he remembers how the swagger looked, felt and smelled, and he has an idea of how to get it back.
Said Cox, after a quick smile, “Well, to be honest, we’ve never had a lot of swagger, but there’s always been that feeling of dominance. I mean, for 14 straight years, we dominated. So you lose that a little bit.” Then Cox paused, before easing back into a smile and adding, “We’d like to get dominance back on our résumé.”
If so, the Braves will have another word back on their résumé: “Champions,” of their division, if nothing else.
Permalink | Comments (66) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Felton has UGA on track
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
There were fewer than 100 Georgia fans in the building, which if nothing else probably made this team feel right at home.
Anonymity seems to work for the Bulldogs. So, apparently, do nonsensical storylines, natural disasters and blind, spinning three-point attempts by backup freshman guards.
You know what else works for Georgia? Dennis Felton.
If this guy isn’t given a warm embrace by his athletic director, his university and the student body after what has happened in the last few days, then there’s something really funky in the air in Athens.
The Bulldogs’ 60-56, overtime win over Kentucky on Saturday in the SEC tournament in the eerie surroundings of mostly empty Alexander Memorial Coliseum did more than merely create the college basketball oddity: the day-night doubleheader.
It reaffirmed that the program — battered this season by suspensions, injuries, defections and rumors of a head coach possibly being nudged off a cliff by his athletic director — isn’t nearly the mess that many believed.
The Bulldogs’ scheduled evening semifinal against Mississippi State — while significant for a potentially and previously implausible NCAA tournament bid — almost seemed trivial by comparison to what had already happened. Georgia hadn’t won two games in the SEC tournament since 1997 (when it lost in the finals) — and this didn’t look like a team that would even win one.
After Friday’s tornado forced the postponement of the Kentucky game, the Bulldogs board their team bus after midnight, only to find the streets to their downtown hotel blocked.
“We had to actually walk part of the way, right smack through the Kentucky hotel because the police wouldn’t allow our bus to get close enough to the hotel to drop us off on the curb,” said coach Dennis Felton. “It was 1:30 by the time we got back.”
Things got only stranger. Saturday’s game was advertised as being open to only players’ families, cheerleaders, bands and the media. But there was more than 500 blue-clad Kentucky fans in the building, prompting former Auburn coach Sonny Smith to crack: “Kentucky’s known for horse-breeding. But I didn’t know they could get this many family members in a 24-hour period.”
Smith added: “It would take the National Guard to keep Kentucky fans out of here. The Georgia fans must be up in Kentucky hunting chickens.”
Outside the arena, a female security guard surveyed the Kentucky fans trying to talk their way into the Coliseum and said, “There’s going to be a fight out here soon.”
And then: “You know, somebody already offered me $5,000 for my [yellow] jacket [as a disguise to get in].”
Inside the arena, Kentucky fan Gary Riley, who is white, said, “Ramel’s my brother.” The Wildcats’ Ramel Bradley is African American.
He said he was approached by a woman outside the arena. “She gave us eight tickets and told us not to ask any questions.”
As it turned out, each school was given 400 tickets to distribute as it pleased. The idea was that they would go only to school officials and the like. But the Wildcats made certain their entire allotment was distributed.
What of Georgia’s allotment? Either nobody tried or nobody cared. Feel free to pick a conspiracy theory. It’s about the only thing this program hasn’t had this year.
The spinning three-point shot?
Cross that one off the list.
Georgia trailed, 56-54, with 8.8 seconds left. Following a timeout, backup guard Zac Swansey — who was replacing senior Sundiata Gaines, who had fouled out in regulation — dribbled to the front court, then turned, spun and fired a trey over Kentucky’s best perimeter defender, Ramon Harris, with 1.2 seconds left.
Swansey, who was supposed to pass off to teammate Billy Humphrey but thought better of it, said later: “It wasn’t a typical SEC tournament game.”
I’m still not sure which of the 97 possibilities he was referring to.
How about another conspiracy theory? Felton said he “objected vehemently” to the post-tornado format that would have his team play again a few hours later. He would’ve preferred a three-game Sunday, with both semis being played earlier in the morning.
“I think everybody understands that this is our only chance to make it to the [NCAA],” he said, “and I can’t help but feel that when that decision was made, they did it knowing well they were basically eliminating our chances of winning the [SEC].”
But suddenly, nothing seemed impossible.
Permalink | Comments (62) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, UGA / SEC
Predicting the Field of 65
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
A conference tournament is supposed to be the forum for an iffy team to make its case.
This year has seen a slew of major-conference teams pleading, “Nolo contendre.”
Thursday was one of the stranger days in college basketball annals. Almost every team presumed to be on the proverbial bubble contrived to lose. Ole Miss lost to Georgia. Maryland lost to Boston College. Baylor lost to Colorado. Arizona, Oregon and Arizona State lost in the Pac-10.
On Saturday, Virginia Tech lost to North Carolina on a Tyler Hansbrough jumper with 0.8 seconds left. Of his Hokies, coach Seth Greenberg said: “If somebody watched that game and thinks we’re not one of the 65 best teams in the country, they’re certifiably insane.”
Some years a field of 65 doesn’t seem big enough. This isn’t one of those. This is a year where the field could shrink by 10 and not omit anyone of consequence.
But it won’t, which is where we invoke the First Rule of Bracketing: Those 65 teams, however flawed, must come from somewhere. Here’s one guess as to their identities:
East Regional matchups
1. North Carolina
16. SWAC champ/Mt. St. Mary’s
8. Marquette
9. Kansas State
5. Washington State
12. Ohio State
4. Butler
13. Oral Roberts
6. BYU
11. Arizona
3. Xavier
14. American
7. Michigan State
10. Baylor
2. Georgetown
15. Belmont
—————-
West Regional
1. UCLA
15. Maryland-Baltimore County
8. Miami
9. Arkansas
5. Pitt
12. Western Kentucky
4. Indiana
13. George Mason
5. UNLV
11. Virginia Tech
3. Drake
14. WAC champ
7. Mississippi State
10. St. Mary’s
2. Texas
15. Portland State
—————-
South Regional
1. Tennessee
16. MEAC champ
8. Gonzaga
9. Texas A&M
5. Purdue
12. Temple/Massachusetts
4. Louisville
13. Cornell
6. Notre Dame
11. Illinois State
3. Stanford
14. Winthrop
7. Oklahoma
10. South Alabama
2. Duke
15. Austin Peay
—————-
Midwest Regional
1. Memphis
16. Southland champ
8. Davidson
9. Kentucky
5. Connecticut
12. St. Joseph’s
4. Vanderbilt
13. Siena
6. Clemson
11. West Virginia
3. Wisconsin
14. Big West champ
7. Southern Cal
10. Kent State
2. Kansas
15. San Diego
Permalink | Comments (40) | Categories: Mark Bradley
Just another jolt in Dogs’ crazy season
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Most figured it was going to take some cataclysmic event for Georgia to make it through the SEC basketball tournament this weekend.
You just assumed it would be something relatively pedestrian, like Kentucky and Tennessee losing.
Instead, the Georgia Dome almost blew over.
What next?
“I was in the coach’s locker room,” coach Dennis Felton said. “It was just myself and my assistant, Mike Jones. The only thing I heard was the sound of sand falling down between the walls. I just looked at him and chuckled and said, ‘Those are the rats.’ “
Injuries. Suspensions. Tornado.
Georgia will make it through this basketball season one day, hopefully intact. Needing a miracle, it got bad weather. At 9:40 p.m., when the Bulldogs were still in the locker room waiting for their quarterfinal game against Kentucky, play during the overtime game between Mississippi State and Alabama stopped.
Bands stopped.
Fans got quiet.
The only noise: It sounded like an airplane was landing on the roof of the Georgia Dome. Rafters swayed. Pieces of insulation floated from the ceiling down to the floor. A tarp covering one wall tore off the wall. A bolt fell into the stands. A washer fell to press row. Fans in the temporary bleachers began to scatter. Players and cheerleaders cleared the floor.
And you thought just Georgia’s season was a mess. You should’ve seen it outside.
I’ve spent too many nights at this intersection of sports and the bizarre. I sat in Candlestick Park in San Francisco the night the World Series was interrupted by an earthquake. I sat ringside in an outdoor stadium in Las Vegas when a paraglider crashed the Evander Holyfield-Riddick Bowe heavyweight championship.
The night worked out OK for Holyfield. He was a heavy underdog, but regained the title.
Maybe divine intervention will help Georgia. The Dogs have already suffered through a season of the bizarre, so it can’t possibly hurt.
Hey, what’s one more thing?
“Yeah,” said Felton, smiling.
Their game was postponed. Time, site and weather conditions were pending.
Outside the Dome late Friday, chunks of insulation, steel and broken glass covered the ground. There was debris and turned-over trashcans everywhere. Lightposts in the plaza between the Dome and the Georgia World Congress Center were bent over. A concrete parking sign along Northside Drive was pulled out of the ground.
As play in the Mississippi State-Alabama game finally resumed one hour and four minutes later — with 2:11 left in overtime — loud claps of thunder could still be heard inside. With every sound, several fans in the temporary bleachers turned and looked up at the ceiling, as if worrying that something was going to fall.
Things were no less settled on the court. Just before play was suspended, Mississippi State guard Ben Hansbrough turned to Alabama’s Mykal Riley and remarked on the noise.
“He mentioned to me after they shot a free throw, and we were coming down the court, he was like, ‘Sounds like a tornado,’ ” Riley said. “I was agreeing with him, and then all of a sudden everything started moving and everybody started running.”
I know SEC officials are constantly fighting this battle for attention with the ACC during tournament time. But is this the best they could come up with?
Mississippi State’s Charles Rhodes, with a flare for the understatement, said: “It’s got to be one of the worst environments I’ve ever been in as a player. You know, to see stuff falling from the roof, it really scared me. Last time I’ve been in something like that was when there was a bat in the gym [in Starkville]. So this really tops that one.”
We’ll take his word for it.
Georgia athletics director Damon Evans had been looking for a bolt to strike the team and the fan base. This likely isn’t what he had in mind.
Kentucky fans seemed to outnumber Georgia fans 5-to-1, which would be depressing enough for the Bulldogs even if the game wasn’t held in Atlanta. But that speaks to the fan apathy currently surrounding the program. It’s the residual of a team losing 11 of its final 13 regular-season games and going 4-12 in the conference.
The Dogs managed a mini-jolt at about 12:30 a.m. Friday, when Dave Bliss’ short left-handed bank shot in the final seconds gave them a 97-95 overtime win over Mississippi.
Of course, the next jolt came at 9:40 p.m. But the Bulldogs have needed some divine intervention. At this point, they would assume anything to be a good sign.
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Tech saved best for last, but it still wasn’t enough
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Charlotte — For all of one night and part of another, we saw what could have been. We saw a Georgia Tech team capable of playing at the highest level in the most prestigious conference in the land. We saw a team that should have been working to enhance its NCAA seeding, not simply to stave off statistical elimination.
Credit the Jackets for playing their best basketball at season’s end. Fault them for waiting so long.
The Tech team that routed Virginia on Thursday was such a revelation that even those who’d watched the Jackets all season were saying, “Where’d that come from?” Here’s where: From a fusion of talent and effort, from an understanding of how the game should be played at both ends … from, in other words, a place these Jackets had scarcely even visited.
On Friday we were given a case study as to why the Jackets are 15-17 as opposed to 22-10. They were played off their feet by a Duke team that isn’t all that gifted but is, as ever, furiously focused. The Devils’ manic pressure appeared to catch Tech by surprise, which shouldn’t have happened given that the two had met in Durham 16 days ago. It was 22-10 at the second TV timeout and 33-16 at the third, and the guy who’d written he could see the Jackets winning was on the horn to his optometrist.
But then …
Tech stopped acting as if it didn’t belong on the same court and began to run those lordly Dookies into the floorboards. Down 20 in the first half and 15 at the break, the Jackets outscored the nation’s No. 7 team 19-2 over five dizzying minutes, and suddenly the crowd — passionately anti-Devils, an ACC tournament tradition — was in a lather and Tech was within two.
“We had them on their heels,” said Anthony Morrow, and the Jackets did. Mike Krzyzewski, who hates calling timeout, called one, but it made no difference. Tech still kept coming, limiting Duke to three points on nine possessions, and then Gerald Henderson shot an air ball, and Jeremis Smith took the rebound and tried to throw long for Moe Miller, but Kyle Singler intercepted and fed DeMarcus Nelson for a transforming trey.
Just like that, the great wave was broken. Duke gathered itself and won handily if not easily, and there we had Tech’s season in miniature — some really nice moments that added up to 17 big fat losses.
“We definitely fought,” said Morrow, a senior who might have played his last collegiate game. “This season could have gotten a lot worse.”
That’s true. The Jackets could have quit on themselves and finished 10-21, but they didn’t. That said, the season should have been much better. Even with all those early losses — six before New Year’s — Tech had its chances. But it lost close home games to Maryland and Miami and Virginia, blunting any real momentum until there weren’t enough games left for momentum to matter.
“I’ve said I did a really poor job my third year here [the season with Chris Bosh that ended in the NIT],” Paul Hewitt said Friday. “But we made steady progress [this season]. The mistake we made was before the season, when we scheduled [road games] at Indiana and Connecticut and Vanderbilt. Confidence is very important, especially with a freshman point guard.”
But it wasn’t so much a lack of confidence that undid the Jackets as an absence of application. This talented team didn’t defend well enough soon enough, and that’s always a failure of coaching. If this wasn’t the botch the Bosh season was, neither is it one Hewitt will highlight in yellow on his résumé.
“A couple of balls didn’t roll our way,” said Morrow, singing yet another verse of the same old song. “This game didn’t go our way.”
Thus did a season come apart. To their credit, the Jackets nearly pulled it together at the end. To their lasting chagrin, they ran out of games.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
Felton’s fate mirrors Gailey’s
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
If this weekend has been perceived as some job-saving mission for Dennis Felton, the man is still sitting in his paddleboat.
Georgia’s opening game in the SEC tournament Thursday night (and Friday morning) was much different from most of their games this season: a lot of effort, occasionally interrupted by flashes of skill. Undermanned as ever, the Bulldogs fought for leads, played on fumes and overcame periods where they seemingly tried to give the game away, before finally beating Mississippi in overtime 97-95 at the Georgia Dome.
Hey, if a coach is trying to save his job, he might as well do it with a little drama.
The winning shot appropriately came from a senior, Dave Bliss, whose short bank shot behind the Rebels defense came moments after Mississippi’s Chris Warren made three free throws to tie the game with 5.5 seconds left. This came after the Rebels pulled the same hat trick at the close of regulation, sending the game in to overtime.
And in other news, Dennis Felton hasn’t been fired yet.
He was not immediately rewarded with a raise and a contract extension. He’ll have to settle for a second-round game with Kentucky. But it’s better than a Friday without a game and waiting for the phone to ring.
The Dogs won. How rare is that? They had won only two of their previous 13 games to close the regular season. An upset over Kentucky and they’ll match their victory total for the past seven weeks.
But for now, they’ll just enjoy the sigh.
“I proud of the way we kept going after the victory until we got it,” said Felton.
They showed something.
He showed something.
The days leading up to this tournament has seemed like some strange deathwatch. It may be new for Felton. But if it seems familiar to you, there’s a reason.
The backdrop of Felton’s situation is similar to the one that led to Chan Gailey’s firing at Tech. The two men coach different sports. They’re from very different backgrounds. But they must feel like blood brothers.
No, Gailey didn’t inherit probation or nearly the boatload of problems with the Tech football program that Felton did with the basketball team at Georgia. But he strung together seven-win seasons with second-tier bowl appearances, which was acceptable with his old boss, Dave Braine, became his undoing with new boss, Dan Radakovich.
Georgia athletics director Damon Evans is relatively new (four years). He has never hired or fired a football or basketball coach. But we found out how important basketball was to him a few weeks ago when he said, well, just that: “I don’t think people know how important this sport is to me.” OK, now we do.
Radakovich has higher expectations for Tech football than Braine did. Similarly, Evans sees what has happened to basketball programs at other traditional football schools in the SEC. Florida became Kentucky. Tennessee became Florida. He sees no reason why the same thing can’t happen at Georgia.
Felton and Gailey. Both good guys. Both good coaches. Both, suddenly, deemed as possibly not good enough.
Evans maintains he hasn’t made up his mind about Felton’s future. But I have this theory any time a boss says he hasn’t made up their mind: He has made up his mind, and it’s not good news. Otherwise, that same boss generally will give a public embrace, if for no otherwise than to mute the story.
Evans hasn’t done that. Similarly, Radakovich ducked several opportunities to publicly back Gailey in his final days.
If Felton still can save his job, it was a good, if not exhausting, start.
Asked afterward if this will quiet his critics, Felton smiled and said: “I didn’t know I had any critics.”
And as to whether he believed it would strengthen his chances of keeping his job, he said: “How can I possibly sit here and do Damon Evans’ thinking for him? That’s a question better suited for Damon.”
Felton remained confident before the Mississippi game, saying: “I expect to be Georgia’s coach for a long time.”
I think Chan Gailey said that. But maybe Felton still has a chance to save something.
Permalink | Comments (51) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, UGA / SEC
Duke better watch out for Jackets … seriously
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Charlotte — You’re going to laugh, so get it out of your system. Laugh for 30 seconds. Laugh for a half-hour. Laugh until you hyperventilate. I won’t be offended. Neither will I change my mind.
I can see Georgia Tech beating Duke Friday.
I can see the 16-loss Jackets playing on Saturday in the ACC tournament.
I can see the team that cannot reach the NCAA tournament as an at-large invitee giving itself a fighting chance to get there as an automatic qualifier.
I can see all these things happening. Maybe you see none of the above. I understand if you don’t. I’ve watched Tech all season, same as you. But what I’m seeing now isn’t the team I watched lose those seven home games. What I’m seeing now is something close to the team I thought this could/should be.
Not a great team, no. Not a Top 10 fixture, a North Carolina or a Memphis, but an 11-loss bubble team at absolute worst. A team that can get points from a lot of guys, not just Anthony Morrow. A team that can defend at a major-college level, as opposed to the amateurish bunch that kept neglecting to guard anybody.
Too many times the Jackets have left us with the impression that they lack talent, but those were false clues. They have enough players to run with the most talented aggregations in the land. (Kansas and Carolina would make anyone’s top five of probable NCAA titlists, and Tech took both to the wire.) The wonder isn’t that a 16-loss team won its ACC tournament opener by 18 points Thursday night; the wonder is that a squad capable of such a powerful performance lost 16 times.
But that’s the cracked beauty of these postseason congregations. Everybody gets another chance. The sixth seed has won this ballyhooed event five times. (Tech did the deed itself on a snow-blown weekend in 1993 in this very city, beating Duke and Clemson and Carolina en route.) These Jackets entered as the seventh seed and had to win a tiebreaker with Florida State and Wake Forest to manage that, but here they are.
Here they are, not that you’d recognize them if you knew them only from those six losses before New Year’s or from that five-game losing streak of February. They’re different, bolder, better. To see them dissect Virginia — which had, as we know, won in Atlanta only last week — was to focus not on any inherent limitations but to glimpse instead the potential.
“Everyone has a clean slate now,” said Anthony Morrow, who scored 18 points but was, significantly, only one of five Jackets to break double figures. “And Georgia Tech has historically been a great tournament team.”
The Jackets led by two at halftime, having made 56.7 percent of their shots. Six minutes into the second half they trailed 56-51 and you wondered if that early offense was going to dissolve into late-game sludge. But the freshman Moe Miller made a huge trey, and Zack Peacock scored off a curl, and the next thing you knew Tech was ahead by six, and then by 10, and then it was over. Said Morrow: “Nobody was looking at the scoreboard [when the Jackets fell behind]. We just kept playing.”
When they play like this, they’re really good. That, see, is the catch: It has taken them four months to play like this. The 18-point victory was their third-biggest of the season, trailing only December thrashings of Centenary and Tennessee Tech. But if a team is ever going to find itself, the ACC tournament is as good a venue as any.
“This season has not been a fun ride,” Paul Hewitt said, “but we know we’re just a few bounces away from being a much better team.”
The next round of bounces comes tonight against the nation’s No. 7 team. Call me crazy, but I can see a team lugging 16 losses toppling a team coached by the best in the business. I can see Tech winning.
Permalink | Comments (62) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
Chipper more comfortable in leadership role
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Lake Buena Vista, Fla. — During the Braves’ run of goodness through much of the 1990s, Terry Pendleton emphatically was their leader. Then David Justice dominated the role until management lost its mind by trading his bat and his charisma.
Even so, Justice was gracious enough to appoint his successor, but the new guy really didn’t want the job.
Keep this quiet: Chipper Jones still isn’t enthralled with the job, but he has accepted it. In fact, he has excelled at it. You can tell as much by another spring at Disney’s Wide World of Sports featuring more than a few young eyes studying every move of this 35-year-old third baseman who keeps slugging his way toward Cooperstown.
According to Braves catcher Brian McCann, already a two-time All-Star at 24, he only listens to three people about hitting, and two of them are obvious: Howard McCann, because that’s his father who was a former baseball coach at Marshall University, and Pendleton, now the Braves’ hitting coach. The third is Jones, because he is a pied piper for McCann, Kelly Johnson, Josh Anderson and others among the Braves’ mighty kiddie corps.
Jones has responded appropriately to his idol worshipers. That is to say, he has tried to avoid anything that could harm their psyche. Then again, as the new Pendleton and Justice, he hasn’t a choice, which is why he rarely exhales these days. “You can’t ever let your hair down,” said Jones, with a slight sigh, while glancing toward the field from the dugout at Champion Stadium. “You can’t ever let up, because whatever you do or say, it’s constantly placed under a microscope by everybody. Not just by the media, but by the young guys. So it’s imperative that you dot your i’s and cross your t’s and make sure that you do everything spot-up.
“If you don’t, and if you slack up, or if you don’t do something right, those young guys will see it. I don’t want them to see me doing anything wrong.”
Whatever Jones is doing, he is doing it mostly right. Said manager Bobby Cox, in his 23rd season of seeing Braves leaders come and go, “Chipper is always watching, always focused. He’s like a lot of players, because he had to grow into [the leadership] role over time.” Added Jeff Francoeur, who has spent his two seasons with the Braves as a frequent visitor to Jones’ portion of the clubhouse, “He’s not going to be very vocal, but he is going to lead by how he plays. We need him healthy. He’s a guy who can wake up and hit .330 out of bed.”
He actually did seven points better than that last year at .337. It’s just that he also spent a fourth consecutive season with a slew of aches and pains. His long stretches out of the lineup contributed to the Braves’ second straight third-place finish in the National League East after a record 14 consecutive division titles.
Not only that, Jones’ latest round of injuries generated some rare tension in a Cox clubhouse: You had the veteran Jones, the overall Braves leader, in a public battle with the veteran John Smoltz, the leader of the Braves pitchers. Then, after a quick meeting with Cox and Pendleton, you had peace again. “I would compare it to a spat between two teenaged brothers,” said Jones, with one of his crooked grins, saying he mistakenly thought Smoltz was blasting him through the media for not playing hurt. They golfed together this spring.
Added Jones, “Nothing’s changed between us. It’s just one of those things that happens when you live, eat, sleep and drink baseball for 15 or 20 years together.”
Just so you know, other “things” have happened in the Braves clubhouse besides Smoltz vs. Jones, but Jones said he has handled them more softly. “Man to man,” he said, nodding. “Calling a team meeting, embarrassing a guy in front of everybody, doing it in jest so the whole team laughs at him. That’s not how you do it. That’s how you lose respect. You pull him aside, and you look at him eye to eye, then he knows this guy means business.”
Especially when this guy is Jones, who learned from Pendleton and Justice, two other guys who meant business.
Permalink | Comments (45) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Not willing to pay for patience
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Last week this space posed the question: What if the Atlanta Spirit fires everybody? This week, in light of Bruce Levenson’s surprisingly vigorous defense of Don Waddell, we ponder the flip side.
What if the Spirit fires nobody?
What if Billy Knight, who has taken the wrong man with his first pick in four of the five drafts he has conducted for the Hawks, is allowed to continue as general manager? (Going 1-for-5 - the “1” being Al Horford - leaves Knight with a batting average of .200, which plops him squarely atop the Mendoza Line.)
What if Mike Woodson, whose career winning percentage is .306, gets an extension after what will surely be a fourth consecutive losing season? (Even Dan Henning, who could talk his way out of a Turkish prison, got fired after four losing Falcons seasons.)
What if Waddell, who has been in place nearly a decade and has succeeded in building the 28th-best team in a 30-team league, is allowed to continue at this plodding pace? (What with global warming, there mightn’t be any ice left by the time Waddell gets this franchise to the Stanley Cup finals.)
The Thrashers have lost 10 of 11 games and have fallen from playoff contention. The Hawks slipped from eighth in the NBA East to ninth Wednesday and have no more doubleheaders scheduled against the wretched Heat.
Even with those two wins in one night, the Hawks have lost 14 of 19 and are 5-10 with Mike Bibby. The Hawks haven’t reached the postseason since 1999. The Thrashers haven’t won a playoff game ever.
I get paid to go to games, so maybe I’m not the best judge. But I keep asking myself: If I had to shell out real money to watch these teams flail, would I want to hear some voice advocating patience?
Would I continue to subsidize this apparent absence of accountability, or would I find another outlet for my disposable income?
Permalink | Comments (98) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Quick Hit
Felton deserves more time to fix inherited mess
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
In the 13 years that have passed since Hugh Durham was nudged out the door, Georgia’s basketball program can be accused of being a lot of things. Mundane is not one of them.
Tubby Smith stayed for two seasons, then left for something better. Ron Jirsa stayed for two seasons, then left when they changed the locks. Jim Harrick stayed for four seasons, then was paged back to the netherworld.
Dennis Felton didn’t merely enter a bad situation when he was hired in 2003. He was handed a plot of land in Kabul and asked to turn it into a competitive resort property as soon as humanly possible.
Sorry. I realize this may not jibe with the win-now mentality that has smothered major college athletics. But when a coach largely spends his first three seasons trying to scrub out the grease spot left by his predecessor, five years isn’t enough to build Pompeii.
Or even a Holiday Inn.
Dennis Felton deserves another year.
Whether Dennis Felton gets another year is another matter.
“I find it bizarre that the question is even being asked,” Felton said when asked about his tenuous job security. “It’s like, ‘What do I say?’ “
He tried to stay calm. Staying calm can be difficult when you take a team from eight wins in year two to 15 in year three to 19 in year four (despite losing arguably their best player, Mike Mercer, for the last 10 games).
It’s hard to stay calm when season five implodes and suddenly you’re viewed as flotsam.
“If I were to be fired, I can tell you one thing for sure: It’s not because we’re not doing things the right way,” Felton said. “It’s not because our players don’t represent our university with class and dignity. It’s not because we’re not getting it done in the class. I mean, we’re getting it done on levels academically that Georgia basketball probably hasn’t seen since the ’60s.”
Georgia’s tip-off in the SEC tournament is 9:45 p.m. So with a loss, Felton’s tenure could end around midnight. It’s another year without an NCAA tournament berth. Such bottom lines upset the torch-bearing villagers in Athens, who otherwise have nothing to obsess about until spring football.
Publicly, Georgia athletics director Damon Evans says that his mind isn’t made up. You wonder. Circumstances notwithstanding, Evans sees that wins are down and fan apathy is up. He sees what Tennessee has done with its hoops program. He sees a sparkling new $30 million practice facility connected to Stegeman Coliseum, and maybe wants a payoff.
The fact that Felton is a good coach and an even better man doesn’t preclude the possibility that he may get squashed. It’s the reality of sports.
“I’m going to give you my standard response: I’m going to evaluate everything when the season is over,” Evans said Wednesday by phone.
His criteria?
“I would rather not get specific. All I can say is there’s a lot that goes into managing a major basketball program at the University of Georgia. There are a lot of factors other than just wins and losses. There are a lot of things that have a direct impact on your success on and off the court. Believe me when I say that I am looking at everything in totality.”
More the reason to give Felton another year.
He had a track record for success at Western Kentucky. He inherited a mess and probation at Georgia. He turned things around and likely had the Dogs headed for the NCAA tournament last year until Mercer’s knee injury.
This should have been a very good season. But it was like somebody stuck a pin in an Uga voodoo doll. Mercer and Takais Brown were among three players suspended for not attending tutoring sessions (eventually they were kicked off the team). Billy Humphrey missed three games for underage consumption of alcohol. Two freshmen, Chris Barnes and Jeremy Jacob, were injured. Boom goes the season. Georgia enters tonight having lost 11 of its past 13.
Now, so many want to pull the chute. Why? Felton’s last recruiting class was strong. He has shown he can coach. He deserves a chance to work with next year’s roster, amid somewhat normal circumstances.
It doesn’t mean he’s going to get it.
Permalink | Comments (115) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, UGA / SEC
Hansbrough honors go overboard
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
OK. This settles it. NCAA honcho Myles Brand, the president of the United States, the czar of the solar system and everybody else with a little juice should force all universities to adopt the Georgia Tech rule when it comes to the retirement of an athlete’s number.
Tech’s rule? Graduate first, and then we’ll consider giving you a call.
Are you listening, North Carolina officials? I’m just trying to keep you from embarrassing yourselves again. I mean, did you really say you’re retiring Tyler Hansbrough’s number?
That’s awful for several reasons. We needn’t go beyond this: Hansbrough hasn’t finished his junior season. In fact, the Tar Heels haven’t finished their regular season, period.
They have the ACC Tournament this weekend and the start of March Madness after that. Even so, university officials already have announced the hanging of Hansbrough’s jersey with their basketball elite of Jordan, Worthy and Ford.
Guess they’ll name the floor of the Dean Dome after Hansbrough, too. Anything is possible with these suddenly knee-jerk leaders of Carolina Blue.
No question, Hansbrough deserves to have his North Carolina number retired someday. He just became a rare unanimous choice for ACC Player of the Year. Under North Carolina guidelines, the winner of a national player of the year award —which is what Hansbrough did — automatically gets your number retired. Hansbrough also captured a third straight game against Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium, home of the Tar Heels’ dreaded rivals.
It’s just that Tech has it right: No retirement of an athlete’s number with the Jackets until he or she holds a diploma instead of a ball or something.
And no exceptions.
Not for Kenny Anderson, Stephon Marbury, Dennis Scott.
Nobody.
Too bad Tech has higher standards than many of its colleagues, especially those in Chapel Hill.
Permalink | Comments (127) | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
Holyfield should role-model at home
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
It was the irony that struck me. I’d just been reading Jeff Schultz’s review of Evander Holyfield’s book, “Becoming Holyfield: A Fighter’s Journey,” and paused at this excerpt:
“Gruenfeld does a nice job of getting Holyfield to open up on several topics, including the influence of his late mother, Annie; being born out of wedlock; repeating the same mistake of having several children out of wedlock; encountering racism as a youth; meeting after several years with his estranged father, Isom Coley; missteps in his business life; and failed marriages to his first two wives, Paulette and Janice.” (Gruenfeld is Lee Gruenfeld, Holyfield’s authoring caddie.)
Later, Jeff quotes Holyfield as saying, “That’s it. That’s me.” Thus, the boxing champion’s stamp of approval.
Then the morning mail was delivered and there on top was a new book entitled, “The Encyclopedia of Sports Parenting.” Now you see the irony of it. “Sports Parenting” is a study in advice to parents who come to deal with athletic offspring, over 400 pages of it. It is commended by such people as Sen. George Mitchell, more in the news as a steroids bird dog lately than as a legislator. But in no way does it refer, or even hint, of such athletes as Holyfield and those who create children out of wedlock.
Athletes are headliners as such mainly because of their fame, not realizing nor caring about the influence their errant examples set for those coming behind them.
There is one section in “Sports Parenting” that takes a pass at the fallen star:
“Unprepared for the epilogue of sport, and with no market skills of any sort,
“He plummeted hard in sad free fall, seeking condolence from alcohol,
“He fathered a son, he did not marry, the weight of paternity too heavy to carry. …”
Only a mild reprimand, but to have any effect on an athlete so unprincipled as to cause nine illegitimate children to be delivered into this world? Hardly so. It isn’t a sin limited to the athletic world, but it draws headlines there because they are headliners. One professional basketball player has had six children by six different women. A running back the Falcons might have drafted, won’t be. He is alleged to be the father of one child born out of wedlock and said he is the father of two others. Then there is the widely publicized story of Tom Brady, the New England quarterback, who ditched his girlfriend, leaving her pregnant. Holyfield and his nine, though, surely must lead the world of sports.
Dan Doyle probably had no intent of having his book tied in with the unsavory lot in headline sports. The author is connected with the University of Rhode Island, and his work is supported by an all-star lineup of athletic people of ethics, including John Wooden, Richard Lapchick, Mike Cleary, head of college athletics directors, Mark Murphy, former Washington Redskins star, now AD at Northwestern, and, of course, Senator Mitchell. He does not blindly take the puritanical position that all sports are beautiful and clean. He does just the opposite and offers his recipe to avoid pitfalls, dealing with that ubiquitous object, the role model.
Role-modeling should be something that begins at home, not left to some glorified gladiator seen streaking across a 34-inch screen. Careful who you set forth as an example for your child, on the field and off. He may wind up the subject of a book that strips him down to his real self. One seeing himself in tell-all print, and saying, “That’s it. That’s me.”
Permalink | Comments (17) | Categories: Furman Bisher
Mets, Braves pick Glavine’s brain
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Lake Buena Vista, Fla. — Tom Glavine verified Tuesday what we suspected. As soon as he joined the New York Mets five years ago, he became the most popular new resident in the history of Flushing.
Everybody rushed to pick Glavine’s considerable brain. The owner. The general manager. The players. The clubhouse personnel. Anybody who thought the future Hall of Famer could deliver secrets involving The Great Braves Empire that he just departed and helped create. So what is Bobby Cox really like, and how can our manager clone some of his splendid ways?
Does Andruw Jones have a red cape under his jersey in center field, or does that just apply to John Smoltz during the majority of times he takes the pitcher’s mound?
Surely the catalyst for the Braves along the way to their slew of division titles are those choppers and chanters.
If not that, then what?
“I probably told them a lot, but it wasn’t as much as me telling as much as it was them asking,” said Glavine before pitching in a spring game against the Washington Nationals at Champion Stadium, where he prepared for his 17th season with the Braves after five years in New York. “You come from an organization like this that had the success that it had, and me as a player having the success that I had, [the Mets] bring you in for a reason.
“A large part of it is what you do and what you can provide on the field, and the other part is what you bring outside of that. ‘Hey, what do the Braves know about this, or how do the Braves go about that, and what does Bobby [Cox] like to do in this situation?’ That kind of stuff.”
It’s the kind of stuff Glavine will provide sooner rather than later when he briefs the Braves about the Mets. “Oh, we’ll talk to him, and we haven’t talked to him about that yet, but we will, because you have to,” said Cox, while puffing on his cigar in the home dugout. “You’d be making a big mistake if you didn’t.”
In case you’re wondering, Steve Garvey was sort of in this situation after going from powerful Dodger Blue of yore to the upstart Padres. Then you had those rare traitors such as David Wells, Johnny Damon, David Cone and others. They had the audacity to switch from the Yankees to the Red Sox, or the other way around.
This Glavine thing is nearly unprecedented.
Well, it is unprecedented. “I know I can’t think of another situation quite like it,” said Pete Van Wieren, the Braves’ eternal broadcaster and noted baseball historian, who thought before he shook his head and thought some more. Added Cox, still puffing, “I mean, remember when Jackie Robinson was traded from the Dodgers to the [dreaded] Giants? He refused to go and just retired. Never thought about Glavine, but, yeah, this is unusual.”
This is highly unusual, not only in baseball, but in any sport: You’ve got two fierce rivals. More specifically, you’ve got the Mets and the Braves, both spending much of the 21st century ranking as the dominant teams in the National League East. Not only that, you’ve got Glavine as a prominent player going from one of those rivals to the other, then back again with considerable knowledge of both.
But here’s the deal: It’s one thing to share the knowledge. It’s another for those who hear it to find ways to use it.
“From the Mets’ perspective, for instance, you can dissect what the Braves do all you want, but it’s difficult when you try to put that puzzle together,” said Glavine, who wanted to make something clear: He isn’t snitching. “In New York, it wasn’t like I was giving inside secrets that happened in the clubhouse or things that Bobby did that only players knew. It was fairly common knowledge, but sometimes there are questions that can be answered in terms of the intricacies of how the plans were put into place. It’s not like you’re giving away top-secret information.”
Obviously not, because the Mets never reached the World Series during Glavine’s tenure. The Braves have done so five times with Glavine — and counting.
Permalink | Comments (59) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Keeping Waddell makes no sense
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
At the end of this Thrashers season, Don Waddell likely will be subjected to some sort of performance review.
We can’t know if owners will conduct separate reviews for each of Waddell’s jobs: executive vice president, general manager, temp coach. But given that he hasn’t helped create a significant hockey market in Atlanta, nor has excelled in player development, nor will coach his handpicked players to the playoffs this season, one failing grade should cover all three areas.
Most amazing is that we actually have to ask the question: Will he be back?
Logic says no. But logic seldom carries the vote in this organization. Logic shows up only on grainy black-and-white photographs, sort of like Sasquatch.
Last month, Waddell and owners shot down a report that he had been given a three-year extension. Yet, in a recent spin-mail to Thrashers fans following the Marian Hossa trade, owners spread sunshine about the team’s future, gave no hint of replacing Waddell as GM and punctuated the letter with: “Our summer agenda will also include solidifying a head coach who will take us to the next level.”
Now, I don’t know if Waddell has done much prepping for his review. But he didn’t act the part Monday. When asked how he would respond if owners asked him to justify being brought back, he said: “I don’t think I need to justify anything to them. They’re smart people.”
Sorry. Those thoughts don’t intersect.
Only eight NHL general managers have held their position since the 1999-2000 season. Only Waddell hasn’t won a playoff game. Three of the other seven have won Stanley Cups (New Jersey’s Lou Lamoriello, Detroit’s Ken Holland, Carolina’s Jim Rutherford). Another has reached the Cup finals (Buffalo’s Darcy Regier). Another is bidding for his fourth straight playoff season (Nashville’s David Poile).
Nashville and Minnesota, two other recent expansion teams, have had more success and stability than Atlanta. Columbus, the other recent newbie, floundered. So it fired GM Doug MacLean. Go figure.
When asked why he didn’t feel he needed to justify his job to owners, Waddell said: “They know our situation here.”
Which is?
“You’ve seen it.”
Tell me.
“There’s lots of things. We didn’t have the start we wanted to have.”
And?
“That’s it. There’s lots of things. But I’m not going to sit here and talk about that with you. What I talk to them about, I’m not going to share with you.”
But beyond the 0-6 start, what else …
“There’s lots of things. But nothing I can share with you.”
Michael Gearon, the most grounded of the Atlanta Spirit owners, did not return phone messages Monday.
Just as well. It’s better that Gearon rest now before asking Waddell why an organization that has drafted near the top for so many years recently had its group of prospects ranked 23rd by a Web site, HockeysFuture.com.
Better that he rest now before asking Waddell why Hossa, despite loving Atlanta, didn’t feel good about the team’s future and wouldn’t re-sign.
Better that he rest now before asking Waddell what’s to stop Ilya Kovalchuk from leaving as a free agent in two years.
Waddell always has been an optimist. But there’s a line between optimism and believing in the Easter Bunny. When asked Monday about how he viewed his sliding team’s reaction to the trade deadline, he said, “Well, we’ve gotten points in five out of six games.”
It sounds better than saying, “We’ve won one out of six games.”
This team, which Waddell believed was train-wrecked by Bob Hartley and superior to last year’s, has won only 7 of 22 games since mid-January and 19 of 49 since mid-November.
Justify that.
As coach, he has lapsed into expansion clichés. He actually said, “We’re still a young franchise,” the other day. Players are “working hard.” Also, and let me make sure I get this right: “We’re taking it one game at a time.”
A little math. The Thrashers have 68 points with 12 games left. They would need to go 12-0 to finish with 92 and pass first-place Carolina if the Hurricanes merely go 6-5 and finish with 91. It’s so over. But is he so over?
“Nothing’s ever been said to expect anything different,” he said.
Still waiting for justification.
Permalink | Comments (95) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
Busch just wanted to win
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Earlier during the Kobalt Tools 500 on Sunday at the Atlanta Motor Speedway, it was the guy who everybody wants as the premier driver in NASCAR against the guy who actually is the premier driver.
No question, Kyle Busch isn’t the people’s choice. For one, his name isn’t Dale Earnhardt Jr. For another, Busch is occasionally raspy at 22, but he isn’t the angry young man anymore. He even is considered warm and cuddly these days by Tony Stewart, his old antagonist and current teammate with Joe Gibbs Racing.
That said, Busch couldn’t care less that the majority of those in the stands at AMS emphatically made the transfer from red to green in honor of Earnhardt’s switch in car colors after he went from Dale Earnhardt Inc., to Hendrick Motorsports.
Busch just wanted to win. He wanted to do so badly, and he did so easily along the way to his first Cup victory at AMS with his typically free-wheeling style.
“Everybody always says I’ve been an aggressive driver, but I’m just doing my deal,” said Busch, who was so intense during the race that his hands remained sore afterward from griping the steering wheel so tightly. “They said I used to cause wrecks, and that I used to be out of control. I don’t feel like I’m driving any different than I used to. [They say] I’ve sort of changed my style per se, and now it looks like I’m professional at it or something. It all seems to be working to my advantage right now,”
Consider this: Busch leads his NASCAR peers in the standings of the Sprint Cup and Craftman Truck series.
If not for a mechanical failure Saturday night, Busch would have topped the Nationwide Series, too. “He’s amazing to me,” said Stewart, of Busch, the youngest winner ever at AMS. “It’s fun to watch him. I mean, the nights he runs the truck races, and we’re sitting on the bus, I normally don’t pay attention. But it’s fun to watch him drive, whether it’s a truck or a Nationwide car or a Cup car. He will drive it far beyond what it’s capable of doing.
“There’s no doubt that at the end of a day, he’s getting everything that car’s capable of, and that’s what you want out of a guy. Stuff like driving the thing on the apron during Turn 2 in the truck race the other day. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody do that here. Not on purpose, at least.”
Some folks do things on purpose that aren’t necessarily good, but you know what the say: Cheaters don’t win, at least not always, and that even applies to the traditionally shady world of NASCAR drivers, mechanics and the rest.
Then again, cheaters nearly won when Carl Edwards kept the lid on his oil tank this time (ahem) while sitting 50 laps shy of zipping to his third consecutive victory in the Sprint Cup Series. Edwards and his folks at Roush Fenway Racing say their little mishap last week involving that lid in Las Vegas was the result of a bolt on the oil tank that worked itself loose from the car’s vibration.
NASCAR officials and common sense say otherwise.
Whatever the case, Edwards literally was smoking around the track near the start of the stretch drive as the leader. Soon afterward, he was smoking into his garage to give Busch a victory that he likely would have grabbed anyway. His Toyota made its competition resemble of bunch of horses and buggies during his cruise to the finish line after Edwards’ departure.
The man is proficient inside anything with a gas pedal nearby and a checkered flag in the distance. Not only that, Busch’s reputation when it comes to following the rules is as solid as Edwards’ is suddenly shaky. Plus, while Earnhardt and others kept whining about the quality, or lack thereof, of the Goodyear tires (“Even if I got them for free, I wouldn’t keep them,” said Tony Stewart, who finished a grumpy second), Busch kept driving fast.
And get this: Busch was part of the Hendrick team before he was dropped before this season for the people’s choice.
The one that finished a grumpy third.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Categories: Auto Racing, Terence Moore
As fate would have it, Hawks win
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Seeking to make lemonade from a truly rotten lemon, the Hawks asked fans to come “be part of NBA history.” They even commissioned Al Horford to do a video spot, which wound up being splashed across the Internet to unintentionally hilarious effect: “An historic day for the NBA,” said Horford, straight-faced, and then he revealed that the first 3,000 patrons would receive a free A-Town Dancers swimsuit calendar.
If not quite historic, Saturday night was weird beyond measure. The Hawks and Heat played twice at Philips Arena, the first “game” lasting 51.9 seconds and “starting” with the Hawks leading 114-111. That would, as fate and perhaps history would have it, be the final final score. The Hawks posted their 25th victory of the season without actually scoring a point during the “game” in question. Got that?
As Miami coach Pat Riley said, nearly two hours before the fateful 51.9 seconds: “I’m a little confused today.”
For the restart of a game that had begun 80 days earlier, the NBA printed up a three-page “fact sheet.” It included this pity paragraph: “Players who will be inactive for the resumption of the Dec. 19 game, yet who will be designated as active for the regularly scheduled March 8 game, may be in uniform and are to sit in the second row behind the team benches.”
Riley again: “I’ve read the rules, and I believe the NBA made them all up.”
If not for Riley, this would have been just a single who-cares game between two teams of varying lousiness. But his what-the-heck protest of the Dec. 19 game was somehow upheld by the NBA. Much has happened to the Heat since then, none of it good, and the only thing worse than having to play on a Saturday night in March while holding the league’s worst record is to have to play twice.
Over in the Hawks’ locker room, Josh Childress was asked what play he expected Miami — having had 80 days to draw up an inbounds set — to run. “They seem to think that, because it’s Riley, he’ll go for the 3 immediately. But you don’t know. They might have a trick play like Boise State, some 4-point play we’ve never seen.”
The fateful 51.9 commenced with two players who were based in the Western Conference on the night of Dec. 19 taking the floor — Mike Bibby and Shawn Marion, who had scored 23 points on Dec. 19 for Phoenix and had since been traded for Shaquille O’Neal. (That O’Neal, whose erroneous disqualification was the crux of the sustained protest and the league’s $50,000 fine against the Hawks, wasn’t even in the building made the whole thing seem even sillier.)
The Heat inbounded to Dwyane Wade. He dribbled up, dribbled around, almost tried a trey but passed instead. Mark Blount shot and missed. (Boise State can breathe easy.) The Hawks rebounded. Joe Johnson drove and missed. The Heat rebounded. Bibby knocked the ball out of bounds with 8.5 of the 51.9 seconds remaining. Wade shot to tie from the deep left corner. He missed. Eighty days after it began, the game was over.
The Hawks celebrated a bit disproportionately. Mike Woodson pumped his first. Horford, who hadn’t been a part of the mini-game — matchups, you understand — raised his arms on high. Pyrotechnics flashed above the floor. Then the teams, having toiled feverishly for 51.9 seconds, took a 15-minute break.
“A heck of a rush,” Woodson would say later. “From a coaching standpoint, it was a heck of rush.”
And then the Hawks went out and did it again, sort of.
Game 2 came down — wouldn’t you know it? — to the Hawks leading by three and the Heat with the ball, and this time Daequan Cook missed from 35 feet.
Said Josh Smith: “It seemed kind of awkward. We’d kind of already played the [first] game … Winning the second game felt better. It was more a full game.”
In sum, the Hawks played 48 minutes and 51.9 seconds Saturday against the league’s worst club, and they outscored the Heat by three points and exited with two victories. Awkward or not, it was a profitable night. Maybe even an historic one.
Permalink | Comments (32) | Categories: Hawks / NBA, Mark Bradley
Brad Daugherty, a 7-foot-tall NASCAR fanatic
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Just guessing, but the most conspicuous person at the Atlanta Motor Speedway on Sunday for the Kobalt Tools 500 will be an African-American. He will be nearly taller than the scoring tower. He will be the guy whose drawl sounds like somebody from Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s household. He will be the one who could tell you every aspect of the Car of Tomorrow for hours, days or weeks without you asking.
Brad Daugherty really is into this racing stuff, and, yes, we’re talking about that Brad Daugherty.
Remember the former All-America basketball player for the University of North Carolina who later used his considerable skills at 7 feet to make a slew of All-Star teams in the NBA? He’s more than just a NASCAR analyst for ESPN these days. He’s a loyal racing fan who was so into the sport while growing up in Black Mountain, N.C., that he later wore No. 43 during his nine years with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
That was the number of Richard Petty, Daugherty’s hero.
This isn’t necessarily an indication that NASCAR is closer to its stated goal of more diversity. This is just an entry for Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. In fact, a lot of folks probably look at Daugherty as if he’s a little goofy or something.
“Oh, man. I’ll tell ya. Yeah,” said Daugherty, 41, who couldn’t care less how others view his passion. He spoke over the phone from his home in Asheville, N.C., adding, “My dad was a race fan, and I used to go to the track with him back in the mid-1970s, and it really wasn’t cool back then [for African-Americans]. But my dad was a big dude, man. He was about 6-foot-6, 300 pounds, and he was an ex-Marine. He was a good-natured guy, but nobody bothered him, and he loved racing.”
So did the son, along with the son’s childhood friends. They included Robert Pressley, whose father, Bob, was a legendary short-track racer around North Carolina. The younger Pressley had chores to do involving his father’s race car after school, and before long, Pressley’s buddy, Brad, began helping, too.
Then others followed. “These were the guys I played basketball with and also just knocked around with, and we built some race cars together,” Daugherty said. “We had a little short track here in Asheville, and we would go out on Fridays to try to see if we could get into the race, and it kept a lot of us out of trouble. I was the only African-American kid there, but I never really thought about it.”
Obviously not, because Daugherty kept living his passion. He loved basketball, but he really loved racing.
There were those late-model stock cars that Daugherty built with his friends during the mid-1980s. They loaded the cars on an old truck for trips around the Southeast, and they became proficient enough to win 38 races one summer. Even when he joined the NBA, he reached into his pocket to have a Busch car built for Pressley. Not only that, Daugherty was the crew chief, the spotter and often the mechanic for the operation. “I was the first rookie owner, and certainly the first African-American owner, to win with a rookie driver in the Busch series,” said Daugherty, who eventually moved into the Craftsman Truck Series.
With the likes of Kenny Irwin Jr. and Kevin Harvick, Daugherty’s team won two Truck Series races.
“So it tickles me. I’ve been going to these old raggedy tracks for 30 years, and I’ve done all kinds of things, and it amazes me, because people always say, ‘Gosh, man I can’t believe you’re at the race track,’ ” Daugherty said, laughing, before recalling that he also has been a member of NASCAR’s diversity council and rules committee.
Still, the looks. The giggles.
The disbelief.
“I find it funny that a lot of [media] people really have a problem with me being around the track,” Daugherty said. “They think it’s just some kind of political move, but I’m not there for that. I’m a huge racer. I’m a racer at heart, and I love what I’m doing.”
Since this was Daugherty, that ending sounded like something “The King” would say. Or maybe Petty would let his cowboy hat and shades do the talking.
Permalink | Comments (20) | Categories: Terence Moore
Hey, check out local sports-talk radio
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
I’ll say this right off. I’m a radio guy. Grew up on radio in my little hometown. An old Atwater Kent, with the round speaker on top. It was my constant companion, soon as I got my homework done. I thought I could listen and do homework at the same time, but my mama wasn’t buying any of that.
I saw in my imagination only scenes that radio could bring me. Some of my closest friends lived in that old Atwater Kent. Grady Cole, Lee Kirby, Clare Shadwell, Ted Husing, Eddie Dooley, though we never met, and on Saturday afternoon in the fall, that radio was mine. Football, even if it was Columbia playing Middlebury.
Not a lot has changed, except everything. First thing I do in the morning is turn on the radio, one of those little Bose things. No television for me. I don’t want to waste time distracted by people invading my privacy from a screen. I can listen and do things. Television, you have to watch.
There are two radio stations in town, both bragging about being the “most-listened-to sports station in the South,” or the station that “knows what guys want.” I do, too. I am one, but I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing.
They’re pretty good, most of the time. Sometimes they can’t stick to their games before veering off into women and booze, and women and sex, and just women. Not that I’m against either - I may be near 90, but I’m not dead - I don’t tune in for sports to get the leering voices of guys jabbering about women. Stick to the games, or you lose me.
One is 680 The Fan, the other 790 The Zone. They jab at one another now and then, rather subtlely most of the time. In the morning hours I jockey back and forth between the two, all depending on which is sticking to business.
A guy named Christopher Rude rules on one station, a show they call “The Rude Awakening.” Clever, wot? It, however, is not an original. The real “Rude Wakening” is brought to you by the garrulous Neal Boortz, and he has been rude and awakening for years on WSB.
Steak Shapiro - he must have a birth name, but I don’t know it - runs the other morning show, whatever they call it, on 790. Tell you the truth, I kind of like The Fan’s morning style a little better - especially since The Fan came at you the other day with a full course of the infamous Pacman Jones, at the same time The Zone was on Vince Dooley’s patio - under glass, of course - having breakfast with Mark Richt.
Newspaper types don’t get this sort of socializing. You see, we sit down, take out a notebook and start asking questions, it’s about as exciting as a haircut. Besides, Dooley or Richt, or whoever you may be talking to, isn’t sure how that’s going to come out until the paper hits the door the next day.
On radio, it’s live and on record. No misquotes. No misremembered moments, to invade the Roger Clemens vocabulary. And, frankly, it is sort of exciting. Makes you jealous.
Some of the locals visited the Braves in spring training and interviewed Jeff Francoeur, Tom Glavine and some others - no Smoltz, he’s in hibernation - and they just jabbered away, spewing out their secrets like schoolboys. Take out your notebook and pen, even your tape recorder, they start measuring their words like candidates.
Makes you envious. Could be one reason so many newspaper guys are bailing out for ESPN and the mike and the camera.
In the afternoon, well, I’m sort of partial to the two guys on The Fan. I like their style, and that they stick pretty much to business and steer away from skirts. Oh, they speak of their wives and kids now and then, but mainly, Buck Belue and John Kincade play the course.
Belue, every Bulldog knows, out of Valdosta, quarterback of the team that won the national championship in 1980. A gentle fellow with heart. No rable-rousing for Buck.
Kincade is a Philadelphian, and has trouble getting over it. Opinionated. Territorial. Good radio, has a weekend show on ESPN. It’s the combination, the contrast that comes across with them. They stick more to the news of the moment than sticking pins in stuffed shirts, though Kincade, infected by hockey, does get off rather heavily on the guys who own the Thrashers and the Hawks. And why not? Has there ever been a more mucked-up sports ownership since Naismith hung up the first peach basket?
That’s about it. Just wanted to let you know there’s something out there in the radio world. Turn it on.
Permalink | Comments (95) | Categories: Furman Bisher
Wheeler eager for shot at Norcross
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
“We have a saying,” said Wheeler coach Doug Lipscomb. ” ‘Be pleased but not satisfied.’ “
At 7:10 p.m. Thursday, Lipscomb sounded like a man who was neither. His raised voice could be heard through the steel door of his team’s dressing room, shouting something about “basketball IQ” and the presumed lack thereof. Speaking of the game just won against smallish Hiram, he told his players, “That’s not going to be good enough against Norcross.”
And then, thinking fast, he added: “Or Savannah.”
Pretty much everybody (excepting the folks from Hiram and Savannah) wanted to see Norcross play Wheeler for the Class AAAAA boys’ state championship. Between them they’ve won five of the past six titles and can claim a current rankings edge: Wheeler is rated No. 1 to Norcross’ No. 2 in Georgia, but Norcross is No. 6 nationally to Wheeler’s No. 15 according to USA Today.
“It really doesn’t matter who we play,” said Wheeler forward Richard Howell, speaking before Norcross faced Savannah in the late game. But then, with a nod toward Norcross: “I really don’t like them.”
The Wildcats, see, fell to Norcross 64-63 at the latter’s gym in the first round of the 2007 state tournament. Wheeler folks came away thinking they’d been fed a home-cooked rodent, believing J.J. Hickson, now of North Carolina State, was hacked on a putback — nothing was called — at the frantic game’s end. The schools haven’t met since. They will tonight.
“They’re a very talented team,” Lipscomb said. And yes, he planned to hang around the Arena at Gwinnett Center to catch the Norcross-Savannah game. “You know I’m not going to let you put down that Lipscomb would leave without watching the team we’re about to play. Give me a little credit.”
Give him more than a little. Lipscomb has won four state titles in his 15 seasons at Wheeler, coaching the exalted likes of Shareef Abdur-Rahim, D.A. Layne, Jermareo Davidson and Hickson. Until Norcross came along — first with Gani Lawal, lately of Georgia Tech, and the current All-American Al-Farouq Aminu, soon to be of Wake Forest — the Wildcats essentially had Class AAAAA to themselves.
Now they’ve gone two whole seasons without a title, a notion that sorely rankles the Marietta school. Indeed, you only had to note the T-shirts Wheeler wore on its bench — issued before the state tournament commenced last month — to appreciate this program’s expectation of eminence. “Sweat on the floor,” read the inscription, “turns into gold in the trophy case.”
Not that there was anything particularly golden about the 68-54 dismissal of Hiram. Wheeler opened as if distracted — “We’ve got a bad habit of starting off kind of slow,” said Dequan Jones, who has signed with Miami — and trailed 19-12 after the first quarter and 24-16 two minutes into the second. (The 5-foot-8 Arsenio Nuckles, who made three early treys, was wreaking all sorts of miniature havoc.) Then the Wildcats got interested, and by halftime they led by 11.
“That second quarter wasn’t bad,” Lipscomb said, and the 21-2 push that closed the half showcased Wheeler at its towering best. Its tall and swift frontcourt — Howell, Jones and Ari Stewart, the smallest of whom is listed at 6-6 — took control of the backboards and the floorboards and the whole shebang.
“We kept our composure,” said Howell, a junior who scored 22 points. “But we can’t get down against good teams.”
Norcross, which has won the past two Class AAAAA titles, is better than good. (And Norcross, it should be said, handled Savannah far more easily than Wheeler handled Hiram.) The two giants, who have been circling each another for more than a year, will meet tonight, and one of them will go home pleased and satisfied.
Permalink | Comments (55) | Categories: High School, Mark Bradley
Heaven help the Spirit
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
And here we thought the Falcons had it rough, trying to hire a general manager and a coach at the same time. The Atlanta Spirit - not exactly the model of organizational efficiency - might be in the market for two of each.
Any lingering Thrashers playoff hopes were dashed by Wednesday’s loss to Carolina, leaving the Spirit with a hockey club that hasn’t had a coach since October and stands 28th in a 30-team league. Does ownership, such as it is, bring back GM Don Waddell, who has been in place for a decade and has one playoff appearance - and no postseason wins - to show for it?
Conveniently enough, the Hawks also lost Wednesday to fall a season-worst 11 games below .500. The post-Bibby buzz is beginning to yield to reality: The Hawks are 3-7 since the trade and haven’t risen above ninth place in the mostly wretched NBA East. Billy Knight has already tried to fire Mike Woodson - career record: 93-212 - only to be rebuffed by owners. So that leaves … what?
Knight and Woodson are under contract through June 30th. If the Hawks fail to make the playoffs - or even if they slip in and are summarily dismissed in Round 1 - does the Spirit retain the coach who has lost the backing of the man who hired him? Or does it dump the GM who didn’t draft Chris Paul (who, on cue, had 23 points and 18 assists against the Hawks on Wednesday)? Or does it fire everybody and start all over everywhere?
And if so, how would a four-headed search work? Would Bruce Levenson run the hockey part and Michael Gearon Jr. the basketball side? (Spirit president Bernie Mullin is no longer around to do anything, not that many people ever knew what it was Mullin did.)
Would Steve Belkin offer up candidates of his own? Would anyone listen if he did? Would a miffed Belkin drag everyone back into court? And would a coach and/or GM of even modest stature agree to work for a group known mostly for suing itself?
For all Arthur Blank’s resources, the Falcons needed more than a month (plus one handy Webcam) to land Thomas Dimitroff and Mike Smith. Now imagine if the maladroit Spirit embarks on the same tricky process times two. I am imagining, and I believe I can speak for the masses when I say …
Heaven help us all.
Permalink | Comments (111) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Quick Hit
Cremins leading the cheers for Hewitt
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
What you’re about to read isn’t within several fast breaks of normal in big-time athletics. I mean, you’ll never guess who ranks as the biggest supporter of the current Georgia Tech basketball coach.
It’s the previous Georgia Tech basketball coach. Some guy named Bobby Cremins, now the head man of hoops at the College of Charleston. Even so, Cremins often calls Paul Hewitt two, three or how many other times per week Cremins deems necessary to offer his considerable support.
“I’m back in the rat race here [at the College of Charleston], but Georgia Tech is still very important to me, and I watch every game I can,” said Cremins, whose 19 seasons coaching the Yellow Jackets to fame officially ended in 2000. Unofficially, he never left, with his son, Bobby Jr., attending every home game and with Cremins referring to the Jackets as “we” and “us” more often than not.
You can attribute much of Cremins’ ongoing love affair with Tech to his admiration of a young coach from Siena College whom he never met until he became Cremins’ successor. “Paul’s been very good to me,” Cremins said. “He hired one of my players, Willie Reese, as a coach. He kept my secretary for a long time. He’s very bright, and he’s a great coach, and he’s a great person. Paul brought us back, because we lost something near the end, and he brought us back fast — maybe too fast. He’s been great for us, and any way I can help him, I’ll do it in a second.”
No, this isn’t normal. The old guy often resents the new guy, or it’s the other way around. Instead, Cremins hugs Hewitt, and Hewitt squeezes back. “I appreciate Bobby’s support, and other than my dad, during the course of the season, I don’t think I hear from anybody more than Bobby,” said Hewitt, laughing, maybe to keep from crying. His Jackets enter Thursday’s game at Alexander Memorial Coliseum against Clemson with a 12-16 record overall and 5-9 in the ACC.
Just four years ago, Hewitt’s team was in the Final Two. It reached March Madness two of the next three seasons. Then came this year’s collapse that was spurred by the early departures of Javaris Crittenton and Thaddeus Young to the pros, a self-inflicted schedule of brutality and the transfer of the gifted Mouhammad Faye to SMU for academic reasons.
So Cremins keeps calling. “After a loss, he’ll say, ‘Hang in there. Just keep your head up. You guys will be fine. You lost two good ones [Crittenton and Young],’ ” Hewitt said. “He’s constantly reminding me of those things, and it helps. Bobby sat in that seat [as Tech coach], so he understands the challenges you go through.”
There is the challenge of recruiting good students who also can play a little for a school that mostly practices what it preaches when it comes to academics. There is the challenge of seeking to keep from getting bitten too badly while operating among the basketball monsters of the ACC. Finally, there is the challenge of having a fan base that expects the Jackets to do much of the biting in the conference and beyond, especially after Cremins created his own monster at Tech.
Those John Salley and Mark Price years gave way to Lethal Weapon 3, and then to Travis Best, Stephon Marbury, Matt Harpring and the rest. It ended for Cremins with the Jackets after three losing seasons in his last four years.
“I thought Stephon would stay two seasons [before going pro], but he stayed one, and it killed us,” Cremins said. “I don’t blame him for leaving. It’s never the kid’s fault for trying to better himself. But I’ve talked to Paul about being careful recruiting a great player and not having a plan for when he leaves. I lacked foresight. I was an idiot.”
That’s opposed to what Cremins calls Hewitt, which is a blessing. “Anybody who gets on Paul is crazy. I hope he stays at Georgia Tech for a long time,” Cremins said, before adding with enthusiasm, “I know he’ll bring us back.”
Permalink | Comments (43) | Categories: Tech / ACC, Terence Moore
Falcons had no choice but run with Turner
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
You never like to admit these things in sports. That said, sometimes, a local legend has to go, even around Atlanta.
Dale Murphy’s time was up. The same went for Jessie Tuggle, Hank Aaron, Spud Webb and Phil Niekro.
Plus, even though you can debate whether the Hawks ousted Dominique Wilkins too soon, he played less than three more seasons in the NBA at a mediocre level after he was shipped out of Atlanta in 1994.
Here’s my point: The Falcons needed to snatch Michael Turner out of free agency, mostly because they hadn’t a choice.
Actually, they did.
They could have ignored the obvious, which is that they had an incumbent running back last season with a willing heart but also with 33-year-old legs that kept saying, “No mas” more often than not.
Warrick Dunn is a splendid human being in so many ways, and he also is the owner of on-field credentials that sit just shy of Canton, but Dunn had to go. In fact, he already was going physically. So in comes Turner with his 26-year-old legs after four years as LaDainian Tomlinson’s backup at 5-foot-10 and 237 pounds.
It makes sense. New Falcons coach Mike Smith wants a power running game, especially since he was used to seeing one as the defensive coordinator with the Jacksonville Jaguars. Whereas the Jaguars have Fred Taylor and Maurice Jones-Drew, the Falcons now have Turner as Taylor and Jerious Norwood as Jones-Drew.
The Falcons don’t have Dunn as anything anymore.
It happens.
Permalink | Comments (156) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Quick Hit, Terence Moore
Falcons lost Favre to city night life
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Frankly, you could cover Brett Favre’s career as a Falcon on a postcard. In fact, maybe no more than a postage stamp. He came, was rarely seen, gone after one season, and Atlanta hasn’t been able to shake him out of its hairy memory to this day.
When he retired from the Packers on Tuesday, it was black-type front page stuff. Kings and queens have vacated thrones with less of a stir. And there in the background of his NFL biography loomed the ever-pathetic image of the heavy-handed, intolerant Falcons who in barroom myth ran off the mudcat from Mississippi, described by all the crooning broadcast voices as “one of the greatest, if not the greatest of all quarterbacks of all time.”
You should forgive them, for they are short of perspective that comes with vintage. In their grasp for ear-ringing superlatives, they forget, or are unaware, that there was an Otto Graham, a Johnny Unitas, a Bobby Layne, a Joe Montana, and more who could sing in that choir of the “greatest.” Make no bones about it, Favre had the same kind of stuff, and records that back him up. But throughout it all, the Falcons weren’t able to shake the image as the dullards who dumped him.
They have one substantial authority on the subject who backs them up — Favre himself.
This is the way it was: Here was a small-town guy from Kiln, Miss., present-day population 2,040 (it has sprawled since Brett was a kid), who had never “been to town” before. Atlanta was the new rage of the South. Temptations on every corner. Open bars. Booze on the hoof. He should have been in Green Bay, larger than Kiln, but his kind of town.
In a book under his byline, he takes the blame. “I drank Atlanta up,” he says. He later spent some time in a center that wrings out drunks.
He missed the sitting for the first team picture. Hung over, he was late. He wasn’t married yet, and Atlanta was already a magnet for southern beauties looking for a big time. Jerry Glanville was the Falcons’ coach, and he was looking for a quarterback to back up Chris Miller, who had a good career going. Ken Herock had drafted Favre out of Southern Miss, and Favre was the GM’s “boy.” Glanville soon had enough of Favre’s libertine life pattern and demanded that he be traded. Herock resisted.
The story is that Glanville asked that his offensive coach, June Jones (the same), be allowed to cast the deciding vote. Jones was with Glanville, and the deal was made. Favre went to Green Bay for the Packers’ first-round draft pick in 1992, and the Falcons drafted another player from Southern Miss, Tony Smith, a running back. He lasted a season.
Favre got the news sitting at his parents’ table in Kiln — usually he could be found at the Broke Stroke, the town social center — eating crawdads and drinking beer. His “career” in Atlanta amounted to five passes, two caught — by the other team — zero yards. The Packers saw what in this country playboy?
Ken Herock was borne out. Glanville could build a case for himself, but on the other hand, had he not been able to see the talent raging inside this Cajun from Kiln? Put the whip to him, send him on the field instead of clumping along with Billy Joe Tolliver as his backup? Truth is, Glanville didn’t like him, didn’t like his habits, didn’t like his addiction to the playboy life. Curse Glanville, if you choose, he who often rode onto the field aboard a motorcycle, but what he missed was “one of the greatest, if not the greatest quarterback of all time.”
Favre himself gives the Falcons a pass. And in passing, let it be said that his presence on the national scene has corrupted the preferred Cajun pronunciation of the name — it’s “Fov,” not “Farve.”
Permalink | Comments (48) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Furman Bisher
Dunn deserves better than Falcons
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
He came here through the front door of a rebuilding project. He leaves here through the back door for the same reason.
Welcome to the NFL circle of life. It makes no exception for the respected, the admired, or the sometimes brilliant. It makes no exception for Warrick Dunn. He was brought here believing he could help the Falcons win a Super Bowl, but six years later finds himself being escorted to the curb, still with two legs, 10 fingers and no rings.
“It’s not easy to release a player like him,” Falcons general manager Thomas Dimitroff said Monday.
In truth, it probably was pretty easy for Dimitroff. He had just signed Dunn’s replacement the day before. But you understood the sentiment.
Players like Dunn are considered missing ingredients for championships. They can play. They can lead. They can inspire. Heart isn’t something that shows up at combines or scouting reports. That saying about the size of the fight in the man being more important than the size of the man in the fight - it was written for Warrick Dunn.
“He’s amazing - one of the toughest players I’ve ever seen,” said Dan Reeves, the Falcons’ former coach who brought Dunn to Atlanta.
Some things, Dunn can’t control. His career timing has always been off. He left Tampa Bay in 2002, which turned out to be the season the Buccaneers won a Super Bowl. He missed the playoffs in four of his six seasons with the Falcons, who actually made the Super Bowl four years before he arrived.
We can’t know what happens from here, or if Dunn eventually retires beloved and title-less, like a modern day Ernie Banks. But if he was put on this earth only to rush for over 10,000 yards and help build homes for single mothers — well, there are worse legacies to leave.
The Falcons let Dunn go Monday. The current of the franchise says that was the right thing to. They have a new general manager, new coach and a new offense, which will play more to the power-running strengths of Michael Turner.
But bottom line: the man deserves a better career exit than this. Sports are littered with great athletes who never won championships. The NFL has its share: Barry Sanders, Dan Marino, Dick Butkus, et. al. But nobody of Dunn’s stature deserved to be subjected to the goofiness that was the Falcons the last few seasons.
He can still be what he wasn’t here: a piece of a championship team. Maybe he rejoins his former coach, Tony Dungy, in Indianapolis. Maybe he goes to Dallas, which is looking to get over the top. Maybe he goes anybody closer to a title than the Falcons are right now. He deserves it.
Dimitroff said the Falcons agreed to release Dunn immediately after his agent requested it Sunday night. Why?
“We thought it was the best thing for him,” Dimitroff said.
Dimitroff is new here but he can speak to Dunn’s potential value to some teams. Remember where the general manager came from. Remember how New England started its dynasty.
“We all have believed that if Warrick can get in the right system he can still produce,” Dimitroff said. “We had a number of people up in New England who were aged veterans and were looking to be involved with a top tier team. This situation may provide Warrick with an opportunity to land on one of those teams.”
In 2002, Dunn thought he had signed with one of those teams. The Falcons were flushing the remnants of a Super Bowl roster: Chris Chandler, Terence Mathis, Jamal Anderson (not long after Dunn’s signing). With Michael Vick, Dunn and a new aggressive owner in Arthur Blank, they looked to be the NFL’s rising star. But fame had a cameo role.
So he leaves again — still admired, still capable, still ringless.
“It would be nice if he got there, but there are so many players who’ve never won a championship,” said Reeves. “People in New York wondered about Michael Strahan and Armani Toomer, but they finally won it. I remember in Dallas when we picked up Jackie Smith, who had been with the Cardinals. We got to the Super Bowl and he cried like a baby.”
Here’s hoping Warrick Dunn gets a chance to cry.
Permalink | Comments (130) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz
Morrow has made his mark
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Anthony Morrow remembers the shot that would have evened the 2005 ACC championship game against Duke. Top of the key, 40 seconds left. He’d just made a 3-pointer a minute earlier, and the way Morrow rose and delivered this one made a guy sitting courtside say to himself, “Tie game.”
Morrow thought he’d made it, too. Alas, the ball, he recalled, “went a little long.” And Will Bynum climbed Shelden Williams’ back for an offensive rebound that set off a careening sequence that wound up with Morrow making a two-pointer from the lane that would leave Georgia Tech one point short with 25 seconds to go. Then Jarrett Jack was whistled for the infamous phantom foul on J.J. Redick, and the Jackets wound up losing 69-64.
Morrow was a freshman then, and from a big-picture standpoint you could say nothing about Tech basketball has been as good since that frazzled day in Washington. Those Jackets would be eliminated from the NCAA tournament by Louisville one week hence, and here it is 2008 and Tech hasn’t won a postseason game of any kind — NCAA, NIT or ACC — since 2005.
“There have been certain situations I don’t want to go into too deep,” Morrow said Saturday, speaking after Tech had won its first game in 3-1/2 weeks. (Presumably he meant the early departures of Thaddeus Young and Javaris Crittenton to the NBA.) “But guys like Jarrett Jack and Will Bynum [upperclassmen who led Tech to the 2004 NCAA championship game] set the standard really high.
“My sophomore year [the Jackets were 11-17] was kind of rough, but we got back to the NCAA last year. So I don’t think things have gone backward.”
Tech needs to sweep three games in the regular season’s final week just to reach .500. Morrow believes the Jackets can play their way into the Big Dance — “Definitely,” he said — but realistically they would have to win the ACC tournament to do it.
As deflating as the past three seasons might have been — Tech is 43-44 since Jack and Bynum and their accomplished group left — there has been one reason to smile. Morrow came here as a standstill shooter and will leave as something more. He should exit as one of the top 20 scorers in school history, and he’ll have gotten there on the strength of more than just a sweet stroke.
After his freshman season, Morrow recalls coach Paul Hewitt saying, “You’re just a catch-and-shoot guy.” And he was. But he isn’t now. He can score off the dribble, and he can even post up.
“Some guys might not have taken that the right way,” Morrow said, speaking of Hewitt’s apt critique, but this guy did. Hewitt and his assistants helped, but Morrow attributes most of his improvement to a time-honored concept. “It’s definitely hard work. It’s coming out to pickup games and telling yourself, ‘Today I’m going to work on posting up.’ It’s setting up the chairs and using the heavy ball to work on dribbling.”
Four years after he arrived — a bit in awe of Jack and Bynum and the rest, truth to tell — Morrow is Tech’s leading scorer and only consistent offensive option. He scored 22 points on only 12 shots in the Jackets’ overtime defeat of Wake Forest on Saturday, and if that modest victory was required to break a five-game losing streak … well, so be it.
“That’s just part of the game,” he said. “The ACC is one of the biggest conferences in the history of college basketball, and you’re going to have ups and downs. It’s all about who wants to do something about it at the end of games. That’s what makes it so much fun.”
Often we on the periphery get caught up in wins and losses and RPIs, and we lose sight of a basic underpinning: College basketball is fun. If Tech basketball isn’t what it was when Anthony Morrow enrolled, that doesn’t mean his four years have gone for naught. Indeed, he said, “This has been the best time of my life.”
Permalink | Comments (27) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
Lopez still has something to prove
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Lake Buena Vista, Fla. — One day after proving the parts can still move in harmony, even if the memory may require some updates, Javy Lopez was back in his new role of desperate rookie Saturday.
He dropped into a crouch down the right-field line, then quickly stood to throw to a teammate in shallow center. He visualized base stealers as he practiced throws from home to second. He stretched. He ran. He swung. He alternated drills with an obscurity, Corky Miller, who has spent most of his 10 pro seasons in the minors.
If you ever wondered what it looked like to see a former $22 million free agent go back to school, this was it.
“I can’t have the attitude that I’m just here to get ready for the season,” Lopez said. “I’m here to make the team. I have to prove that there’s some baseball left in me. Time is gold for me.”
It happens in sports. Skills fade but desire grows. The trick is knowing whether one compensates for the other.
Lopez is in camp as a non-roster player. It’s symbolic that his cubicle is at one end of the Braves’ clubhouse and a horseshoe of lockers representing the teams’ core is at the other: Teixeira-Kotsay-Francoeur-Hudson-McCann-Smoltz-Glavine-Jones.
He is not the 32-year-old, 43-homer, All-Star who fell into riches. He is a 37-year-old who went from the Braves to Baltimore to Boston to unwanted. His home-run totals the past four years: 23-15-8-0 (when he was out of baseball).
Lopez has a pretty good chance to win the job as catcher Brian McCann’s backup. He is lighter (218 pounds) and leaner than he has been in years, but showed he still has some power when he homered in his first spring at-bat against Los Angeles. It’s the defensive aspect of his game that he and the Braves are most concerned about, and there was evidence to support that concern Friday.
Lopez relayed an incorrect sign from coaches who had wanted him to throw to second on a steal attempt. He didn’t realize that he actually signaled to infielders that he wouldn’t throw to second but instead check the runner at third. So Lopez threw to second and nobody was there. A run scored. Another runner advanced.
Lopez’s explanation: “I know the sign we had here in the past. I thought it was still the same.”
The comment amused Cox — somewhat.
“We’ve changed things a few times in the last few years,” he said.
Lopez understands 2003 is not going to buy him any votes. His production in Baltimore never matched what he did that last season with the Braves. He had health issues. He wasn’t enamored with Orioles’ management — nor they of him. He fell so far that Baltimore drop-kicked him to Boston for the dreaded “player to be named later or cash considerations.”
It sounded better than: Just go.
Lopez spent a year out of baseball. He got in shape and started training with Braves coach Chino Cadahia, who gave frequent updates to general manager Frank Wren. Wren was pretty much sold by early December. One day, he dropped his kids off at Landmark Christian High School in Fairburn — and saw Lopez working out on one of the fields.
“It must’ve been 40 degrees,” Wren said.
He signed Lopez to a minor-league deal. Lopez’s salary if he makes the roster: about $750,000. There’s a wakeup call.
Said Chipper Jones: “Once you hit your mid-30s, especially playing that position, you mature real fast. Javy knows he’s not going to hit 40 home runs. He knows B-Mac [McCann] is the man now. He just wants to play.”
Lopez acknowledges he’s not the same guy.
“Let’s put it this way: My work ethic now is a lot stronger,” he said. “I’m not the every day guy now, and my work ethic needs to be stronger to warrant my position. It’s a different mentality. I’m trying to listen more. I’m trying to do that little extra work that before I didn’t do, for whatever reason. At this point of my career, everything counts.”
Lopez looked around the clubhouse.
“I think some of these guys were two years old when I signed with the Braves,” he said. “Oh my God.”
Reminded that a few members of the starting rotation weren’t in the room, he said, “True, but they’re on the team. I’m not there yet.”
Permalink | Comments (21) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Jeff Schultz
Hawks a strange outfit
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Something significant has happened: The same owners who backed Billy Knight to the hilt in the fight against Steve Belkin in the summer of 2005 have disregarded Knight’s recommendation that Mike Woodson be fired. The general manager who once inspired blind trust in his ownership (if not his fan base) has lost his hold and might soon lose his job.
The same owners who declined to utter a discouraging word after Knight passed on Chris Paul/Deron Williams have now broken with Knight on an essential basketball matter — i.e., who should coach this long-suffering team. Regarding the Hawks, the one thing you could count on these past few forlorn years was that Knight wouldn’t be second-guessed in-house. Now even that’s gone, and here’s where we are:
The team that hasn’t made the playoffs in the new millennium is trying to fashion a postseason run with a new point guard and coach who should be a featherless lame duck but, astonishingly, isn’t quite. Indeed, Woodson seems in a stronger position today than the man who hired him and who just wanted to fire him. This is known as the Tommy Tuberville Backlash Effect.
The Hawks are a strange little outfit — owners suing one another, the GM drafting wing after wing, the coach lugging a career winning percentage one point higher than Chipper Jones’ lifetime batting average. But the only owner who had previously questioned a key Knight decision was the pariah Belkin, and now it’s clear that some of the folks who didn’t say, “Hey, Billy — how about we take a point guard this time?” are pointing toward Mike Bibby and saying, “Hey, Billy — what took you so long?”
It would be wrong to suggest that Woodson is anywhere near secure. A three-game losing streak could well be his parting gesture. But ownership is clearly intrigued by the addition of Bibby and the way the Hawks have played in narrow home victories over Sacramento and New York (substandard teams, to be sure). And Knight’s attempt to dump Woodson after trading for Bibby seems to have struck some Atlanta Spirit members as untimely at best and unfair at worst.
The improbable upshot is that the dour Woodson has been rendered a sympathetic figure. With news of his GM’s blocked move swirling, Woodson pressed on Friday, ordering up the game-winning play — an alley-oop from Bibby to Josh Smith — on a night when his team looked to have run out of ideas. I’m not a fan of the man’s body of work (career record: 93-209), but credit must go where credit is due.
“It’s not about my job,” Woodson said afterward. “I’m not here to discuss that.”
As for his new player: “It’s not easy [breaking in a point guard on the fly], but Mike is making a tremendous transition. He hit a big [clinching] shot.”
Said Al Horford, who gets better and better: “I really don’t get the papers, and I don’t really pay attention to that [outside] stuff. My job is to go out and play. Coach is doing a good enough job — he’s going to be fine.”
The belief here remains that the Hawks have too much talent to miss the playoffs. If we assume Woodson will be around for the duration of this season, that sets up a loaded offseason. Woodson and Knight are under contract only through June 30. If the tempest-tossed coach winds up presiding over this franchise’s first postseason appearance since 1999, might ownership be so grateful that it rewards him with a new contract?
And might Knight, who was the object of a Spirit-staged political rally on the floor of Philips Arena when the Joe Johnson trade was consummated in 2005, be penalized for having failed to supply Woodson with the proper tools all these years? Might the King of Wings ultimately get sacked because — oh, the incongruity! — he finally found a point guard?
Permalink | Comments (74) | Categories: Hawks / NBA, Mark Bradley
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