UGA

By cooter11

June 27, 2007 4:35 PM | Link to this

a building can make a difference! NOT

By dawgfatha

June 27, 2007 4:46 PM | Link to this

Chip -

Any chance we could get an online photo feature of the new digs once the building is complete? I know a lot of folks would like to get to see it before fall starts.

By Chip Towers

June 27, 2007 4:55 PM | Link to this

You know what, dawgfatha, I will get in touch with our photo folks and see if they can’t come up here and get some shots. If not, I’ll shoot it myself. Probably worthy of a story here during the slow time of the year. I’ll get on it.

By Erk

June 27, 2007 4:55 PM | Link to this

Cooter, if you think top of the line basketball facilities did not influence the best players to play for schools like Florida & Ohio State, you’re wrong. A building most definitely can make a difference.

By ConyersDawg

June 27, 2007 5:22 PM | Link to this

dawgfatha, go to www.georgiadogs.com you can see flash images and click on the links to see more.

Thank you chip for continuing to talk about our hoopdawgs. The hoop program is really taking off and it is very exciting.

I can’t wait to take both my 2 young boys to the annual kick off this year. We missed it last year and i have cleared the schedule for it this year.

Quick note. I know all the talk is Lump and Moreno, but you heard it from conyers first, Thomas Brown will be an impact this year. He is now weighing over 200lbs and is fine. I really wanted him to red-shirt but the reports from Athens are he is faster then ever and swollen like a solid rock that has been chiseled.

By CyleLimbaugh

June 27, 2007 5:58 PM | Link to this

Good story man. You you have just intensified my longing for Feb. 08. ConyersDawg Great analysis on both fronts: Too many people are missing out on the unbelievable excitement that the Hoop dogs provide, and way too many people are counting out the #20 on the football field. Lump is the man, Moreno is the future, but the #20 needs no explanation.

By The Plain Truth

June 27, 2007 6:02 PM | Link to this

new facility…same old redneck no show Uga fans who think spring FB is more important than BB

By NASCARfan

June 27, 2007 6:36 PM | Link to this

Chip,

I park, and have parked on the Carlton St. parking deck every morning since January. I’ve seen this building go from infancy to completion. Heck, I even have a friend who worked on the construction crew (What’s up, Cole!). This building is amazing, and fits right in with the Dan McGill Tennis Center. And by that I mean it’s first class. This university has done much that is first class. The Student Learning Center. The Ramsey Center. This addition to the Steg, which isn’t just building next door, Chip. It’s actually part of the Steg now. It’s all one building. They’re getting ready to build a beautiful new expansion to the Tate Center which is also going to turn that gulch / parking lot (which has always been an eyesore to me) on the west side of the Sanford Stadium into a parking structure with landscaping. A lot of the classrooms in the older buildings have been renovated (the Journalism building needs some work, and so do the classrooms on the 3rd floor at LeConte, but hey, nothing’s perfect). So when is the football team going to get that much needed indoor practice facility? When are they going to swing around the upper deck on the west side (while leaving the mezzanine open so you can still see in the stadium from the bridge) to add 10,000 more seats or so to put us up over 102,000 and make us the 2nd or 3rd largest on campus stadium in football, and maybe surpass that ugly erector-set stadium in hillbilly country? What some other projects that you’ve gotten wind of? Also, is the completion of this project enough to keep Coach Felton from running away from this program if another job comes along? And here’s another question. Honestly Chip, how much do you think Tubby now regrets leaving Georgia, a team he could have built into a national powerhouse for Kentucky. I think he learned his lesson that the grass isn’t always bluer on the other side. Now, he’s taken a job that’s much, much WORSE than when even Coach Felton took over Georgia. I sometimes wonder if he doesn’t feel like a great big dummy for leaving Athens for Lexington and those insane fans.

By Carter

June 27, 2007 6:38 PM | Link to this

The Plain Truth- try learning proper grammar before you start cutting on other “rednecks”. Anyways, the practice facility does look great. The inside is spectacular. I wish they would remodel Stegeman and build an indoor facility for football next.

By Paul from Milton

June 27, 2007 6:41 PM | Link to this

Sounds like the Dawgs have a first class practice facility and a third rate playing facility.

By corey

June 27, 2007 6:45 PM | Link to this

No, it goes like this “The Plain Truth”: New Facility: Same old UGA outspending, outrecruiting and outshining Tech in another sport.

You see, we’re putting more emphasis on basketball. If five fans show up that’s five more that will get to see UGA beat GA Tech in something else, right?

Here’s a quiz: Name the last time Tech sold out any sporting event at ALL that they didn’t depend on the other team to fill the seats. Seriously…anything will do.

By truthteller

June 27, 2007 7:04 PM | Link to this

It doesn’t matter what UGA does with facilities,, money, etc. They can NEVER buy class, and will never have any.

By ----------

June 27, 2007 7:35 PM | Link to this

*By truthteller

June 27, 2007 7:04 PM | Link to this

It doesn’t matter what UGA does with facilities,, money, etc. They can NEVER buy class, and will never have any.*

haha…..sounds like someone got bit by the jealousy bug

By Dawg4life

June 27, 2007 7:40 PM | Link to this

chip,

good update on the new hoops facility. I remain impressed not only with coach Felton, but with how much he has been able to accomplish, from turning around a defunct program to attracting what’s gonna be a top-notch recruiting class, to now seeing to the fact that the facilities match the upgrade in the team.

Hey, speaking of Stinchcomb, Chip and others, I’ve been talking to some friends and they said that Trinton Sturdivant is reminiscent of Stinch when he was a freshman at UGA. Same size, mechanics, technique, smarts. Only differene is that Sturdivant might be more athletic.

Chip, others, whaddya think??

By Ron Roberts

June 27, 2007 8:50 PM | Link to this

Honesty, I hate the upper-upper deck they added to Sanford. I just liked the symmetry Sanford had before, and now that’s shot. I always presumed they’d just enclose the other endzone before they’d build up anymore.

I’m happy the program \finally made a big spend on the basketball programs, and I’m 50/50 on whether we need a new arena now or not. I think all that they’ve done to Stegman has made that place a far more basketball-friendly environment, and fan support doesn’t exactly dictate the need for anything larger, so on the one hand I say, why build something newer? You’d have to build it bigger if you did, and that, to me, seems kinda risky right now.

On the other hand, the Athens/Clarke area could use an indoor arena for concerts, trade shows, conventions, etc. that the University could make use of as well. A joint partnership between Athens/Clarke and the University to build something near downtown would be beneficial to downtown merchants and the school, too.

Of course, now that they’ve invested in the adjacent practice facility, I guess that’s out of the question now. So a compromise, maybe? How about doing some fan-friendly upgrades to Stegman, like better lighting (especially the upper sections…it gets damn dark up there), maybe some lights along the aisles, a concourse widening with something a little more “interesting” to the selection at the concession stands?

By Ryne

June 27, 2007 9:40 PM | Link to this

I, too, park at Carlton Street deck and every morning when I walk by the building I can see into what will be the gymnastics facility. Just that alone looks like a top class Olympic training type facility. As you pass the front of the building along Carlton Street, you can see the weight training room, and man does it look like something impressive too. I could see how athletes would love to play somewhere like that. I can only imagine the basketball facilities are the exact same. Also, mentioning the camps, I was in the Ramsey playing basketball today and Terrence Woodbury was in there shooting. After a while I saw him working with a kid showing him how to step into his shot. I thought that was cool, because it looked as if he was just working with him too help the kid out. Anyway, high fives all around to coaches Felton, Landers, and Yoculan for their hard work!

By The Plain Truth

June 27, 2007 11:22 PM | Link to this

I’m not a GT fan, but they sell WAY more BB tickets than Uga does. I think their season BB tickets are routinely sold out. Uga has a long way to go to catch GT in basketball tradition. The telling thing is that Uga has drawn 3000 or so fans to Gwinnett Arena during the Christmas holidays for games the past few years. How many Uga fans live in Gwinnett??

By BuLLdawg

June 28, 2007 5:21 AM | Link to this

.

.

I don’t know. Call me stupid, but for 25 years the vols and everyone else has had an indoor football practice facility so we can even have a practice when it rained. It’s the sport that generates the revenue to pay for all this, and here we have Stegosaurus which should have been demolished 25 years ago so we had a place to play basketball for a highly successful women’s program and a men’s program that desperately needs the crowds to show up and support the program.

And, what ?

We build a practice facility, not visible to the public and not for football, but basketball and women’s gymnastics. Where is our men’s gymnastics ?

Then we have the reporter drive all the way up there, and he doesn’t even think to take a camera.

But, tells us it is the new digs.

Excuse me ?

We huddle there before games and interview there after games in the Stegosaurus ?

Whose idea of new digs, or reporting on new digs, is this ?

No one’s ?

There are basketball gymnasiums three times the size of this one, which were not designed for cattle shows, in our own conference and have been for years. When do they get what they really want ?

New digs, and this is football practice time we are all excited about coming up.

.

.

By Bryan Carver '97

June 28, 2007 7:17 AM | Link to this

For Countdown to Kickoff, any word on who will be the former players in attendance? I know on Sportsnite, they said some 1980 players. Also, for those who went last year - were you able to get things signed other than the footballs? I skipped it because I have a special book that I wanted to get signed, but last year they said you had to purchase a special football, but in all the pictures it seems like people had posters and helmets too. Thanks!

By David

June 28, 2007 8:06 AM | Link to this

I love Thomas Brown but I can’t think of one player that really mad an impact at the skill position a year after knee surgery. I don’t care how good of shape they are in, it takes two years for them to trust the knee.

By godawg

June 28, 2007 9:10 AM | Link to this

Here’s a real fix for those football jones…From David Ching…“We’re talking like 8,700 words here. Coach Richt was really phenomenal today, though, so I decided to transcribe the entire hour-long Q/A he did with Josh Kendall, Carter Strickland, Marc Weiszer, Dean Legge and myself…”.

Good, good stuff!

By scooter11

June 28, 2007 9:43 AM | Link to this

UGA’s #1 again in another mascot poll. Why do they keep reinforcing other mascots’ inferiority complexes? The Dawg will always be on top.

By rob

June 28, 2007 10:30 AM | Link to this

Chip- I am a long time UGA hoops fan and I have been more than frustrated by our lack of success. Amazing that we are in the bottom 3 all time in the SEC with all the talent in this state. Totally unacceptable. I could go on for hours about all that is wrong with our hoops program, but the fact that we just built a practice facility for what we could have built a new coliseum for only p** me off more. Total stupidity. Also, the university keeps dumping money into Stegman every other year for improvements. You can not make a “muti purpose facility” a basketball arena no matter how much money you put in to it.

By austindog

June 28, 2007 11:33 AM | Link to this

I was in school in the early 90s and Stegman was old then. The architecture is embarrassing because of the dated, Astrodome, “futuristic” look the school went with. I cannot believe they didn’t bulldoze the place but instead chose to keep pouring more money into it. I had student season tickets for hoops and bleed red and black, but are we going to still be looking at that piece of crap in 20 years? I think we are.

By godawg

June 28, 2007 12:04 PM | Link to this

austindog, I started school in ‘79 and it was already old then. When I was a kid I can remember the students riding motorcycles over the roof…

If we wait another 20 years I predict that architectual style will come back in and we’ll be the envy of the SEC and beyond…

By blufftondawg

June 28, 2007 12:09 PM | Link to this

There is nothing about Stegman Coliseum that will keep UGA from having a national contending hoops team.

What will hold the B’Ball program back is would be fans talking footyball on a basketball blog. Be a football fan somewhere else, be a basketball fan in a basketball blog. Thanks Coach Felton for all you do.

By Bryan Carver '97

June 28, 2007 1:47 PM | Link to this

Sorry I asked about Countdown to Kickoff (despite Chip himself making mention of it). So here - my guess is that the powers that be figured an improved practice facility was enough to offset the “downside” of an older colesium. The outside may look old, but they seem to have updated the inside. Stegman holds about 10K, why tear down a good building. It’s not the building, but the 2-5K QUIET fans in the Steg that makes the difference.

By ConyersDawg

June 28, 2007 2:54 PM | Link to this

Basketball in Athens is a hot topic when we are winning, just like the other sports. When Tubby was here the Steg was hoping. When Harrick got the Hayes boys with Ezra again the Steg was rocking.

None of our Coaches have recruited like Felton and the Steg will again be rocking.

On my part, it’s tough during the week to drive over an hour to get to the Steg and get back at a decent time and go back to work the next morning. But I follow our hoopdawgs very closely and appreciate Chip continuing to give us hoopdawg coverage.

By blufftondawg

June 28, 2007 5:49 PM | Link to this

Thanks conyersdawg. Real b’ball fans are appreciated. I LOVED the Harrick teams. And don’t forget, UGA has had some bright basketball moments. We are gonna have some more in the next few seasons.

By Jessica

July 2, 2007 10:31 AM | Link to this

Bryan-

I’m with one of the organizations putting on Countdown to Kickoff. Last year was footballs only, but this year you can bring any items you like for autographs. However, to make sure that we have time for everyone to get autographs, we’ll have a rule of one autograph per player for each time you go through the line. So if you wanted a particular player to sign two items, you’d need to go through the line twice.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a definitive list of athletes who will be attending. There’s no way to guarantee that a particular person will show, and we don’t want to disappoint people by advertising names and then having some of them not be able to come. Last year we had Ben Watson, Buck Belue, Garrison Hearst, and Jermaine Phillips, among others.

You can find out more information here: www.ugakickoff.com

By Steg sucks

July 3, 2007 7:05 PM | Link to this

The new facility is AWESOME, top-notch. Brilliant minds - “Let’s build a big-time PRACTICE facility right next to an old POS basketball facility. That’s how we’ll get new recruits.” The new facility will help, but for the love of G0D, please demolish that old a$$ building and put in a new basketball arena that one would expect to find on Georgia’s premier university’s campus.

By don

July 8, 2007 2:08 PM | Link to this

Let’s see…do the numbers urge the athletic assoc. to build a new facility? If so, where? Demolish old and build new? Where to play in mean time? Renovate old? Too many details. $120m is a lot of money for that…right now.Let’s let bb become a little more revenue producing, then see what happens. As for spending money, it’s time to do something serious about adding on to sanford stadium, again. Come on Damon…get with the program and do something about it. Either you aren’t smart enough to figure out how to successfully propose it, or you’re afraid of Mike Adams…which is it? There is no other alternative. Just do it.

By DawgByte

July 9, 2007 12:35 PM | Link to this

I love Thomas Brown! I applaud his hard work and effort in the weight room. HOWEVER, he was stronger than an Oxe starting off the ‘06 season. Chisled bodies may look good, but they don’t necessarily translate to on- field performance. For whatever, reason TB has never really gotten it done on the field. Personally I think KL and KM will be an outstanding one-two punch and should be the primary rock carriers. I’d use Brown as a third down receiving option out of the backfield and give him some work late in the 3rd Qtr. and early in the 4th… a fresh legs approach.