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AJC > Sports > UGA > Blog > Archives > 2008 > March > 16
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Bibbity Bobbity Bulldogs!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
What a weekend, as the lesson was taught again: Never bet against a team that thinks it’s playing for its coach’s job.
I don’t know whether Dennis Felton really has a fairy godmother, but this has to be the biggest feel-good Cinderella story of the year (or many years) in college basketball. Georgia’s run to become the unlikeliest conference champs in the country is the stuff of Disney movies, only this time we didn’t have Fred MacMurray in the locker room ironing flubber onto their shoes.
A team that had lost 10 of 11 games becomes only the second No. 6 seed to make it to the SEC tournament semifinals thanks to a pair of last-second overtime wins secured by unlikely heroes — senior scholar-athlete Dave Bliss, an occasional offensive force but more often mainly a defensive presence, and Zac Swansey, a freshman put into a pressure-packed position after Sundiata Gaines had fouled out.
Wait, not dramatic enough. Throw in a tornado that shook the Georgia Dome and postponed and forced the relocation of Georgia’s second game to the normally unfriendly environs of the Trade School’s sometimes leaky-roofed Alexander Memorial Coliseum, where they had to then turn around and play again just six hours later. They win, thanks in part to the sudden effectiveness of Billy Humphrey, who couldn’t buy a point for most of the tourney.
And then they manage to jump out ahead of Arkansas in the championship game and then hang on despite increasing fatigue. And, again, Humphrey comes up big, sinking a 3-pointer with just over a minute and a half left that was the dagger in the heart for the Hogs. As Felton said post-game, after having to go through all that and play three games in two days, “We found out that we had more than we ever thought we did” in terms of perseverance.
And to make it all even sweeter, the Dogs got to enjoy winning the program’s first SEC tournament title in 25 years and the ritual cutting down of the net at their arch rival’s home court.
Nah, even Disney in its “Pollyanna” heyday wouldn’t go for that!
This, of course, ends any speculation about Felton being let go by UGA, though actually even before the Dogs’ tournament showing, it appeared the consensus view in the Bulldog Nation was that Damon Evans might as well give Felton one more year to turn things around. Too many coaching vacancies elsewhere, no real stellar candidate to replace him, and what looks like an outstanding freshman class coming in next year.
Now, keeping Felton seems like the easy call. But in the midst of the euphoria of the past few days, fans can’t help but ask: Where was this team during the regular season?
Actually, some of the hallmarks of the past few months were still evident in Atlanta, including the tendency of the team to get a double-digit lead and then let it slide away. But where the Dogs seemed to give up several times during the regular season, they did exactly the opposite in the tournament. And once they got past Kentucky, they seemed to sense they were what the Georgia broadcast crew called them Sunday: a team of destiny.
The key to Felton making progress from this point on is figuring out how to inject that urgency into his teams’ play on a regular basis, especially on the road in conference play, where the Bulldogs have had an abysmal record under him.
The other concern about Felton is his problem with keeping players after he’s gotten them into school. A program where the coaches outnumber the backup players on the bench is going to have a hard time sustaining success.
So while we enjoy this unexpected championship and hail the job that Felton and his players did this weekend, let’s keep in mind that the 2007-2008 season is hardly a blueprint for building a program.
Felton needs to make whatever changes are necessary so that at next year’s SEC tournament the defending champs don’t have to depend on repeatedly defying the odds (and that fairy godmother) in order to have a chance at repeating.
