Four-plus years ago, Sundiata Gaines willingly left the big city to play a little backwater basketball in Athens. He maybe had seen Georgia play once on television before then, sort of stumbling on it by accident. New York knows about as much about crop rotation as it does these Bulldogs.

That little experiment is almost over, with Georgia closing its regular season schedule at home Saturday. It is time to take an accounting, to determine the net Gaines.

Rich Addicks/Staff (ENLARGE)

Senior Sundiata Gaines says that the worst part of his experience at Georgia was 'getting adapted to losing.'

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Sure, he could survive the grit of growing up in Queens, even the stray bullet that nicked his neck when he was 4. But could Gaines get out of Georgia basketball in one piece, while hoeing Dennis Felton's hard row for four years?

"I still think [going South] was a good decision," said Ronnie Gaines, the father who named his boy for an African warrior, and watched him live up to the image.

"He distinguished himself as one of the all-time greats of Georgia in how many ways he impacts the game: assists, scoring, steals, rebounding," said Felton, the Bulldogs' besieged coach. "I think that is what he'll be remembered for.

"That and his toughness, his competitiveness, regardless of how hard it has been."

The captain of a wayward team, the across-the-board statistical leader among a sometimes motley cast, Gaines will leave school with a very different way of measuring success. Not by wins or losses, certainly — the Bulldogs are 19-44 in the SEC on his watch — but rather by the amount of hooey one person can swallow and still keep his self-respect.

While it seemed everybody else was transferring or getting the heave-ho as Felton laid down his law, Gaines was the constant. He arrived in Athens a quiet shooting guard who by necessity became the vocal point man. He always showed up, he always played hard, becoming the template for the kind of player Felton requires.

Those who followed Georgia basketball beyond the police reports or somber game accounts (the Bulldogs have lost 10 of their past 12) may recognize an all-around gamer. South Carolina coach Dave Odom called Gaines the best guard in the SEC. He will leave Georgia as the only player to amass the combination of at least 1,000 points, 500 rebounds and 400 assists.

And at no time did he ever make it look easy.

"The worst [part about my Georgia experience] is all the losing, getting adapted to losing," Gaines said. "What hurt me the most was never getting a chance to see what the team was capable of building up to. That discourages you.

"Every year we got a little better, and I came in this year thinking, 'Wow, we got a team that could actually contend for a Final Four.' But you lose guys [top scorers Mike Mercer and Takais Brown were the notable expulsions this season]. That's been the dilemma every year. It messes players up mentally; they're always thinking about what we could have had."

Replays showed Gaines was reacting to a punch Sunday when he was ejected from a game at LSU. But if you could look a little deeper, he'd agree that you might find a little simmering frustration at the core of that uncharacteristic outburst.

Absolutely nothing is easy. Here he is taking 20 hours in the midst of the season in order to finish his requirements for a degree. Sleep has become a luxury.

"I'm better when the pressure's on me," he joked.

"After [last week's] Florida game, he told me, 'Dad, I'm just so tired.' He's been doing this for four years. That has taken a lot of energy," Ronnie Gaines said.

A sociology major, one of Gaines' current research projects is to observe the interaction at various automobile dealerships. Perhaps he should be a project in himself, a study in determination amid dysfunction.

He came to Georgia at a time when it was really un-cool to do so. The Jim Harrick cleanup was still in its mop-and-bucket stage.

"We were going after everybody, but we were having the door slammed shut on us by most people that were SEC-caliber players," Felton said.

Eventually, Gaines and his father opened the door, having decided to go with the neediest program. He could go to one of the Big East schools — Pitt, Boston College, Seton Hall were in the mix — and perhaps be another spoke in the wheel. Or go to a place like Georgia and step in as the hub.

In a way, Gaines got exactly what he asked for. He was thrown in as a freshman, beginning his 31-minutes-a-game routine right away. "You're going to get your butt kicked, but you're going to develop," was his father's thinking.

Butt kicked? Check.

Development? Check.

"On the bright side, it was a great experience for me because I got a chance to play major minutes coming [in] as a freshman," said Gaines, who holds out pro ambitions. "I got to be an all-around player instead of just being one dimensional.

"It taught me a life lesson. You're not always going to be dealt the best cards. You have to take advantage of all the opportunities you get and try to make the best of them."

What's for him to fear in the uncertainty of the real world? After all, he survived Georgia basketball.