It's showtime for Mark Fox's Bulldogs

By Tim Tucker

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

ATHENS -- Since Mark Fox became Georgia's men's basketball coach in April, things have been upbeat around a long-subdued program.

Fans greeted him enthusiastically on the speaking circuit. Players generally embraced the new staff's new ways. Plans for a major facelift to Stegeman Coliseum moved to the fast track.

And, oh yes, Fox's team is still undefeated.

Now comes the reality check: the season.

Georgia opens its first season under Fox -- the program's fifth head coach since Hugh Durham's long tenure ended in 1995 -- at home Friday night against New Orleans.

With little reinforcement to the roster that posted a 12-20 (3-13 SEC) record last season, Georgia is expected to again finish at the bottom of the SEC East, according to the league's annual media vote.

Asked recently what would constitute a successful debut season, Fox's answer wandered to Manhattan, Kansas.

As an assistant basketball coach at Kansas State in the 1990s, he closely observed football coach Bill Snyder, "who," Fox said, "took a team that was the worst football program in America to being one tackle away from the national championship game."

"Amazingly enough," Fox said, "he used a very simple approach, which we've stolen: that we're going to try to get a little bit better every day. If you can do that over time, then ultimately your daily efforts will add up to something. ... I think largely I'll gauge success this year on how much we're improving, how hard we're working, if we've approached the game the right way."

Of course, they'll still keep score.

And Fox's career record -- 123-43 and three NCAA Tournament bids in five years as a head coach, all at Nevada -- figures to take a hit from a schedule that includes 15 games against teams that reached the 2009 postseason.

Mark Slonaker, a former player and assistant coach at Georgia and a former head coach at Mercer, has known Fox since the early 1990s. He was one of relatively few people in Georgia who knew much, if anything, about Fox when UGA athletics director Damon Evans hired him in April. Seven months later, Slonaker senses a groundswell of support for the coach.

"People who didn't know a lot about him have been impressed with his basketball resume and the things he's doing and implementing," said Slonaker, who works in fundraising for UGA and also will be the color analyst on the basketball radio broadcasts this season.

"One-hundred percent, people are just on board," Slonaker said. "I was really impressed at [a recent] meet-and-greet [with Fox] to see how many people I know personally who had gravitated away from the program the last few years and now are back."

Fox appreciates the support, but clearly does not want this season to be about him.

In fact, in a rare gesture for a major-college coach, he has asked not to be introduced before his first game -- or before any home game this season.

"I don't think it's about the coach. I really don't," said Fox, who also eschewed the traditional pregame introduction at Nevada. "I have a role to play with this program and this team, but this is about young people having as good an experience as they can have. And I don't need that introduction. ... I really prefer to just let them introduce our players."

Said one of those players, forward Trey Thompkins: "It just shows the type of selfless person he is. ... It's a blessing to have a guy like that in the front of the ship."

Players say they have seen different sides of Fox.

There's the side that made the team run every step in Sanford Stadium after several players missed, or arrived late for, tutoring sessions. "I never want to see him mad enough to make us do that again," Thompkins said. "That was one of the worst experiences of my life."

And then there's the side that "knows how to lighten the mood unlike any coach I've ever been around," senior center Albert Jackson said. "Like, some days in practice, we'll be tired and guys will be hurting, and he might tell Chris Barnes to run up and shoot a 3-pointer just to make the team laugh."

Barnes, see, was 0-for-0 from 3-point range the past two seasons.

Turning around the Georgia basketball program is, of course, no laughing matter.

For starters, fans would like a more efficient offense. Last season, the Bulldogs averaged 64.9 points per game, by far the fewest in the SEC and the second fewest by a UGA team in a half-century.

Fox has installed a variation of the triangle offense, famously used by Phil Jackson with the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers and less famously by others, including Fox at Nevada and, for that matter, Slonaker at Mercer.

"It's good," Thompkins, who averaged 12.6 points per game as a freshman last season, said of the offense. "I'm starting to see what areas Kobe [Bryant] and [Michael] Jordan got all their points from. It's an offense that takes a lot of work and a lot of concentration and a drive to learn. There are so many options off of it. It's a journey."

Friday night in Stegeman Coliseum, Fox's journey with his new basketball team reaches the starting line.