Fifteen days ahead of Selection Sunday, college basketball staged, not by design, Speculation Saturday. After the double whammy of reports regarding the FBI’s probe of recruiting, everybody was asking: What does it all mean?
Obvious answer: Nothing good. But in the shorter term, there were questions about which players named in documents unearthed Friday by Pat Forde and Pete Thamel of Yahoo Sports would be allowed by their schools to play Saturday. (Most of them, as it turned out.) What of Arizona coach Sean Miller, whom ESPN’s Mark Schlabach reported Saturday was caught by a wiretap discussing a $100,000 payment from an agent to recruit Deandre Ayton? (It was reported in mid-afternoon that Miller wouldn’t work Saturday night’s game with Oregon.)
Amid all this, Georgia played its best game since it beat Alabama two days before its football team almost beat Alabama. The Bulldogs trounced LSU 93-82. Afterward Mark Fox, who has coached Georgia since 2009 but might not be coaching it much longer, offered a seething take – we can’t call it a rant; he never raised his voice – about the state of his industry.
“I’m disgusted,” he said. “I’m disgusted with how people have treated our game. It’s absolutely disgusting. There’s always going to be unethical behavior. If there’s a million-dollar budget, somebody’s going to be unhappy with the salary cap.”
Then: “It’s like playing baseball, and my team gets four outs per inning and your team gets three. That’s not fair. And it starts with the coaches.
Then: “The NCAA made up of member institutions. How are they handling it? Are they hiding their heads in the sand?”
Then: “I’m past anger and sadness. I’m just disgusted.”
In a weird way, Fox’s team might be positioned to benefit if enough teams – Arizona would surely head the list – opt to sit out the Big Dance. If the pairings were set tomorrow, the Bulldogs wouldn’t make it. But what if they beat Texas A&M here and Tennessee there and win a couple of games in the SEC tournament? Could they, as maybe the next-to-last team out, slip into the field of 68 because of a couple of self-imposed absences?
Answer: Maybe. But this team really shouldn’t need such an assist.
The Bulldogs clearly were superior to LSU, which shouldn’t surprise. They have much the bigger and better players. They outrebounded the Tigers 49-34. Said LSU coach Will Wade: “They imposed their will on the backboard. They imposed their will in the paint. That’s really all there was to it.”
So how did LSU leave with the same conference record (7-9) as the team that has beaten it twice? The Tigers are in Year 1 under Wade, whose burden it is to rebuild the rubble left by Johnny Jones. Their best player is point guard Tremont Waters, who’s both a freshman and 5-foot-11. There should be no comparison between this program and one that has worked since 2009 under the same coach. In the SEC standings, they’re peers.
But -- and this is a big “but” -- should the furor raging in Hoops World make us view Fox differently? Unlike Hugh Durham and Jim Harrick, he hasn’t landed Georgia on probation. He insists he runs his program “the right way,” which presumably means he doesn’t cheat. From the looks of some of his earlier recruiting classes, you were inclined to believe it.
Fox again: “Most of those things that occur, they happen in the shadows and the darkness -- until the FBI gets involved. Absolutely we’ve had some situations where we didn’t get players (because of cheating). Other schools have, too.”
The question, then: At a time when we’re wondering if there’s a single major program that isn’t dirty, would having Mr. Clean be reason enough for athletic director Greg McGarity to give Fox, yet again, one more year?
Every March, at least 32 coaches win an NCAA tournament game. Since the 2009-10 season, Fox hasn’t been among that number. (He has taken Georgia to the Dance twice.) Are we to presume that all those who get there and stick around are scoundrels?
It’s laudable that Fox seems to have conducted business on the up-and-up. But that’s one expectation of the job, is it not? (As we know, not all coaches adhere, or even care about adhering, to that standard.) There’s another expectation: Every coach is hired under the assumption he can make his team a big winner. Fox hasn’t yet.
We saw Saturday that Georgia has the personnel to be an NCAA tournament team. It still might get there. But with the SEC so unsettled – Kentucky and Florida and South Carolina down, Auburn and Tennessee up – the Bulldogs, with maybe the league’s best player in senior Yante Maten (27 points, 11 rebounds, six blocks on Saturday) were positioned to make hay. They haven’t yet, and February’s all but done.
Full credit to Fox for being able to answer postgame questions that didn’t involve his program’s appearance on the FBI’s 30-or-so-most-wanted list. But his stewardship of Georgia basketball should continue only if he can get this team to the NCAA tournament. As Fox said Saturday, “I think it’s possible to do the job the right way.”
Not to be crass, but doing the job also involves winning. Fox’s record in SEC regular-season games is 77-77.
About the Author
