Georgia basketball coach Tom Crean has been to Hawaii many times over the years while coaching at Michigan State, Marquette and Indiana. He’s even vacationed there a couple of times.
Not so, for his young group of players.
The Bulldogs will all get to experience the Aloha State together this week as Georgia competes in the Maui Invitational Tournament.
Crean’s experience in this tournament first came more than two decades ago when he was an assistant coach for Tom Izzo at Michigan State. It just so happens that Izzo, who is considered Crean’s greatest coaching influence, and the Spartans will be there again this year.
“Now we’re in Maui (again) and here he is, he’s bringing a team, I’m bringing a team,” Crean said. “This will be my fifth team there and fourth as a head coach. I love it. Hawaii is incredible. It doesn’t ever get old.”
It’s a fun trip, of course. And hard.
The competition level always steps up for a tournament like this, and that will drastically be the case for the Bulldogs (4-0). Their best win so far was their last one, 82-78 over Georgia Tech. They open the tournament on Monday against Dayton in a game that will tip off at 9:30 a.m. local time (2:30 p.m. EST). The winner will face the winner of Michigan State-Virginia Tech.
Kansas, UCLA, BYU and Chaminade are on the other side of the bracket.
The teams will play games for three straight days, with the tournament champion decided 5 p.m. EST Nov. 27.
“The level of basketball that you have to be at in this, the level of competing that you have to be at,” Crean said. “I'll use that term urgency again. That urgency that you have to have in this is unlike anything these guys have ever been a witness to in this point in their careers."
The challenge begins Monday with the Flyers (3-0). The Bulldogs left for Maui on Friday morning to get adjusted to the five hours difference in time, to practice and, yes, to do a little sightseeing.
The prospect of playing in this event in the country’s 50th state far off in the Pacific Ocean helped lure many of the young Georgia players, which include a Top 10-rated recruiting class and 10 newcomers overall.
The key for them will be to balance the fascination of being in an exotic and picturesque vacation location while also trying to focus on playing their best in order to compete against the best teams they’ve met all season.
“I’m not going surfing and I’m not going to do much around the water,” said freshman Anthony Edwards, the Bulldogs’ leading scorer at 19.3 points per game. “It’s a business trip. We’re going there to win games.”
Said junior Rayshaun Hammonds, who had 26 points in the win over Tech: “It’s going to be fun, but it’s also going to be a business trip. Because we’re wanting to win it all, and we know we’re going to be playing great teams.”
It has been a fun year so far. UGA opened the season with the second, third and fifth most points by any SEC team this season, averaging 95.3 points against Delaware State, The Citadel and Western Carolina. But scoring is expected to be much harder to come by in Hawaii.
The Flyers have allowed just 70 points a game in its first three contests, which they’ve won by an average margin of 19.7 points. They’re led by, Opi Toppin, a 6-foot-9, 220-pound redshirt sophomore from Brooklyn who is averaging 23.7 points and 9.7 rebounds per game and shooting 70 percent from the field. Dayton features three other double-figure scorers in Ryan Mikesell (14.0 ppg), Rodney Chatman (13.0 ppg) and Jalen Crutcher (11.0 ppg).
For both sides, it’s an opportunity to showcase their teams on a national stage. Every game will be broadcast on one of the ESPN family of networks. The Georgia-Dayton contest is on ESPN2.
Though UGA had already scheduled this trip before Crean was hired in 2018, the Bulldogs’ second-year coach said he is a big believer in playing in such high-profile tournaments, and hopes to schedule similar opportunities in the future.
“I think it’s important to be able to take your program to a prestigious tournament like that, and be able to measure yourself against those programs that are there and see what you've got to do against them,” Crean said. “You find ways to win and see what you got to do to be able to win long-term.”
Crean’s teams have never won the Maui championship. His Marquette team lost to Duke in the championship game in 2007. He went there with Indiana in 2008 and ’15 and with Michigan State as an assistant in 1995.
The win-loss results aren’t the point, Crean insists.
“It doesn’t make any difference,” he said. “When you get there, none of it matters. You have got to be at a high, high level of competition, of compete-ability, if you want to succeed in that tournament. I’m looking forward to that.”
It’s not the Georgia basketball program’s first trip to Hawaii. While the Bulldogs have never played in Maui, it’s their fifth time to the islands. UGA played on Oahu in 1987, 1996, 2001 and 2007. Under coach Tubby Smith, the Bulldogs won the 1996 Outrigger Hotels Classic, defeating No. 21 Maryland 73-65 in overtime in the championship game.
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