For all that Georgia had going right leading to this basketball season, with four starters set to return from a 20-win team that was one of the biggest surprises in the SEC last season, the departure of Brandon Morris was a stunner.
But Mark Fox had to dismiss his two-year starter and one of his best defenders from the team in July after he was arrested on felony drug charges.
“It caught me off-guard,” Fox said Wednesday at SEC media day. “It was heartbreaking because I love the kid. I’ve stayed in touch with him. But it’s disappointing. The hard thing is it puts your team behind the 8-ball when you have a guy that you were counting on who’s no longer on your team.”
Georgia has some recent experience with trying to fill a significant void, though, and it turned out pretty well. The Bulldogs watched their SEC player of the year Kentavious Caldwell-Pope leave early for the NBA as a sophomore, and they entered last season trying to account for his loss. They lost four of their first five games, but started to hit their stride, and before it was over, the Bulldogs had put up one of Fox’s best seasons in his five at Georgia.
Fox went from the proverbial hot seat to signing a two-year contract extension. On Wednesday, SEC media voted his Bulldogs to finish fifth in the league this season. Guard Charles Mann was voted second-team preseason All-SEC.
“I don’t think (the players) ever really doubted that we would have a good team,” Fox said. “I think the challenge for us was how quickly we could adjust to playing without (Caldwell-Pope). And we weren’t very good before Thanksgiving. It took us four or five games before we figured out how to play without Kentavious. But once we did we had a good year.”
The Bulldogs won five of seven games leading into conference play — and used a 12-6 run in the SEC to finish tied with Kentucky for second place in the conference. The early-season scuffling cost them a berth in the NCAA tournament, and they lost in the second round of the NIT.
“At the end of the year you would not have wanted to play Georgia in the NCAA tournament,” noted Bruce Pearl, who is back in the SEC coaching at Auburn three years after he was fired at Tennessee.
Fox has three other returning starters to build around, including his junior backcourt tandem of Mann and Kenny Gaines. Mann led Georgia in scoring last season with 13.9 points per game while playing through knee tendinitis.
Mann had a platelet-rich plasma injection before resting for six weeks leading to last season. He didn’t start the season in his usual shape, and his ballhandling suffered for it, not that he would — and he didn’t — use it as an excuse.
“I was pretty much playing on one leg last year, and it was tough, but I got through it,” said Mann, who committed a team-high 113 turnovers compared with 97 assists. “I feel completely better. I’m back to me. I’m playing my game. And I should be fine this whole year.”
Senior 6-foot-8 forward Marcus Thornton brings experience to the post, where he returns as Georgia’s leading rebounder (6.1 rebounds per game). He’ll be complemented by the return of inside-outside threat Nemanja Djurisic (6-8) and incoming freshmen Yante Maten (6-8) and Nigerian-born Osahen Iduwe (6-10).
“I think in years before we didn’t have a lot of certainly with our team, starting within ourselves,” Thornton said. “I think this year we established some of that, guys having played big roles in games that we were able to tough out and win.”
And while Fox is still sorting out what to do at small forward — he’s considering moving 6-foot-4 guard Juwan Parker there and playing a small lineup — Thornton pointed out the Bulldogs can’t wait around to make their adjustments this time around.
“We know that we’ve got to start with the mindset we had at the end of the year,” Thornton said.
The Bulldogs open the season at Georgia Tech. Then they’ll see the likes of Gonzaga and either Minnesota or St. John’s in the preseason NIT.
The SEC schedule doesn’t have a lot of let-up, and Georgia has to play Kentucky twice this season. Unlike last year, though, Georgia gets to play Tennessee, Kentucky and Florida at home. Georgia lost to all three of the SEC’s NCAA tournament teams last year on the road before losing to Kentucky a second time in the SEC tournament.
“That was a challenge because it affected us in a lot of ways,” Fox said. “If you get one of them at home can you sneak out a victory and maybe get second place all on your own. But all I know is we got some of those people coming in (to Stegeman Coliseum) this year, and they’ll all have good teams again.”
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