Georgia coach Mark Fox managed to stay on point for almost all of the seven minutes he gave reporters before Friday’s practice at the Stegeman Training Facility. He answered persistent questions about what’s wrong with the Bulldogs with various forms of “we’re not playing well and we need to play better.”
Then, pressed for an explanation of just how upset he has been with the team’s effort and execution the last week, he snapped.
“You can’t get a picture for how pissed off I am,” Fox said, eyes glaring. “Excuse my language, but I didn’t like at all how we played last week. So we’ve got to go back to work.”
It was indeed a very bad week. The Bulldogs (16-9, 7-6 SEC) lost back-to-back home games to Auburn and South Carolina, teams in the bottom quarter of the conference standing. In the process, Georgia’s RPI plummeted 20 spots on average, so it slogs an RPI in the 40s to Tuscaloosa to face a competitive Alabama team.
The Crimson Tide (16-10, 6-7) just knocked off that same Auburn team that came to Athens and beat Georgia 79-68 at Auburn Arena.
So, yes, the Bulldogs and their coach are a bit on edge as they prepare for Saturday’s 8 p.m. tip at Coleman Coliseum.
“We just need to play better,” Fox groused. “It doesn’t matter if you’re home or on the road, you’ve got to play well. And we didn’t play well last week. So we need to play well. That’s the bottom line.”
In Georgia’s defense, there are some tangible reasons for its subpar play. The Bulldogs have been inundated with injury issues. They were without starting point guard J.J. Frazier in the 64-58 loss to South Carolina on Tuesday. The 5-foot-10 sophomore suffered a facial fracture and concussion in the previous against Auburn. Frazier played the two previous games with a hairline fracture in his left (shooting) hand, the result of a hard fall taken in Georgia’s win at Texas A&M on Feb. 11.
Frazier may not be available against Alabama. Fox indicated that will be a game-time decision based on UGA’s concussion protocol. Meanwhile, the Bulldogs will continue to play without starting small forward Juwan Parker, who will miss his 11th game with an Achilles tendon injury.
Georgia has also lost Marcus Thornton, Yante Maten and Kenny Paul Geno for stretches of games this season. In all, its players have recorded a total of 27 DNPs (did not play) because of illnesses or injury. But the Bulldogs refuse to use that as an excuse.
“We’ve always had the next-man-up philosophy, and I think we just haven’t played well,” said Thornton, who has not recorded double-figure points or rebounds since returning from a concussion Feb. 7.
“There have been multiple times we haven’t had whoever or whatever the case may have been, but we’ve been able to get through it. We just haven’t played well. We’ve just got to focus on playing well again.”
The lack of a consistent rotation does explain some of the Bulldogs’ struggles on offense in recent weeks. Georgia hasn’t scored in the 70s in the past six games after averaging 73 in its first seven SEC games.
“There have been a lot of changes and things we’ve had to do to adjust ourselves due to injuries and stuff,” senior Nemanja Djurisic said.
“But I don’t think we’ve been playing well with the players that we have, and there’s no excuse for that. We need to get back to playing the right way, playing hard and just playing better basketball from the top to the bottom.”
Said Fox: “We need to get whole. We need to get a rotation. That’s been the hard thing. We didn’t play well and we’ve got to own up to that responsibility as we work to get back to playing well. The first thing we have to do is establish some consistency in our rotation and some of that has been taken out of our hands. But with whoever is suiting up, there is a certain level of execution that we expect and we didn’t get that. So we’ve been trying to get back to that.”
About the Author
