Georgia coach Mark Fox put together a rigid nonconference schedule to prepare the Bulldogs for SEC road play, but he also expected his roster to look different.
On the heels of a home loss to Alabama in their league opener, the Bulldogs (9-6, 0-1 SEC) face two of the league’s better teams on the road. They get No. 19 Florida (12-4, 0-1) in a regionally-televised game Tuesday night in Gainesville, and Vanderbilt (11-4, 1-0) on Saturday in Nashville.
“Obviously that will be a big challenge,” Fox said. “We’re going to go against two very good basketball teams on their floors. We’re going to have top play very well to give ourselves a chance to win.”
Fox scheduled to prepare his Bulldogs for the horrors of SEC travel. They’ve already played at Xavier, Colorado and Southern California. While they were 1-2 in those games, they could have beaten the Buffaloes and pulled through with a 63-59 win over the Trojans in Los Angeles.
Yet Georgia will be trotting out a different team this week: Starting power forward Marcus Thornton remains sidelined with a knee injury.
“It was good for these young guys to understand what the road was like and to have some success like they did at S.C.,” Fox said of the Pac-12 team. “But we’re a different team now. With Thornton’s injury we’ve had to change so much, so the players that played those road games, their roles are different now.”
Georgia’s depth problems in the frontcourt were exposed in the loss to Alabama. The Bulldogs did a decent job of containing all-star forward JaMychal Green, who finished with just eight points. They were overwhelmed on the backboards, though, outrebounded 35-20 in a 74-59 loss.
“Georgia has lost some players from a year ago from their frontcourt,” said Florida coach Billy Donovan, whose squad lost 67-56 on the road at Tennessee on Saturday. “But their backcourt play has been outstanding and they have some very, very talented freshmen. So we expect this to be a challenge for us.”
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