The NFL’s Super Bowl is not for another two weeks, but the Super Bowl for the Georgia Bulldogs’ basketball team is Saturday night at 8 at Stegeman Coliseum.
The Bulldogs (6-10, 0-3 SEC) are that desperate to win. They’ll be playing host to LSU (9-5, 0-3), one of the few SEC teams against which they appear to be competitive peers at this early juncture. If Georgia doesn’t take care of business, it will be in real danger of falling 0-6 in league play, with a road date at Texas A&M and a home game against No. 10 Florida waiting on the other side.
Of course, the Bulldogs aren’t going to admit that.
“Every game is important, really,” coach Mark Fox said, predictably. “This game is important, as they all are.”
But whether or not Georgia can beat LSU Saturday night is not the question foremost on the minds of the Bulldogs’ fans. They’re wondering more about the big picture when it comes to the state university’s men’s basketball program.
As the Bulldogs lumber through what is shaping up to be another mediocre season at best, what they’re asking is, “why can’t Georgia play winning basketball consistently?”
It is not the first time this has come up. People have wondered that for years. This is, after all, a basketball program that has in its 108-year history recorded 20 or more wins in a season just nine times and logged a winning mark in conference play only 14 times.
“You’re asking the wrong guy about that,” said Hugh Durham, who led Georgia to four 20-plus-win seasons and its only Final Four appearance in 17 years as its coach (1979-95). “I took a lot of pride in the fact that we were pretty consistent. But other guys have done a good job. Tubby (Smith) did a good job. Jim Harrick turned out a couple of outstanding teams. But I don’t know. We had some pretty good players when you really get down to it.”
That is the one constant theme that comes up when discussing both the program’s regular struggles and the pockets of success it has had over the decades. When Georgia has been very good, it has had very good players.
Sportscaster Matt Stewart covers four games a week for CSS and other television networks and began his broadcasting career at WRFC, then the flagship station for the Georgia Bulldogs radio network. He, too, points to the talent factor when describing Georgia’s problems winning over years.
“Why is Georgia football good? Because they get great players,” said Stewart, who will call Saturday’s game on CSS. “The same thing applies to basketball. It’s not a different formula. That’s why Kentucky is great in basketball, because it gets great players. It really comes down to players.”
The Bulldogs’ main problem this season is that it has but one really good player. Sophomore Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is the team’s only double-figure scorer (16.8 ppg) and has led the team in scoring in 14 of its 16 games.
Caldwell-Pope, a 6-foot-5 shooting guard came to Georgia as a 5-star prospect and a McDonald’s All-American. But too often the Bulldogs have missed on players of his ilk, and the state is chocked full of them.
Case in point: UGA was a finalist for Tony Parker. The 6-9, 275-pound center was ranked No. 6 in the nation at his position and played for Miller Grove High, located just 50 minutes away in Lithonia. Parker signed with UCLA.
The Bulldogs did land Parker’s teammate, Brandon Morris.
“I didn’t want to leave Georgia. I didn’t want to go anywhere far away,” said Morris, who had offers from Florida, Ohio State, Texas and UCLA, among others. “I wanted my mom and my sister to be able to come see me play. And Coach Fox told me I’d have the opportunity to play major minutes as a freshman.”
Fox has come through on that front. Morris, a 6-7 forward, will start his eighth game of the season against LSU better than 28 minutes per game.
Therein lay one of the Bulldogs’ main problems this season. They’re young. Fox has utilized 11 different starting lineups, but his main group features two freshmen (Morris and Charles Mann, two sophomores (Caldwell-Pope and Nemanja Djurisic) and a junior (Donte Williams).
The Bulldogs have been a little unlucky as well. Fox signed Mr. Georgia Basketball in his first season in Athens. But forward Marcus Thornton ended up with chronic knee problems and currently sidelined indefinitely.
Fox, who's hoping to avoid a third losing season in four, pleads for patience.
"These guys need time,” Fox said. “They're talented players, they just need time."
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