A tough season for Georgia basketball coach Mark Fox got tougher over the weekend. His father, Raymond Lewis Fox, died in Garden City, Kan., on Saturday. He was 78.
Fox’s father struggled with a lung ailment for quite some time, so his death wasn’t entirely unexpected. In fact, Fox learned his father was close to dying before the Bulldogs tipped off at George Washington on Friday night.
Georgia (6-6) lost to the Colonials 73-55, then Fox flew home to Kansas briefly before returning Sunday to prep his team for Wednesday night’s SEC opener at No. 21 Missouri (12-1).
The funeral for Raymond Fox was held Tuesday evening in Garden City. Fox flew there and was to rejoin the team in Columbia, Mo., 500 miles east, on Wednesday.
Fox said his father, a high school coach and educator, instructed him not to let his death disrupt him from his duties at Georgia.
“My dad believed in coaching and education,” Fox said Monday. “… Ultimately I think the impact he made on me was, as a coach, as an educator, your obligation is to the student and the team.”
As for the matter of the Georgia basketball team, there is much work to do there. The Bulldogs lost their last two games of the non-conference schedule and to their only six opponents of any RPI significance. Their wins have come against Wofford, Appalachian State, Chattanooga, Lipscomb, Gardner-Webb and Western Carolina.
And Georgia could not have drawn a more difficult start to the SEC portion of the schedule. The Tigers have the best record in the league and are virtually unbeatable at Mizzou Arena, where they have won 38 of their past 42 games.
“I’m surprised we’re not playing at (Kentucky’s) Rupp (Arena) twice to start the league,” Fox said sarcastically. “Look at our openers the last five years. No surprise we’ve got a hard one.”
Under Fox, the Bulldogs’ previous openers have been at Florida, at home against Alabama, at home against Kentucky and at Kentucky.
This Missouri team is as good or better than any of those. Coach Frank Haith’s Tigers are led by a trio of 6-foot-5 guards — Jordan Clarkson (19.3 ppg), Jabari Brown (18.4) and Earnest Ross (14.0) — who provide 67.8 percent of the scoring, which is a healthy 76.2 points per game. Missouri shoots nearly 49 percent from the floor, holds opponents to 38.2 percent shooting and has a plus-8.9 rebounding average.
No team is flawless, but the Tigers — who have the longest streak of NCAA tournament appearances among SEC programs at six — have been close to it.
“You’ve got a team that’s playing very fast. They shoot the 3; they spread you out; they’ve got a home-court advantage,” Fox said. “We have to find a way to win.”
Conversely, Georgia just doesn’t do a lot very well. The Bulldogs rank last in the SEC in assists (10.4 pg), assists to turnovers (125-151) and 3-point shooting (4.2 pg) and 12th in free-throw shooting (65.2). There’s not much to suggest they’ll be able to match up.
“It’s been tough the last four or five days,” junior forward Nemi Djurisic said. “But we also have to stay positive. We know the things we have to improve are fixable. Coach is telling us to stay positive and just do the little things and concentrate more on the defensive end and rebounding.”
All the talk in the offseason was about how the Bulldogs were going to account for the lost scoring output of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, the No. 8 pick in the past NBA draft. But Georgia has been better overall on offense, averaging 71.8 points per game, up nearly a dozen points from a season ago. But Caldwell-Pope also was the Bulldogs’ best defender and leading rebounder, and that remains a deficiency.
“When we want to defend, we can defend,” said sophomore guard Charles Mann, the team’s leading scorer at 13.0 per game. “That’s an area we have to address and get better at fast in order to win. Scoring hasn’t been an issue for us this season, so we just have to defend better.”
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