University of Georgia fans (myself included) everywhere are presumably feeling a tad bit down about the current state of Mark Richt’s football team. After last Saturday’s showing in Starkville, how could they not be?
Hopefully everyone can continue to support the football team going forward, and maybe the return of A.J. Green can spark a mild winning streak – I am flying to Boulder, CO with some friends for the game and I pray that the Dawgs aren’t 1-4 when I return home on Monday afternoon.
But enough about football.
October is quickly approaching and that means that we are only one month away from the start of the 2010-2011 NCAA basketball season. The Dawgs open things up at home against Mississippi Valley State on November 12th – no game time has been set yet. You can bookmark the complete schedule from the Georgiadogs.com website.
This season Mark Fox will start the year with probably the best basketball team that UGA has had since the days of Jim Harrick and his legendary basketball tests. ESPN college basketball analyst, Andy Katz, has Georgia in his preseason Top 25 (actually rounding out the list at #25). When was the last time ESPN had a Georgia basketball team on any of it’s preseason material?
ESPN’s Dick Vitale put Trey Thompkins on his “Second Team Preseason All-Americans” list. Thompkins should have an amazing supporting cast on the floor with him this year, starting with junior guard/forward Travis Leslie aka “The Elevator from Decatur”. This summer Leslie supposedly added a three-point shot to his repertoire (that being putting big men on posters when he drives into the lane – see Demarcus Cousins). Both of these guys are projected first-round draft picks in the 2011 NBA Draft.
Transfer Gerald Robinson should give Georgia a point guard that can penetrate and create off the dribble – something the Dawgs definitely lacked last season. Robinson’s presence on the court will prevent teams from being able to double-team Thompkins, and his ability to slash should free up Dustin Ware and sharp-shooting transfer Sherrard Brantley for a lot of open looks from beyond the arc.
There are some interesting out-of-conference match-ups on this year’s schedule – Colorado, @ Saint Louis (ESPN’s Pat Forde likes them), The Old Spice Classic Tournament, UAB, @ Georgia Tech and then a big-time game in Athens with Xavier on February 8th (right in the middle of SEC play).
So don’t let the football team’s three-game losing streak get you down, because Mark Fox’s Dawgs should do a lot of winning this season.
Good Grief. Are we Kentucky? We care about right now. About football. I’ll be up about our Hoop Dawgs in February.
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I hear ya Music City Dawg…I’m attending the game in Boulder, so I’m still feeling football.
Just seemed like some good news might be nice for a change, and the football team hasn’t been providing us with any.
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I’m all about basketball right now. I’m not sure our football team could score if the other team got off the field. Look for Price to really have a big year opposite Trey on the block.
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at 1-4, we can officially start thinking basketball, all that is left is to beat the Vols this week, a loss there and the season will be in nuclear meltodown mode.
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Music City represents everything wrong with our Basketball program. You can’t concentrate on bball till February, the season is past half over by then. Why can’t UGA fans concentrate and talk about more than one sport at a time? Why wait till February to support a team that looks to have more success than the beloved football program. I will never understand it. I can’t wait to get my bball tickets in the mail and attend the practice/dinner in November. Awesome times ahead that are not football related.
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Amen
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Good to see the blog back. I am really looking forward to this season, in which I think we can make some noise if we can stay relatively injury free. I know I should take it one season at a time, but was really disappointed that Royal committed to Tech. We are on track to lose ALL our bigs after this season.
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Losing Royal did stink. However, apparently we did get a commitment from a 7-foot JUCO transfer yesterday – http://blogs.ajc.com/recruiting/2010/10/18/georgia-basketball-gets-commitment-from-7-foot-juco-center/?cxntfid=blogs_recruiting.
It looks like he didn’t start playing basketball until his junior year of high school…
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The story I read a few hours after my post says that this 7-footer is not a project. We’ll see–I hope his JUCO stats are a little more impressive this year than last.
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