As I write this, it’s 46 degrees and overcast in Athens. But they’re playing ball over at Foley Field as the Diamond Dawgs begin the 2007 season against defending NCAA champion Oregon State.

Georgia roared back from a slow SEC start last year to reach Omaha. Though they’re picked to finish fifth in the SEC East, the great thing about college baseball is that the amount of turnover from year to year gives most any team a chance to put a good season together.

What do I expect from the Diamond Dawgs this year? First is a repeat trip to the NCAA Tournament. Though the Diamond Dawgs have been to the College World Series three times in recent years, they’ve often followed up those trips with a down year and no postseason. I would like for them to show that consistency this year and at the minimum earn another NCAA Tournament bid. They lost some good players from last year’s team, so it will take some good coaching and some newcomers stepping in for that to happen.

My second expectation? Simple. Take the season series from Georgia Tech. Again.

It’s hard to take much from a 41-point blowout win, but there were two things worth noting from last night’s 92-51 Lady Dog win at Alabama.

First, it was Georgia’s 20th win of the season. Georgia has won at least 20 games in 23 of coach Andy Landers’ 28 seasons. It’s easy to become bored with that milestone, but when you look around Stegeman and think what a single 20-win season would mean for the men’s program these days, it’s never a small accomplishment. Congratulations to Coach Landers and the team.

Second, Cori Chambers found her shot. You never want to say that someone is out of a slump after just one game, but Chambers showed up in a big way last night. She shot 50% from the floor and over 50% from behind the arc. She made more than two three-pointers for the first time since the Mississippi State game in mid-January. I’ve been critical of Cori here because you expect more from a senior captain, but she deserves some recognition for a great game.

If Chambers can continue to shoot well, Georgia becomes a much more different team. While she was slumping, freshmen Angel Robinson and Christi Marshall have really come on. Robinson earned conference Freshman of the Week honors last week and followed that up with her first double-double last night. With Robinson and Tasha Humphrey playing well inside, Georgia has just been missing that steady outside shot to loosen up defenses. Chambers firing from outside again would make the Georgia offense very, very tough to defend.

South Carolina is next in Athens on Sunday.

With the High Holy Day of college football’s national signing day past us now, the competition to get the best prospects and be named the best class is as much of a sport to some fans as the football games themselves. At the center of this "sport" are the recruiting services. Since the early 1980s, these services have gone from newsletters and 900-numbers to full-fledged media companies with TV and radio shows, exclusive combines, and people as pseudo-celebrities and brands.

Behind the growth of this industry are the recruitniks who live and breathe recruiting news. Recruitniks have a love-hate relationship with the recruiting services. They devour every morsel of information and multimedia, and they rejoice when the prospects heading to their school are rated highly. After all, the recruiting rankings are the scoreboard in this sport. That fact also brings out the hate mail if the news is bad. The passion and irrationality can create a bizarre cast of characters on both sides of the information exchange including the overzealous, walking-NCAA-violation fan and the arrogant kingmaker recruiting guru. Most of us fall short of those extremes – I hope.

I don’t claim to be any kind of recruiting expert, and I certainly don’t follow recruiting as much as many people do. I know generally who Georgia will sign and some basics about those guys, and I am familiar with the higher-profile targets who considered Georgia this year. That’s about it. I’ve found that following recruiting and absorbing all of this information as a casual recruitnik has been a lot easier and less stressful keeping these things in mind:

• Recruiting rankings and ratings are just opinions. They might be based on hours of film study or trips and interviews all over the state, or they might be shots in the dark. Some of the "gurus" might have never played or been involved with college football; some have. That doesn’t mean that their opinions are without merit; some have worked hard to become informed and even earn the off-the-record confidences of coaches. There are no absolutes in this business, so just relax – discuss, disagree if you like, and remember that the rankings and ratings you see are just someone’s opinion.
  
• Recruiting rankings and ratings are not perfect and are often wrong. This might seem like the most mind-numbingly obvious thing you’ve ever read, but forgetting this simple point leads to so much of the bad blood from those who take these things too seriously. The recruiting services sell credibility and authority, so the more insecure among them are hesitant to admit that they might get it wrong. It’s OK to admit that, and to me it actually adds to the credibility of those who aren’t stuck on being right all the time. On the other side, you have fans too caught up in the minutia of specific rankings. "Why is our running back only rated four stars? Why is he the #3 guy in the state when he is clearly better than the #2 guy?"
  
• Recruiting rankings, even with their imperfections, can still provide some useful information in the big picture. If you look at the top prospects on a service like Rivals.com, you’ll see that most are committed to or have been offered by some of the best programs in the nation. If the best schools are offering the guys at the top of your list, chances are that you’ve identified some pretty good prospects. If you think in terms of generalities and don’t worry about specific rankings (the #6 vs. the #8 class), they have a good bit of value and show which teams should have better talent. Then it’s up to coaching, player development, scheme, academics, and everything else that turns the potential of top prospects into productive college players.
  
• Coaches are also not perfect in their evaluations. The ranks of Division 1 and 1-AA are full of stars that the big programs missed on. In fact, those kinds of programs depend on finding such guys that slip under the radar. Further, the top programs often have a good bit of dead weight from scholarship players who didn’t pan out. If the coaches who are supposed to be the real experts and have resources to meet and evaluate these prospects can’t get it right much of the time, I don’t hold the recruiting services to a higher standard of accuracy. Some coaches get it right more often than others; you can tell who they are because they keep their jobs.
  
  There’s an interesting post from HeismanPundit recently where he looks at the recruiting pedigree of various Heisman winners. Naturally the paper trail is much better for players from the Internet era, but his list is pretty thorough. What strikes me is that of the Heisman winners he considered to be top prospects, nearly all of them won the Heisman at a traditional power (surely the dynamics of the Heismandments come into play there). On the other hand, almost all of the Heisman winners he lists who weren’t top prospects won their awards at schools on the periphery of college football. Wuerffel seems to be the exception, but even Florida wasn’t much of a traditional power until the Spurrier years. It’s likely that a lot of "good" programs passed on or lightly recruited guys like Sanders and Ware, and they dramatically elevated their programs in such a way that they had the outrageously successful seasons it takes to win a Heisman at a school like BYU. If you want a name who fits that mold for next season, it’s Colt Brennan. He started his career as a walk-on at Colorado before going to Hawaii via a junior college and is poised to have the obscene stats that you need for Heisman consideration from such schools.
  
• As a rule, you want higher-rated prospects. One of the things you’ll hear this time of year, and I admit it annoys me to no end, is someone who’ll say, "Recruiting rankings don’t matter – <player name> was just a two-star prospect and he turned out to be an All-American." Good for him. Again, if the coaches can’t even get it right, I’m going to accept that there will be cases where blue-chippers are never heard from and walk-ons become All-Americans. This is usually the mantra of the fan whose school just lost out on a highly-rated kid. There is a reason why teams like Florida and SoCal are loading up on five-star prospects. As a rule, they’re better prospects. More of them, as a percentage, turn into elite college players. While some top prospects don’t pan out, having more on your roster means you have a much better chance of having a few who do. An elite prospect who lives up to that tremendously high billing can be truly special.
  
• Player-to-player comparisons get more hazy the closer you get to the national level. How can you say with any certainty that one offensive guard from Virginia is better than some other one from Ohio? In the same county or region, you might be able to get a pretty good comparison between two kids who play against each other. Even in the same state, you’ll have comparable opponents and are usually getting the opinion of someone who has a good feel for the quality of football in different parts of the state. But when you get to the multi-state region or the national level, it’s a tough job. You have editors trying to pull together the opinions of different local guys each with their own biases, and highlight films don’t always tell the whole story. Combines and national all-star games can help, but even they provide relatively few points of comparison. So someone is the #6 quarterback in the nation instead of #3. What does that mean?
  
• Highlight videos are nice, but they are highlights. Most of the recruiting services offer deep libraries of highlight videos now, and some of them are truly sick. Fans can make the mistake of getting too caught up on the highlights though. They are supposed to make the prospect look good, and you can piece together a pretty decent reel on most anyone who has seen much playing time. They’ll show the lineman making a pancake block, but they won’t show him giving up the sack. They’ll show the circus catch but not the pass that went right through a receiver’s hands.
  
• Who’s offering? If you want a very general sense about the potential of a prospect, look at who is after him. If is down to Michigan, Oklahoma, and Texas, he’s probably pretty good. Scholarships are scarce, and programs don’t intend to waste them on prospects they don’t consider to be worth it. You have to be a bit careful with this one though, because the inverse doesn’t always apply: the absence of a lot of big-name offers doesn’t necessarily mean that the prospect is a stiff. Maybe the staff has found a true diamond in the rough. Maybe the prospect fits a specific need that other teams don’t have. Maybe there are academic or character concerns. Maybe he’s such a mortal lock to one school that others don’t even bother. All of those cases happen every year. There are dozens of reasons why programs do and don’t offer certain prospects.
  
• Recruiting services are great for gathering data points. This is where they add most of their value in my eyes. Where is a prospect looking? Who has offered? Who leads? Will he qualify? The steady stream of updates about and direct quotes from the prospects and those involved in the recruiting process is very valuable information to those who follow recruiting. Though these decisions can often be fickle or irrational, the services do a great job of identifying the important factors and participants in the decision. Some of the best even form solid relationships with the prospects and are the first to know, often from the prospect himself, when there is something to report. College coaches subscribe to these services just to keep up with this kind of information. I get a bit less interested when the "guru" puts on his evaluator cap and starts telling me about a lineman’s technique with his feet or a defensive back’s hips.

As we get ready to welcome the next football signing class, Steve Patterson at UGASports.com compiles some of their signing day coverage going as far back as 1998. Much of it is free content, so read away. Some humorous stuff in there as you remember who did and didn’t pan out.

From today’s AJC:

Faced with what he calls an “eroding” financial situation in his department, Georgia Tech athletics director Dan Radakovich today will announce a plan to bring in more money from football and basketball season-ticket sales.

The plan, to be outlined in a letter to season-ticket holders, will require a minimum annual donation to a new “Tech Fund” for the right to buy prime season tickets. The required donation, which is in addition to the face price of tickets, will be as high as $450 per seat per year for football and up to $500 per seat per year for men’s basketball.

Talk about bad timing. Now that Calvin Johnson’s departure has closed the most interesting era of Georgia Tech football in the past decade and now that the basketball program has slid back into the lower half of the ACC from a Final Four trip, they want to turn the screws to get a bit more cash from their fan base to make up for an operating deficit.

The reason for such measures: Radakovich said Tech’s athletics department was $2.7 million in the red for fiscal 2006, not including debt service and the revenue earmarked for paying it. He said the projected operating deficit for fiscal 2007 would be $2.89 million without changes.

Georgia’s incredible legacy of operating in the black is certainly an exception in the world of college sports. Tech’s situation isn’t unusual, but it is a reminder how good we’ve got it and how good the financial stewardship of the program has been under Dooley and Evans. Radakovich is known as a sharp financial guy with a good head for business, but we’ll see how the Tech fan base reacts to this decision given the quality of the product they are now asked to pay even more to support.

This morning while we were hitting the snooze button and making coffee, the Georgia football team had finished their first mat drill session of the year. They’re out there before daybreak puking into garbage pails trying to get the mental edge that will mean the extra yard, the extra inch of elevation, the extra burst of speed that will mean the difference in a Georgia win this year.

It’s not just the men struggling with offense.

In four games this year with Tennessee and LSU – their competition for the top of the SEC standings – Georgia has averaged around 52 points per game. In the first three of those games, they at least played defense effectively enough to remain competitive and even beat LSU once. It looked in the first half last night as if that would be the story again. In the second half, even the defense was missing. Tennessee got the ball inside to Candace Parker, and she either made the move to the basket or kicked the ball outside to the open look. Tennessee won 73-57.

The story of the game was possessions. Georgia attempted just 50 shots. Because of turnovers and steals, Tennessee attempted 61. Neither team shot well, but you’d have to really fill up the basket to score many points with just 50 field goal attempts. “The turnovers were too many for us to be in any better shape than we were score-wise,” said coach Andy Landers. Many of those turnovers were Tennessee steals, resulting in some easy transition opportunities for the Lady Vols.

When they could get shots off, Georgia had a problem with what once had been a strength. Much like the men, the Lady Dogs are suffering through problems from outside. Cori Chambers, Georgia’s three-point leader for a season and a career, has dropped off the face of the earth. Since becoming Georgia’s career three-point leader with a 6-for-12 performance at Mississippi State on January 11, Chambers has shot just 5-for-37 from outside (13.5%). She’s not alone though. Georgia didn’t hit their first three-pointer until the final ten minutes of the game last night, and only made two as a team in the game.

As bad as things got last night, and they got pretty bad, Georgia is still in decent position to finish second in the SEC if they can manage to win out. That’s not easy in this conference, but they are finished with their top four opponents: Tennessee, LSU, Vanderbilt, and Ole Miss. Ole Miss and LSU must still play Tennessee. Though Georgia is all but eliminated from the conference title picture now, they are still playing well enough to finish with a high seed in the SEC and NCAA tournaments. If they are to make much of a run in either, that outside shooting is going to have to come around to balance the work that Humphrey and Robinson are doing inside.

The logo in question.

The University of Georgia Athletic Association has sued Bulldog Movers of Atlanta over the company’s attempt to register their name and logo.

Because the firm 1) uses the “Bulldog” name, 2) has a bulldog in their logo, and 3) uses a red and black color scheme, the attempt to register the company’s logo is a threat to the athletic association’s athletic association’s “registered symbols and colors”.

This lawsuit might seem heavy-handed, but the dispute seems to be mainly over the movers’ attempts to register the name and logo. UGA has more or less left alone the gazillion companies in the area using the Bulldog name who apparently have not tried to claim any kind of ownership of it.

As far as the logo goes, it’s a bulldog. But it’s not THE bulldog. Since I’m not a copyright lawyer able to talk about the points of law here, I’ll just speculate wildly and say that I don’t believe this company’s logo infringes on the Georgia Bulldog logo, but we’ll see how this all turns out and if the movers have the energy to fight this.

The past two Super Bowls have been some of the ugliest football I’ve had to watch. I still can’t believe that what Chicago trotted out there Sunday night was supposed to be professional football at its highest level. Indy’s dink-and-draw offense looked remotely attractive and effective only because Chicago looked so weak. I don’t know if it was the weather or the talent level being so even, but this was another painful four hours where the commercials were more entertaining.

Even in a BCS blowout, Florida’s offense looked interesting and was fun to watch. Last year’s Texas win was as good as football gets. The NFL sure knows how to market itself though. Even though the best football was played in the conference title games, they still have us convinced that this was the Big Game.

Last night’s 66-61 loss at Vanderbilt might seem like just another close road SEC loss, but there are two trends developing that might continue to hurt this team in SEC play. It’s not just about the past two losses; Georgia has even been able to overcome these things and win, but I don’t know how many more wins you can expect with these things happening.

• Georgia’s offensive decisions. Takais Brown did not attempt a shot nor go to the foul line for the entire last ten minutes of the game. I don’t know how many touches he got, but he was not a factor on offense. The leading scorer and a guy shooting 5-for-8 from the night is completely taken out of our offense due to shot selection and bad decisions. Meanwhile, Mike Mercer leads us in attempts again and shoots for another low percentage. Surprised?

  Honestly, I don’t blame Brown or Mercer. This wasn’t the first game that Mercer took too many shots and played out of control. If Richt had a quarterback whose favorite check was to throw deep into double-coverage no matter what was called, we’d first get on that QB, but eventually we’d wonder why Richt kept him in the game. Bad shot selection in basketball is bad enough, but when it comes from your leading shooter, it’s twice as bad. Think in terms of possession. If you have, say, 15 turnovers as a team and your leading attempts guy takes 10 shots that are rushed or low-percentage for him, that’s actually 25 possessions where you didn’t get a good shot. That’s a lot of pressure on the defense.

  Coach Felton must tighten up his offense. Georgia didn’t learn from the Kentucky game, and they shot under 30% from outside in the past two games on an average of 25 three-point attempts in each game while Brown attempted just 8 shots in each game. Why should we expect anything different against Florida and down the road?

• First half production. In the four games leading up to and including the Alabama game, Georgia averaged 39.5 first half points in each game. They didn’t fail to score fewer than 30. Since the Alabama game, Georgia is averaging 28.5 points in the first half and has scored 30 or fewer in three of those games and no more than 33 points. They have trailed at halftime in each of the past four games.

  The point isn’t that Georgia came back to win two of those games or that they scored 39 points in the second half at Vanderbilt. When you dig yourself that kind of hole in the first half, it requires a lot of energy to come back. Against Kentucky and LSU, Georgia had the home crowd and good enough defense to completely stifle the other team in the second half. Still, because of the first half, all of that great second half play just meant that Georgia had a shot at the end of the game.

Are these two trends related? You tell me. Here’s Georgia’s three-point shooting in each of the past four first halves: 2-15, 3-11, 1-14 , 3-10. Less than 30% in each game.

If this team is going to choose to live or die by the three-pointer, they have to shoot much better and make sure the people they have on the court taking the deep shots can hit them. If they want to be a more balanced team and take advantage of the improving Brown inside, then he shouldn’t be third or fourth on the team in attempts.

Rivals.com is reporting that Jon Richt, son of Georgia coach Mark Richt, has committed to Clemson. Jon is currently a junior at Prince Avenue Christian School in Athens, and he will be part of the 2008 signing class. He’ll be coming in behind highly-regarded quarterback Willy Korn, so it might be a while before he is heard from.

I think this is a wise move all around. For Jon, it’s reasonably close to home, and as much as we don’t like Clemson around here, there are plenty of schools with a worse football tradition. I also think that this decision lets both Jon and Mark avoid the ugliness that can creep up when family is involved. We heard grumblings, unfounded of course, of nepotism and favoritism this year with JT3, and his father isn’t even the head coach. Jon can make a name for himself now without the “coach’s kid” label over his head. Though many sons do end up playing for their fathers, it can be a very awkward situation and even a distraction.

Though Vince Dooley had family members involved in coaching the program while he was a head coach, Derek Dooley still went off to college at Virginia. I think it’s very appropriate that the Richts are following suit. Best of luck to Jon…unless we play Clemson any time soon.

Finally.

Georgia has had some excruciatingly close losses to LSU over a three-year drought that dates back to the end of Sue Gunter’s coaching career. Whether it was the 2004 Elite Eight or the 2005 SEC Tournament or the game in Athens last year, Georgia played LSU down to the wire but came up just short each time during the period that LSU briefly rose into the elite of women’s college basketball. It wasn’t that one team outplayed or outcoached the other; LSU was just the team left standing at the end.

With that recent history, you’d have to figure that when Georgia finally got over the LSU hump, it would take some sort of play at the end of another close game. That’s exactly what happened last night as they beat LSU 53-51 in Athens on a buzzer-beating shot from freshman Ashley Houts. 53-51. That wasn’t the halftime score…26-21 was all these teams could manage after 20 minutes. This was a close, defensive game the whole way.

Georgia used the same defensive strategy they’ve used over most of the games in this three-year stretch: they focused on and doubled up on LSU’s primary weapon and dared other LSU players to make the shots. This strategy (the triangle-and-two from the 2005 SEC Tournament game in particular) has caused fans to go nuts when they saw LSU players left wide open, but more often than not the plan has worked. LSU hasn’t really run up big point totals in many of these games, and their stars have generally had good but not career-type games. The same strategy worked against last night. All-American center Sylvia Fowles faced constant double-teams. While she ended up with 17 points, she never got on the kind of roll that allowed LSU to get into any kind of offensive rhythym. There was a little wrinkle in the strategy as Quianna Chaney started burying three-pointers, and she scored 14 of LSU’s 26 first half points. Georgia adjusted, and Chaney was held to just six points in the second half while they continued to double up on Fowles.

The Georgia defense became stifling in the second half. When a Fowles basket with over nine minutes left gave LSU the 40-35 lead, Georgia held LSU to only two points over the next seven minutes. A 40-35 LSU lead turned into a 49-42 Georgia advantage.

The difference in this game was simply Angel Robinson’s offense. For the past two years, Tasha Humphrey had been the sole focus of the Georgia post offense. She’s more than held her own against Sylvia Fowles in some epic battles, but no one else could do much of anything inside. With Fowles matched up on Humphrey, Robinson presented a matchup problem for LSU. Because Humphrey is a threat to score from anywhere in the halfcourt offense, Fowles had to respect her shot and step out from the low post.

Georgia countered by going high-low or getting Robinson isolated on the low post against a much weaker post defender than Fowles. During a pivotal second half run where Georgia extended their lead to 49-42, Robinson scored three straight baskets. She sealed off position nicely and made smooth moves to the basket to finish. It was very similar to the late run Georgia made against FSU a couple of weeks ago when Angel also made the difference down the stretch.

Only Robinson’s fifth foul stopped the Georgia run, and that created a big problem. Suddenly Georgia had fewer options to double up on Fowles, and their offense also suffered. A couple of free throws, another Chaney three-pointer, and the seven-point lead was reduced quickly to two to set the stage for the finish. Houts missed the front end of a one-and-one with 23 seconds left, and Fowles tied the game with eight seconds left. Houts brought the ball upcourt and faced pressure right in front of the bench. It looked as if she would be trapped in the corner and unable to get a shot off, but she stepped through the defense and found an opening. Her ten-foot prayer from the baseline as time ran out was on-target, and Georgia had finally broken through against one of their biggest obstacles of late.

For the football fans out there, this felt like the win over Tennessee in 2000 (minus the field-storming and hedge-trampling). It wasn’t the prettiest game, and this might not be the biggest monkey on Georgia’s back (just like Florida was still there for the football team), but the overwhelming sense of relief and accomplishment just to get a win in this series was palpable.

What does the win mean? It moves Georgia, for the time being, into a tie for second place in the conference with LSU and Ole Miss at 6-2. All three teams still must play Tennessee starting with Georgia this coming Monday night in Knoxville. Though there are still six SEC games left, and four are on the road, Georgia seems to be in a good position to finish at least fourth and earn the first-round bye in the conference tournament, and they have a very good chance to finish as high as second. Who knows – if they beat Tennessee on Monday and get a little help down the road, the conference title is still very much in the picture.

The team is certainly there defensively. They’ve been very strong recently against LSU, Ole Miss, FSU, and Vanderbilt – four teams who have been ranked and are likely to be in the NCAA Tournament. If there’s an area to improve, it’s shooting the ball. Georgia won last night despite an atrocious night shooting by the guards in particular. Though they were able to chip in a few points, seniors Chambers and Hardrick were a combined 3-for-22. It’s not that the rest of the team was a lot better – Humphrey, Darrah, and Rowsey were 6-for-22 themselves. Still, this team could be so much more explosive with its senior guards filling the basket. Chambers has been mired in a deep slump since a great performance at Mississippi State. Hardrick has been up and down at times, and she was 1-for-14 last night with a lot of missed layups and chances around the basket. She made some great moves and worked so hard to drive and get to the basket, but she just couldn’t finish. If this year’s team is going to make a push to finish in the top two of the conference and try for a nice postseason run, these seniors really need to get into some kind of consistent form on offense soon.

Though UGA is closed due to weather today, tonight’s big women’s basketball showdown with LSU will go on as scheduled at 7:00 p.m., according to the University Web site. This is a very important game for the Lady Dogs, and a good home crowd is key. If you’re in the Athens area, don’t let the weather keep you at home.

Tickets $5 adults, $3 for high school age and younger, free for faculty/staff/students with valid ID. Free ticket pick-up begins at 5:30 PM at Stegeman Coliseum booth 4.

There were a lot of bad things about last night’s 82-71 loss at Tennessee, but defense has to be at the top of the list. When Tennessee is able to shoot 57%, score 82 points, and hit 11 three-pointers with Chris Lofton sitting injured on the bench, it’s not a good defensive performance.

It doesn’t help that Georgia insisted on attempting 26 three-pointers despite hitting only one in the first half and shooting under 25% for the game.Takais Brown only had eight attempts in 34 minutes. I think we need a new rule of thumb until Mike Mercer breaks out of whatever slump he’s in: if Brown is attempting fewer shots in a game than Mercer, it’s not a good thing.

This is life in the SEC, and even a team missing its biggest star can have its way with you when you leave the defense and the strength of your offense at home. While Georgia is having a good season and can win several more games, the hype has gotten a bit ahead of itself. Georgia is going to be in a fight to finish with the conference record they need to make the NCAA Tournament, and we’ll see what they’re made of in February.

It’s time to put the LSU game to bed and get on with tonight’s challenge at Tennessee…after this highlight video.