Game operations is something that seems invisible and seamless to fans when it works, but teams spend a lot of time trying to make sure it happens that way.

In football, it usually has to do with getting the right personnel groups on and off the field. How often do we see a team have to waste a timeout because someone isn’t on the field for an extra point? Teams have to devote time to working out who should be ready to go when, how information gets communicated from the booth down to the players on the sideline and back, and they’ve even had to come up with the “get back coach” to keep the whole business from spilling over onto the field.

If you’re interested in that kind of thing, the NY Times looks at the amount of time and thought that goes into planning a simple basketball timeout. Do we sit on the bench or huddle out on the court? Which way do we face? Who handles the clipboard? Who keeps track of time? “U.C.L.A. has heard that Kansas players sit in specific order.” It’s as orchestrated now as a pit stop during a NASCAR race. (h/t Double-A Zone)

So about the complaints that the NCAA Tournament is somehow more bland without any huge upsets and a Sweet 16 loaded with top seeds? Ratings were up during the opening weekend.

Through Sunday, the 2009 NCAA Tournament is averaging a 5.4/12 overnight rating on CBS, up 6% from a 5.1/12 through the same point in ’08. Coverage on Sunday averaged a 6.4 overnight rating, up 10% from a 5.8 last year, and Saturday’s games averaged a 6.3 overnight, up 5%.

It’ll be interesting to see now if those ratings continue into this weekend where there are quality matchups across the board.

The San Francisco 49ers – you know the team with the pants-dropping coach – wants you to look at this watch and relaaaaaaax….relaaaaaaaax…

In the latest issue (of SI), Georgia quarterback Matthew Stafford said his meeting with the 49ers included a psychologist who persisted about the impact of the divorce of Stafford’s parents when Stafford was in high school. According to Stafford, the psychologist told him as if it sounded like he had “unfinished business” concerning the divorce. Stafford said no, and then said he felt if he should be wondering how much he was being charged by hour for the psychoanalysis. Stafford compared it to the interviews with teams who asked him to script plays.

Hey, when you’re spending tens of millions of dollars, you get to kick the tires a bit, but you can’t blame Stafford for getting a little annoyed when Dr. Freud kept digging at the subject. Stafford’s reaction was great…Will Hunting would have been proud of this interview.

The #1 team in the nation lost 8-5 on Tuesday night to…Wright State. These midweek games are good to have in your pocket come NCAA Tournament time, but it’s not the end of the world. A 7-run fourth by the visitors was enough to hand the Diamond Dawgs their first home loss.

Georgia might’ve been looking ahead to Wednesday’s first meeting of the year with Georgia Tech in Atlanta. With football and both basketball teams falling to Tech this year, it’s up to the baseball team to get Georgia back on the winning side of the ledger against their rivals. The forecast for Wednesday doesn’t look very promising though.

While many potential coaching candidates coach on into the Sweet 16, the season has now ended for others. Predictably, rumors are starting to circulate, and we’re starting to hear rumblings about offers not only at Georgia but also at other schools with vacancies like Alabama. Specifically, a rumor was published overnight in which VCU’s Anthony Grant was allegedly offered the Georgia job.

This is the kind of stuff Paul is talking about when he warns of “multiple false starts.”

As denials go, UGA SID Claude Felton’s statement about Grant is about as strong as it gets. Ouch. Felton’s facts seem to line up…I saw Adams, Evans, and several other AD staff at the Gwinnett Arena on Saturday, and the UGA plane did leave the Gwinnett airport shortly after 3:00 p.m. headed to Nashville for the evening. Fine.

But naturally Felton’s words are nuanced, and even a clear statement like, “I can say with complete authority that neither Damon Evans nor Dr. Adams has ever had a conversation with Anthony Grant as of today, Monday, March 23” leaves the door open.

Has UGA (Adams/Evans) made contact? No.

Has Georgia’s agent (search firm) made contact with either Grant or his agent? I would expect that to be the case for all of the coaches on Georgia’s list. That’s what they do.

Has Georgia made a formal offer? Almost certainly not.

Has Georgia’s agent, through channels, tried to see what kind of a deal it would take? I could buy that.

As for what happens next, it could go several directions. One is that another school forces Georgia’s hand. It could be a peer like Bama, or maybe even VCU is working hard right now to see if they can get Grant to sign an extension. Another possibility is that the search firm has determined that Grant really is the best available and interested option right now, and they’ve begun discussions through channels while not yet to the point of an official interview or offer.

Georgia’s challenge now, if Grant really is a top candidate, is to keep Grant in play while several other likely candidates are still coaching and not available for official contact. They run the risk of being left with a smaller pool of candidates if some other schools move first, but they also run the risk of missing out on someone higher up the list if we jump at the first guy who shows interest.

It was a football-related observation, but it holds true that the underdogs are usually underdogs for a good reason. The opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament is about the upsets and thrilling finishes for a lot of people, but in the end only Arizona (12 seed) and Purdue (5 seed) are the only Sweet 16 participants who weren’t seeded to advance this far. And it’s not as if Arizona or Purdue are exactly strangers to postseason basketball.

Dan Shanoff thinks this is “terrible for the NCAA Tournament,” but he’s wrong. It’s true that a lot of people watch the opening weekend for the unpredictability of it, but after that first weekend those teams that pull the upsets usually make for some pretty bad basketball.

We got the best of both world this year. There were plenty of close games and exciting finishes. But now we’re left with many strong teams and quality matchups. You’d rather see Memphis play Marquette instead of Missouri? Or UNC play Western Kentucky instead of Gonzaga? Fine…do it in November.

The tournament is about many things, but in the end it’s a mechanism for producing a national champion. To that end, I’d much rather see Villanova-Duke and Kansas-Michigan State at this stage instead of Dayton-USC. Novelty time is over, and the teams that don’t belong in the national title discussion have had their One Shining Moment and can claim to have been part of the process. The lack of a George Mason doesn’t mean that we lack reasons to tune in.

Matthew Stafford helped himself with a strong Pro Day performance last week in Athens, and his curve-setting 38 on the Wonderlic test won’t hurt either (h/t The Wiz).

In addition to watching 40 players in the NCAA Tournament who chose to leave the state of Georgia, many of us will be wondering if somewhere along the way we’re watching Georgia’s next coach. You’d like to think that a decision like that would be based on a larger body of work than just this couple of games, but reality is that coaches make names for themselves at this time of the year, and an early exit can quickly cool off even the hottest names out there.

Take VCU’s Anthony Grant. Grant can still hang his hat on a tournament upset of Duke a couple of years ago. His 11th-seeded VCU team isn’t favored to beat UCLA, but there’s still plenty of people interested in the outcome. If VCU pulls the outright win, of course Grant’s stock will only skyrocket. But if they fall flat and don’t put up much of a fight against the favored Bruins in the first round, will it diminsish his attractiveness to a major program?

Other coaches might have more to lose. Jeff Capel at Oklahoma might be the hottest name in play right now, and he could command a larger contract than most candidates. His team raced to a 25-1 start, but they’re just 2-4 over the last six games. If Oklahoma doesn’t live up to their #2 seed, will Capel’s stock take a hit? Sean Miller at Xavier could also use a strong tournament. Xavier has established itself as a solid program, and they have a couple of recent Elite Eight trips to their credit. His team is almost expected now to be able to advance past somene like FSU in the second round.

Still other coaches can use the tournament to rise from complete obscurity. These coaches won’t necessarily become candidates for vacancies at major programs like Georgia, but they’ll certainly become the next group of coaches to rise up the ladder and possibly fill positions left vacant at the mid-major level.

How about $300 to see Arkansas play Texas A&M?

Fans wishing to sit in the Club Level (which is just about everything close to the field) will have to pay $125 for the ticket and also make a $175 donation to the Cowboys’ 12th Man Foundation. Other seats cost $85 and $125. Studens get in at the bargain price a $50.

I’m glad they make it reasonable for the poor, suffering student. As Ryan said, “I’m not sure I would pay $300 to see an NFL game there.” I don’t know that I’d pay $300 to see Georgia in anything short of the national title game. After this and the $100 bucks Oklahoma State is asking from Georgia fans, that $40 per ticket on my UGA order form is looking like a pretty good deal right now.

It’s a beautiful 70-degree day in Georgia and the perfect afternoon to start spring practice. By now you know all of the big questions and players and positions to watch over the next few weeks leading up to G-Day on April 11th. Just a few unrelated notes before we get going…

Underdog. David Hale has a little pre-spring chat with receiver Kris Durham. I don’t mean to read too much into what Durham has to say in an otherwise upbeat piece, but something he talked about touched a nerve with something I hear a lot from Georgia fans. I’ve never seen a fan base so willing to place high expectations on a program while at the same time wanting to remain "under the radar" or craving the status of underdog.

I get what Durham is saying. You draw your motivation from whatever source you can. If it creates the focus and drive that makes a difference this year, great. No one is going to list Georgia among the favorites this year, so we have to use that to our advantage.

But the underdog status will only carry you so far. Underdogs are underdogs for a reason: they usually lose to and finish behind the favorites. Not always of course, but upsets are exceptional because they are infrequent. Sooner or later, if you’re successful, you have to embrace that success and deal with being on top.

Put it another way: do you think the guys at Southern Cal, Texas, Florida, and Oklahoma are relishing the underdog role? Me neither. That’s where we are this year, so we have no choice. I just don’t want it to be Georgia’s permanent condition. You eventually have to learn to live with high expectations. It comes with the territory for that elite class of perennial title contenders, and I hope that’s where our fans and players and coaches want to see this program.

You can show me list after list with wins and Georgia’s performance relative to everyone else over the past ten years, but shedding this underdog mentality is part of taking that next step. We’ve read a lot this spring about a change in approach and a more focused team, and now it’s time to see that on the field.

Offensive line. With the focus on quarterback and tailback this year, the offensive line that got so much concern and attention over the past two seasons is almost an afterthought. It’s true that there’s finally some seasoned depth, and we all know the names of the major contributors. Now they’re expected to be one of the strengths and known entities as the new skill players fill in and get experience.

While I join everyone else who’s been blown away with the job done through two years by Coach Searels and his linemen, I’m also aware that Stafford and Moreno made the line look at times better than it was. Now that a couple of first-round picks are gone from the backfield, will some issues that previously seemed minor emerge along the line as something more serious?

Unfortunately we won’t get a good read on this question (and others) during the spring. Three key contributors – Sturdivant, Chris Davis, and Vance – are out recovering from injuries. All are expected to return in time for the season, but it will be some time before they are back at peak condition. Even though the line is a secondary story this spring (as it should be with several other higher-profile positions in play), I still think it’s as big of a concern as it was a year ago.

If you saw my post earlier in the day, I thought that the odds of the Lady Dogs making the NCAA Tournament were as long as they could be. The experts agreed. As the brackets were unveiled on Monday evening and region after region omitted Georgia, it wasn’t looking good.

But then in the last group announced was a pleasant surprise. Georgia was in as the #11 seed in the Trenton Regional, and they’ll get to enjoy the payoff of being selected as one of the 16 host schools by playing the opening two rounds right down the road in Duluth. Though the seed is quite a bit lower than we’re used to, the Lady Dogs are going to the tournament for the 15th consecutive season and for the 26th time out of 28 opportunities. “Obviously our basketball team is very excited if not thrilled to be included,” head coach Andy Landers said. “We realized the bubble and the size of the bubble. We had played ourselves onto a small bubble, and we knew that we had a chance to get in and a chance to be left out.”

Of course the low seed means that the Lady Dogs will be under the gun from the outset. They’ll open the tournament against #6 seed Arizona State, a quality Pac 10 team. ASU finished the season at 23-8 with several quality conference wins and a nonconference win over Xavier, a team that handled Georgia in Athens.

But the Sun Devils were eliminated in the Pac 10 quarterfinals and will have to play the NCAA Tournament without leading scorer and starting point guard Dymond Simon who tore her ACL in a late-season game against Stanford. A team as good as ASU is more than one player though, and the Sun Devils have plenty of depth with ten players averaging at least ten minutes per game.

Arizona State’s top inside player, senior center Sybil Dosty, should be no stranger to Georgia. She played at Tennessee during her first two years of college and was the Lady Vols’ leader in field goal percentage as a freshman and sophomore.

Here are the details for this weekend:

TRENTON REGIONAL – DULUTH SUBREGIONAL
Saturday March 21
Game 1: #11 Georgia vs. #6 Arizona State – noon ET (ESPN2)
Game 2: #14 NC A&T vs. #3 Florida State – 2:30 p.m. ET (ESPN2)

Monday March 23
Game 1 winner vs. Game 2 winner – 7:00 p.m. ET

Ticket Information – Come cheer on the Lady Dogs in the NCAA Tournament at the Gwinnett Arena

Tickets to the 2009 NCAA Women’s Basketball First and Second Rounds hosted by the University of Georgia at the Arena at Gwinnett Center on March 21-23 are on sale and can be purchased online at http://www.ticketmaster.com/event/0E0040F8ADDB6455 or by calling 1-800-745-3000.

All-Session tickets are $30 for adults and $20 for youth. Single-Session tickets are also on sale and are $20 for adults and $12 for youth to attend both games on Saturday and $15 for adults and $10 for youth to attend Monday night’s Second Round matchup.

Groups wanting to attend a single-session can purchase tickets for $12 each as long as the group is at least 25 people in size. To order group tickets, please call 770-813-7681.

A couple of departures noted today:

First, despite clarifying comments that he claimed were “blown out of proportion” last week about the Georgia basketball program, sophomore guard Zac Swansey will indeed ask for his release.

While he should certainly be given his release if that’s what he wants, I hope the University at least waits until a new coach is named before they grant his request. He’s not going anywhere soon; the semester still has nearly two months left. There’s no rush to open the floodgates before anyone interested in transferring has the opportunity to make an informed decision.

UPDATE: The AJC has additional details and quotes from Swansey. They report that sophomore guard Troy Brewer is also seeking a release. I get that Swansey expressed displeasure over how his demotion was handled, but the point of a coaching change is that those with whom he has a beef won’t be around much longer.

Moving to football, UGASports.com reported this morning that linebacker signee Dexter Moody was released from his scholarship. UGA SID Claude Felton confirmed that Moody has been released and “is now once again considered a ‘recruitable athlete'”, so the University is not allowed to comment further.

David Hale notes that “Richt has repeatedly that he only pulls scholarships for behavior issues,” so draw your own conclusions. Marc Weiszer adds from a number of sources including Moody himself that the issues were both academic and behavioral.

I appreciate Moody’s willingness to speak, but I hope no one is so clueless as to think that Mark Richt would pull a scholarship for merely “fussing with a chemistry teacher.” Georgia “wasn’t (Moody’s) favorite school,” but we’ll see how many other top programs are willing to line up for his services.

The women’s NCAA Tournament bracket has usually been a question of who and where rather than if for Georgia. The Lady Dogs have been left out only twice in tournament history. With the team already deciding that they will decline a WNIT bid, tonight’s selection show (7 p.m., ESPN) will determine whether the Lady Dogs sneak into the field or if the SEC Tournament ended their season for just the third time in program history.

I’ll be honest: I’m not optimistic about their chances this year. 18-13 is a shaky record even for a program with Georgia’s reputation and name recognition. A late-season five-game losing streak really hurt, and they came up just short of a significant bid-securing win in the SEC Tournament. They do have some things in their favor, but as you’ll see there seems to be a bit more on the minus side of the ledger.

Pro

• Three big wins. Georgia knocked off Auburn, Vanderbilt, and Florida during the season. Not too many bubble teams can point to three such wins over ranked opponents. Georgia also played eventual SEC Tournament champ Vanderbilt closer than anyone else last weekend. They’ve proven they can play with the best in the country, but did they beat enough of them?
• Hosting the dance. You can debate whether it should be a consideration, but it is. Duluth, Ga., is one of the opening weekend host sites for the tournament, and Georgia is the host school for that sub-regional. Ticket sales and attendance are very sensitive subjects for the women’s tournament, and leaving out one of the host schools would pull the plug on local support and attendance for the tournament. Rutgers, at 18-12, is another bubble team set to host a sub-regional, so we’ll see if the selection committee gives these hosts a push they might not otherwise deserve.

Con

• Weak nonconference resume. Georgia’s nonconference schedule wasn’t overwhelming to begin with, and they didn’t notch many quality wins along the way. The few quality opponents – Virginia, Rutgers, Georgia Tech, and Xavier – were all losses.
• Too many losses. A .500 record in the SEC is marginal in most years, and it wasn’t the strongest year for the SEC. 13 losses are a lot to overcome.
• Road woes. Georgia’s best wins all came at home, and the road wasn’t particularly kind. Georgia won just four games outside the state this year: Oakland, Eastern Washington, UAB, and Kentucky. Road losses included Detroit and Ole Miss.
• How many SEC teams get in? In most seasons you could feel pretty comfortable in the SEC earning seven bids. But it hasn’t been the best of seasons for the conference. Tennessee and LSU have a combined 20 losses. Auburn and Vanderbilt had strong seasons, but the SEC didn’t do much to flex its muscle nationally this year. Five bids are solid: Auburn, Vandy, LSU, Florida, and Tennessee. Mississippi State finished sixth in the regular season, had an 8-6 regular season SEC record, and were a fairly benign 22-9 overall. Though Georgia defeated Mississippi State during the regular season, it’s hard to see how the other Bulldogs wouldn’t get the overall nod if it came down to those two teams for the SEC’s sixth and final bid.

If the Lady Dogs do earn a bid, they’ll be playing in Duluth on Saturday at the Gwinnett Arena with a potential second round game at the same location on Monday evening.

…is right there in the bracket.

Three bids. Three. Total. The Big East received three number one seeds.

Every single one of the SEC’s potential bubble teams – Kentucky, Florida, South Carolina, and Auburn – were excluded. And given the seed Mississippi State received for winning the conference tournament, it’s reasonable to conclude that they would have been the fifth SEC bubble team excluded had they not earned the automatic bid.

No SEC team earned a seed higher than LSU’s 8 seed, and even the regular season SEC champ is not likely to be much of a favorite against Butler. LSU is an 8, Tennessee is a 9 (and draws a hot Oklahoma State team), and Mississippi State sneaks in with a 13.

That Mississippi State team, at 23-12 and 13-7 against SEC teams, won the conference tournament and received a 13 seed, just slightly better than the 14 seed Georgia received last season with a 17-16 record and 12 conference losses.

Please don’t mistake any of the above for outrage. It’s the reality of SEC basketball right now that you take all of that in, think for a moment, and admit, “yep…that’s about right.” Let’s not forget that the SEC commissioner himself was in charge of the whole process. This was as good as it was going to get for the conference.

If there’s a silver lining and a Georgia angle to all of that, it has to be about the potential for pretty immediate results for the right coach. Georgia’s returning roster and current mindset is far from perfect, but in this environment of conference-wide mediocrity and imperfection how far would just a little bit of success and improvement go?

This is the way the season ends.

The forecast in Tampa calls for 80 degrees and sunny skies this weekend, so it should be expected that lightning – and tornadoes – did not strike twice for the Georgia basketball team. The season which, with a handful of pleasant and surprising exceptions, began slouching towards its inevitable end not long into the preseason NIT ended with a predictable loss to Mississippi State. As if to highlight the most glaring weakness of this year’s team, every guard on the lineup produced a total of just 16 points – only two points more than leading scorer (and departing senior) Terrance Woodbury accumulated by himself.

Now it’s on to the serious business – the new coach. We know (or at least are told) that the commitment is there and won’t be an issue. But will that be enough to lure someone from the small pool of proven major-conference winners, or will Georgia end up fishing in the mid-major pool anyway?

Regardless of the new coach it’s likely that there will be some changes to the composition of the team over the next few months. I’m not talking about the wholesale departures that greeted Felton; we already know that the incoming freshmen are fortunately still on board. But comments from sophomore point guard Zac Swansey give a little insight into how frustrated some of the returning players must be.

“I’m not 100 percent sure that I want to be here. I want to play, and I want to be with a program that wins. I’m not sure Georgia is that program.”

Hey – we want guards who can hit free throws and hold on to the ball, but you take what you can get.