Multiple outlets in Alabama are quoting Nick Saban announcing today that defensive coordinator Kirby Smart will remain at Alabama, turning down an offer from Georgia.

Back to the drawing board…

Lady Dogs freshman Jasmine James has been named the SEC Freshman of the Week for the fourth time this season. This was the first time the weekly honors coincided with conference play, and James is a big part of the reason why the Lady Dogs are off to a 3-0 SEC start and a perfect 16-0 overall record. She poured in 17 points in Sunday’s win over Florida, and her three-pointer in the final minute of overtime proved to be the game-winner against Kentucky last Thursday.

Despite what seems like a pretty solid consensus to the contrary, something tells me to go with Texas.

Bonus MVP: Jordan Shipley

The Lady Dogs will attempt to establish the program’s best start ever tonight in the SEC home opener against Kentucky. Georgia is off to a 14-0 start and won their first conference game at Alabama on Sunday.

It’s fair to say that the program’s biggest challenges lay ahead with most of a competitive SEC schedule remaining. In-season winning streaks don’t mean much if they don’t turn into successful seasons. But the perfect start to this season is noteworthy because it comes on the heels of a disappointing 2008-2009 season which saw the program lose more than three consecutive games for the first time. That team made the NCAA Tournament by the slimmest of margins, but the state of the program didn’t sit well with anyone.

The offseason wasn’t kind to the Lady Dogs. A starting guard transferred. Senior Christy Marshall was lost for the year during the preseason due to a knee injury. That left the team with only five returning players with any kind of experience.

Hopes were lifted by one of the strongest recruiting classes of the decade. The story of the season so far has been those newcomers meshing well with a quality group of veterans. Fans know all about the stars – Houts, Phillips, and Robinson. The improvement of sophomore Meredith Mitchell has been key in replacing the production and athleticism lost when Marshall went down. The freshmen have stepped right in – Jasmine James has already won SEC Freshman of the Week honors several times and leads the team in scoring. Georgia’s top prep prospect, Anne Marie Armstrong, continues to gain confidence and has hit some big shots in big situations. Jasmine Hassell has been a very important player off the bench providing depth on the frontcourt behind Phillips and Robinson. Ebony Jones and Tamika Willis give Landers still more options at the forward spot.

Make no mistake – the team hasn’t been dominant. They’ve had to come from behind several times to win close, low-scoring games. The difference and key of course is that they won. They’ve come up with the defensive stop or clutch shot to preserve their record. What’s impressive is that many of those big plays have come from the newcomers who have shown the steadiness and effort you might not expect from freshmen. That tough and competitive nonconference slate that led to so many close games has prepared Georgia for the grind of SEC play where they’ll face that kind of test every night.

Unfortunately the possibility of frozen precipitation in north Georgia this evening will likely reduce the crowd for this potentially historic game. Kentucky’s a tough opponent and has improved in recent years under Matthew Mitchell. They beat Georgia twice just two seasons ago and pushed the Lady Dogs to the buzzer last year in Lexington. They’ve been off to a good start themselves this year with only one loss against them. They’re led by forward Victoria Dunlap, a dominating presence inside who averages nearly 20 points and 10 rebounds per game.

Key for Georgia will be applying defensive pressure. Kentucky turned the ball over 29 times in their only loss of the year, and Georgia has been very effective in creating turnovers to spark their offense this year. Georgia has struggled scoring at times, shooting under 40% for the season, so points created by defense could make a big difference tonight. Georgia’s inside duo of Porsha Phillips and Angel Robinson will have their hands full with Dunlap, but they’ll also have to avoid foul trouble and find ways to counter her on the offensive end.

It’s a great night to be a Georgia Bulldog. The evening started off with Mark Fox’s hoop Dawgs defending their home court. Outside shots fell, McPhee hit the shot of his life, and Thompkins took over as the Dawgs (again) sent a ranked and more talented Tech team home. More on that later.

If seeing Tech lose once wasn’t enough, Iowa came through with a nice win in the Orange Bowl. The Jackets couldn’t muster but a single scoring drive on offense, and Iowa was able to break open a close game with a late score. On behalf of the Bulldog Nation, we thank the Hawkeyes for giving us the chance to enjoy two Tech losses in a single evening.

If even that isn’t enough for you and you’re still up, Rudy is on CMT right now. Tech has lost on the court, the gridiron, and even in the movies tonight. Sleep well.

Image: Anti-Orange Page

Great news for a real Bulldog fan favorite. After tearing it up in the NBA Development League, Sundiata Gaines will reportedly sign with the Utah Jazz.

Utah Jazz general manager Kevin O’Connor announced today that the team will sign former Bulldog Sundiata Gaines, who now plays for the NBA Development League’s Idaho Stampede, to a 10-day contract pending the outcome of a successful physical on Wednesday.

Hopefully the 10-day contract will be extended and he’ll stick in the league. I can’t think of anyone who put in more effort during some dismal years in Athens, and he deserves this break.

New Georgia basketball coach Mark Fox has been pushing most of the right buttons when it comes to the fans, and the “Wreck Tech” ticket campaign shows he gets this too. There won’t be a more important game in his inaugural campaign than Tuesday night’s game against Georgia Tech.

Since the series returned to campus sites in 1995, Georgia hasn’t lost a game in Athens to their rival. Bulldog teams that made the NCAA Tournament or finished dead last in the SEC have found a way to win this one game. They’ve beaten pedestrian Tech teams as well as the eventual national runner-up that came in as #3 in 2004.

I know it’s not a conference game, and the series doesn’t have quite the same history on the basketball court as it does on the football field. But not much is expected in conference play from the Bulldogs this year, and a win over Tech is an opportunity for Fox to establish legitimacy in front of fans and the all-important local recruiting base. Georgia’s football and women’s basketball teams have already righted the rivalry in their respective sports. With football season behind us, the Tech game will be many casual fans’ first look at Fox’s team. Can they pull it off?

I didn’t intend to spend the better part of the holidays and bowl season away, but life had other plans. It’s about time to put the football season to bed and move on to the winter sports.

Football
So, right, there was the bowl. We spent so much of the year talking about how much more difficult the job was for our defense because of turnovers and disadvantageous field position. How nice to finally get a taste of what several Georgia opponents experienced this year. You wouldn’t know it from the final score, but Georgia’s offense wasn’t terribly impressive. Georgia’s 14 first half points required about 2 yards of offense. Credit the running game for putting it away and Cox for a nice touchdown pass to White that opened things up, but it was a nice change to see how things went with a little help from the opponent and no Kentucky-like meltdown.

Doug’s right – there’s not much long-term to take from the bowl. It was a lame duck game, and we know that much about the team will be different the next time they take the field. In a general sense, we can be excited about proven players at almost every position on offense except quarterback, and we can be skeptical about the unknown identity of the defense (especially if two key juniors move on).

Speaking of juniors moving on, I surely wasn’t alone in reading Rennie Curran blowing off a disciplinary running session (and his subsequent quarter-long suspension) as a sign that he will be declaring for the NFL draft. It took him a while to get going in the bowl game, but his third down stop on a quarterback scramble in the third quarter with A&M driving might have been the play of the game. The Aggies scored out of the gate in the second half, but after Curran’s stop and the disrupted fourth down attempt that followed, we didn’t hear much from the A&M offense the rest of the way.

So now we have three big storylines over the next month: 1) the new defensive coordinator and position coaches, 2) the draft-related decisions of Curran and Jones (and any other attrition), and 3) the final month of recruiting. How much each of those stories affects the others could be interesting – will the naming of the defensive staff affect recruiting (likely) or the decisions of the juniors (less likely)? In a month we’ll also be talking about mat drills and offseason conditioning, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see that get extra attention this year.

Men’s Hoops
Mark Fox’s first year is going about as expected. The Dawgs haven’t been able to lean on newcomers very much expect for situational minutes, so the cast is pretty familiar. Struggles on offense are unfortunately no surprise, but it is encouraging to see the system in action only a couple of years removed from the Sundiata Gaines-and-pray scheme. Shots are there, and hopefully there will soon be players in place to knock them down.

There have been bright spots. Travis Leslie’s development has been fun to watch. McPhee has done more than could be expected of him. Thompkins has come on strong late in December, and he’s starting to embrace his role. But spotty shooting and turnovers continue to plague the Dawgs and likely will all season.

The highlight of the season was definitely the win over Illinois in Gwinnett. That showcased everything good about this team – physical play inside, a big game from Thompkins, and timely plays by the guards. We were brought back to earth this past weekend at Missouri as the combination of early Thompkins foul trouble and relentless Missouri pressure turned the game into an alarming rout.

There was discussion whether Georgia’s win over Illinois was Mark Richt’s “Hobnail Boot” moment. In the sense that it was the new coach’s first high-profile win, OK. But Illinois was unranked. They’re a good, but not great, team. Dennis Felton managed to knock off #3 Georgia Tech (not to mention Florida) in his first season. If we’re looking for a signature win to get the Fox program off and running, I hope we can do better this year than Illinois. A win this week over a ranked Tech team would go a long way.

Women’s Hoops
Georgia overcame a 10-point halftime deficit by holding Alabama to only 14 second half points and escaped Tuscaloosa with a win in the SEC opener. The Lady Dogs are off to an undefeated 14-0 start and are ranked in the top 10. The perfect record hasn’t been built entirely on easy wins – they’ve beaten teams like Oklahoma, Rutgers, Virginia, and Georgia Tech who are all bound for the NCAA Tournament and have been ranked this year.

A good core of seniors has been augmented by an exciting group of freshmen. The development of sophomore win Meredith Mitchell has been a great shot in the arm. Freshman guard Jasmine James is one of the most entertaining and capable shooting guards the team has had in years.

The one caution with the women’s team is on offense. The team is shooting under 40% for the year, and it got them in a hole against Alabama. They’ve needed late rallies to win several games. To their credit the defense has held tough and made it possible to overcome poor shooting nights. They’re winning games that would be losses over the past couple of seasons. The shooting is going to have to come around against better SEC competition though.

The team hosts Kentucky and Florida over the next week, and it’s a bit like playing South Carolina in football. Neither will win the SEC, but they’re respectable teams that will provide serious challenges and should serve as early measurements of Georgia’s SEC prospects. If they can beat Kentucky it would mark the best start in the program’s storied history. UK is much improved in recent years though, and they only have one blemish so far this season themselves.