Record: 11-3 (1-0)

Andy Landers intentionally structured this year’s nonconference slate to avoid the big name opponents that usually fill up a Lady Dogs’ schedule. With so many freshmen and sophomores still adjusting to the college game, this wasn’t the year to be taking on all comers. Still, the nonconference schedule featured a couple of interesting challenges. Unfortunately, Georgia wasn’t up to many of those challenges. There are only a handful of quality wins, and the comeback at TCU was the lone big road win. Road losses at Georgia Tech, USC, and a neutral-site loss to Louisiana Tech knocked Georgia from the polls and kept them from posting any other high-profile wins.

The Lady Dogs actually already have one conference game under their belt. They erupted for 40 first-half points last Sunday and held on to beat South Carolina 61-51 despite only scoring 21 in the second half. With two very important road games coming up, it was essential that Georgia start off SEC play the right way, and they came away with the home win.

Personnel

There’s something to like about each of the players on the court. You can highlight Phillips’ rebounding or Mitchell’s poise or Miller’s offense and so on. But what stands out is the lack of the consistent playmakers that Georgia usually seems to have. Jasmine James will often give Georgia double-figures, but she’ll do it by taking a lot of shots as the ball is usually in her hand when the shot clock winds down. Merideth Mitchell can be a difference-maker if her shot is falling, but it can be spotty. Anne Marie Armstrong has hit some big outside shots, but her offense is inconsistent, and she’s a step slow on defense.

Georgia’s freshmen guards show a great deal of promise. Khaalidah Miller just earned SEC Freshman of the Week honors for a couple of strong recent outings, and she led Georgia with 15 points against South Carolina. Ronika Ransford is a quick, tough guard who shows good skill on defense and getting to the basket. Her shot needs work, but she’s played well enough to earn more time. Ransford and Miller will be a solid tandem down the road, but they’re not quite to the point of taking over games the way Jasmine James did a year ago.

Post play has been a relative weakness. Porsha Phillips is a fine player and an outstanding rebounder but is more comfortable working around the elbow rather than banging inside. Armstrong and Mitchell likewise have the size to play forward but just aren’t comfortable in traditional post roles. Jasmine Hassell hasn’t exactly fizzled at center after a promising freshman campaign, but she’s struggled enough to be challenged for her starting job. Tamika Willis and Ebony Jones are able to give minutes off the bench, but neither has shown much punch on offense.

What to expect in the SEC

The SEC is typically the strongest conference in women’s hoops, but this isn’t an especially strong crop of teams. Tennessee is a national contender, and Kentucky is as strong as they’ve ever been. After that, it’s a toss-up. Arkansas is stronger than expected. LSU and Vandy are in transition seasons. There aren’t a lot of bad teams, and most anyone can pull off a win at home against all but a couple of teams.

Because the women don’t play a divisional schedule, Georgia will face Kentucky, South Carolina, Florida, Arkansas, and Alabama twice. They’ll only face traditional powers Tennessee, LSU, and Vanderbilt once. In most years, that would be a favorable schedule, but Kentucky and Arkansas look to be two of the better teams this year. The Lady Dogs will find out immediately where they stack up: their next two games are on the road against those strong Kentucky and Arkansas teams.

The nonconference schedule has taught us a few things. 1- Georgia’s not likely to light up the scoreboard. 2- they struggle on the road. Georgia’s scoring woes extend across the board. They aren’t get a ton of production inside, they shoot under 30% from outside, and they shoot just over 60% from the line. What this means for Georgia is that they’re likely to be in a lot of close, low-scoring games – and that’s a best-case scenario. If the defense or rebounding effort isn’t there on a given night, they’ll likely lose. It also means that Georgia’s prospects in SEC play are widely variable. They’re good enough to contend for one of the top spots in the league if enough of those close games break their way. But their margin for error is so thin that a handful of points across a few games could plunge them into the bottom half of the conference.

This isn’t one of Georgia’s stronger teams, but the potential is there for a good season and another trip to the NCAA Tournament. Georgia’s biggest unknown the rest of the way is what they’ll get from their post players. If James remains a consistent scorer and the freshmen continue to come along, the backcourt should be OK – but not great.

Think about the layers of people that take care of everything you need to do your job. Everyone from the IT staff keeping the bits flowing to the assistant who takes care of office supplies and keeps the coffee stocked to the HVAC guys who are outside working on the broken heat pump. Every second you have to spend thinking about these things is time spent away from what makes you productive and valuable to your company. If your company doesn’t have people and systems in place to abstract away those functions, I probably don’t have to tell you how frustrated you are about the constant interruptions and crap you have to deal with before you can even do what it is you do.

We’re trained to think of management in top-down terms: orders and direction are given and followed, policies are imposed, and so on. But the best managers get that one of their most important roles is to create those abstractions and make them as transparent as possible. If a salesperson is constantly dealing with IT issues, management has failed.

So it is with athletics or any profession, and Mark Richt is just another guy with a job. So it makes sense that his manager, Greg McGarity, is helping Richt to clear some of those distractions away. Whether you disagree with Richt’s assessment that “we are very close,” the one takeaway from yesterday’s season-ending press conference was that Richt would be more available to “study the game of football.”

“I’m just spending less time messing around with things that Greg wants to be able to help take off my plate from an administrative point of view,” Richt said. “Things are being put in place that are going to help free me up to spend more time doing the things that I love the most, which is study the game of football and be an expert and be on the cutting edge.”

It might seem obvious to the point of “what took you so long,” but there are reasons why coaches sometimes get bogged down in the peripheral stuff. Going back to the role of management, what’s changed in that area over the past year? We know that this move was undertaken with the cooperation of McGarity, and we don’t know what level of administrative support was available from McGarity’s predecessor.

It can also be a difficult balance because those non-football areas can derail what you’re trying to accomplish on the field. Take the emphasis of this offseason: the restructuring of the conditioning program is the one major change made since the 2010 season. The emphasis on toughness and attitude has nothing to do with schemes and cutting-edge football, but Georgia has decided that they can’t win without it. It’s a similar story for academics. They’re in good hands with Dr. Eason, but it’s an area that can sink your program if it gets out of control with a head coach whose head is mostly in the Xs and Os. Richt will still need to have clear communication with these areas while he studies the game, and that’s something that a good manager like McGarity will have to keep an eye on.

Is this a good or even an important move? I don’t know. On one hand, I don’t see the shuffling of some administrative duties as key to the survivial of Richt’s program as some much-needed upgrades on the conditioning side. On the other hand, Georgia, especially on offense, isn’t exactly what you’d call a cutting-edge program. Teams like Stanford showed that you can still win, and win big, with a conventional I-formation and pro-style offense, but Georgia’s offense heavy on sprint draws and play action isn’t actively being copied in what has become a very copycat business. If it takes some reorganization for Richt to have the time to study those areas and make the changes that are implied by that reflection, at least that’s taken care of now.

Pryor rushes for 100+ and throws two TD passes.
Posey led the team with 3 catches, 70 yds, and 1 TD.
Herron scores Ohio State’s second touchdown, finishes with 87 yards.

And the game was wrapped up on an interception by Solomon Thomas, another suspended player. All that was missing was for Mike Adams to be the guy who fell on that fumble into the endzone.

If you’re still looking for something to pick you up and get you to look forward to the future of Georgia football, you couldn’t get a better prescription than this ESPN update from this week’s Under Armour All-America game. There’s still a month to go until signing day, and the competition for these top prospects is intense. But if the tone of this update is any indication which way the key uncommitted members of the recruiting class are leaning, Georgia’s talent level could be looking at a big shot in the arm. And contrary to Buck Belue’s opinion, there are several prospects yet to make their decisions who will be early contributors at any school.

The last offseason was spent discussing and for the most part shooting down the notion that Mark Richt was on the hot seat. I don’t think we’ll have that discussion again this year. Mark Richt will be Georgia’s coach next year – teams not named Maryland don’t willingly try to put a new staff together a month before Signing Day. The outlook beyond next year is what has changed: we won’t throw out ultimatums for 2011 (as if it were our place to make those demands), but it’s clear that the recent track record isn’t cutting it. With a third of the conference playing for national titles since Georgia last won the league, the expectations are high but unmistakable.

There’s a lot of talk about the program being at a crossroads now, but we’re a season past that point. Talking about a “crossroads” implies that the possible paths facing the program lead to roughly equally likely outcomes. Mark Richt, on the other hand, is trying to keep things from going off a cliff. If changes need to be made on offense, that would make an overhaul of both sides of the ball, special teams, and the conditioning program within two years. What’s left after that?

Bad losses have a way of clearing things up. The 2009 blowout in Knoxville wrapped up any discussion on the need for a new approach on defense. The Liberty Bowl did a good job of shooting down the idea that 2010 was mostly a story of with A.J. / without A.J. Without Green, the Dawgs were 1-3. With him, they were 5-4. Better, sure, but only the 2009 season generated more losses for a Richt team than the shortened nine-game stretch of 2010 during which Green was available. The availability of A.J. Green is an interesting footnote on the season, but it’s noise when it comes to the current state of the program.

Mark Richt has already indicated that toughening up the program will be a priority for the offseason. We’ve seen progress in that area with the developments in the conditioning program, and we’re assured that even more work in that area is on the way. But toughness starts at the top, and what we’re talking about is illustrated in a contrast Kyle makes nicely in this post. The new conditioning staff can get its ducks in a row, but it won’t matter if that attitude isn’t carried through all elements of the program from nutrition and academics up to playcalling and execution.

The Boise State game staring us in the face around eight months from now couldn’t be a bigger moment for the future of the program. I’m not really talking about the game in a must-win sense, as a loss in a game like that isn’t necessarily the end of the season (right, Hokies?). But that game, and the South Carolina game after it, will be immediate and legitimate tests of the ability of Mark Richt to right his program during the offseason. Wins also won’t necessarily mean that Georgia is set for an SEC title and beyond, but those wins are necesaary to keep next season from becoming one long and extended march towards the inevitable.

In 2005, Boise State came to Athens intent on measuring itself against the eventual SEC champion. When the two teams meet in Atlanta later this year, the roles will be reversed: this time, it will be Georgia looking to (re)establish credibility by beating one of the nation’s most successful and highly-ranked programs of the past five years.

Can Georgia score over 30?

It’s the stat you’ve been hearing about since late October: Georgia hasn’t scored fewer than 30 points since their trip out to Colorado.  It’s impressive that the streak has occurred during the meat of the SEC slate, and it’s been a result of the rapid development of Aaron Murray.  That production hasn’t always been enough for a win, though.  Georgia has dropped two of the seven games in which they’ve scored 30+.  They’ll go up against a UCF defense that could be better than most Georgia fans expect.  They’ve held both of their other AQ opponents, N.C. State and Kansas State, under 30, and they stifled June Jones’ SMU offense in their conference title game. UCF leads their conference in most defensive stats, and they’re top 20 nationally in both scoring and total defense.  They haven’t always been consistent, though.  They gave up at least 30 in three straight games to some sub-par conference opponents during the middle of the season.  DB Josh Robinson will be key in keeping A.J. Green from having a big day.

Can Georgia keep UCF under 30?

The flip side of Georgia’s productive offense is this: the Dawgs have given up at least 30 to their last three FBS opponents.  Giving up 30 to Auburn is no indictment of a defense, but the other two games aren’t feathers in Todd Grantham’s cap. Steve Spurrier mentioned yesterday that he had watched Florida try to rotate three quarterbacks this year.  “I think it worked in one game,” he said.  We all know which game that was.  Georgia Tech’s option offense can be explosive, but Duke did a better job keeping the Yellow Jackets in check.  Central Florida presents a familiar style of play that has caused Georgia problems: a mobile quarterback and an effective running game.  They don’t have the scheme of Mississippi State or the power running of South Carolina, but they can move the ball on the ground, move the chains with an efficient passing game, and their quarterback can scramble and turn third down stops into frustrating and drive-sustaining first downs. Georgia’s defense will have to focus on finishing off those third downs and getting off the field – something they’ve struggled with for much of 2010. 

Which freshman QB will have the better day, and will it matter?

The showdown between two of the nation’s best freshman quarterbacks is one of the big storylines of this game. Though the two have similar attributes in terms of a good arm and great mobility, their roles differ. Murray has become the unquestioned centerpiece of the Georgia offense.  Thanks to A.J. Green and a solid receiving corps, Murray’s development has turned an offense that was supposed to lean on the running game into an offense whose identity starts with the pass.  The numbers back it up:  Murray is on track to break 3,000 yards and 25 touchdowns passing for the year.  He’s not just breaking records for Georgia’s freshman quarterbacks; he’s flirting with team records.  UCF’s Jeff Godfrey is also a productive passer, but his role is more about efficiency.  He’s the nation’s leader among freshman quarterbacks in efficiency, and he completes 68.4% of his passes.  He’s only thrown 13 touchdowns, compared with 24 for Murray.  That matters less because UCF can run the ball.  They’re 25th in the nation with 192.46 yards per game on the ground.  Godfrey doesn’t have to throw for 300 yards and 3 TDs in order to be effective; he just has to be efficient in those situations when he’s asked to pass, and he has to use his mobility to create yards on the ground or get out of trouble.  That’s just what he’s done this year, and it’s why UCF is where they are.

What impact will the weather have?

Storms are forecast for Memphis this afternoon, and rain can turn the best intentions of a game plan into a muddy slugfest.  There’s no end of discussion whether rain would help an offense or defense or slow everyone down, but it looks as if a wet track and a strong southerly wind will be a factor in this game. 

Can we expect the unexpected?

We’ve seen everything this bowl season from fake kicks to flea-flickers to the surreal ending of the Music City Bowl.  And that was just yesterday.  That’s not unusual; teams often pull out all the stops for their bowl game.  Big turnovers or special teams plays can either blow a game open or keep an underdog’s hopes alive.  Last year a series of plays from the return game and punting miscues turned the Independence Bowl from a nail-biter into a rout.  In a game with no turnovers and relatively benign special teams, you like Georgia’s chances in this one.  But what are the chances of ending up in that kind of game?

There’s no sense in having a schedule conflict if it can be avoided, so I’ll join the chorus of approval for moving G-Day a week after Masters weekend. At the very least, maybe we’ll miss the early April cold snaps that have been brutal the past couple of years.

But something tells me it wasn’t the Masters keeping D-Day attendance down under a half of Sanford Stadium’s capacity. This change will surely matter to a handful of people, and, again, there’s no use of having a conflict just to have one. I just think that any increase in attendance will be incremental rather than substantial. It’s still a vanilla and heavily-scripted scrimmage that also happens to be on TV.

At the 2010 football gala earlier this month, UGA used the occasion to name the Team of the Decade to coincide with Mark Richt’s tenth season as Georgia’s head coach. Over 37,000 online votes came up with this group:

DEFENSE

DE: Charles Grant and David Pollack
DT: Jeff Owens and Geno Atkins
OLB: Rennie Curran and Boss Bailey
ILB: Dannell Ellerbe and Odell Thurman
CB: Tim Jennings and Asher Allen
FS: Thomas Davis
SS: Greg Blue
P: Drew Butler

OFFENSE
C: Ben Jones
OG: Fermando Velasco and Max Jean-Gilles
OT: Jon Stinchcomb and Clint Boling
TE: Ben Watson
WR: Mohamed Massaquoi and A.J. Green
FB: Brannan Southerland
TB: Knowshon Moreno
QB: David Greene
PK: Blair Walsh

Not bad. A little heavy on more recent players, but that’s to be expected. Subjective lists like these are always fodder for discussion, so here’s who we would have selected. No real criteria other than that they have to had played at least one season for Mark Richt. I considered of course raw production at Georgia but also NFL draft status and even some intangibles.

DEFENSE

DE: David Pollack and Quentin Moses
DT: Jon Sullivan and Geno Atkins
LB: Rennie Curran, Boss Bailey, Odell Thurman
CB: Tim Jennings and Bruce Thornton
S: Thomas Davis and Sean Jones
P: Drew Butler

OFFENSE

OL: Jon Stinchcomb, Max Jean-Gilles, George Foster, Fernando Velasco, Clint Boling
TE: Ben Watson
WR: A.J. Green and Terrence Edwards
FB: Brannan Southerland
TB: Knowshon Moreno
QB: David Greene
PK: Billy Bennett

While we’re at it, might as well do a second team:

DEFENSE

DE: Charles Johnson and Charles Grant
DT: Jeff Owens and Kedric Golston
LB: Will Witherspoon, Tony Gilbert, Justin Houston
CB: Asher Allen and Tim Wansley
S: Kentrell Curry and Jermaine Phillips
P: Gordon Ely-Kelso

OFFENSE

OL: Alex Jackson, Ben Jones, Dan Inman, Ken Shackleford, Chester Adams
TE: Leonard Pope
WR: Mohamed Massaquoi and Fred Gibson
FB: Verron Haynes
TB: Musa Smith
QB: Matthew Stafford
PK: Blair Walsh

I can anticipate some disagreements. Stafford over Shockley? Edwards over, well, everyone but AJ? I was surprised by a few names of some very good players I had to leave off. McMichael. Roland. Oliver. Jacobs. Chapas. Coutu. Blue. Gary. The DE position alone was really tough: no Marcus Howard, Will Thompson, or Robert Geathers. I struggled with putting Justin Houston at LB over someone like Tony Taylor. In the 4-3 Georgia used for nearly all of the decade, would Houston have to be considered with the linebackers or the DEs?

Anyway, feel free to leave your own Dawgs of the Decade in the comments. There’s no shortage of great players who deserve recognition.

It might be a little early for the Airing of Grievances, and this isn’t exactly “I got a lotta problems with you people” stuff.

“Pretty damn good”

This is probably a better post for the long off-season, but the short attention span summary of the 2010 Georgia season is quickly taking shape as a tale of Georgia righting the ship and recovering from a poor start and the absence of A.J. Green.

Mark Richt suggested that “we played pretty damn good” after the team’s 1-4 start. There’s no question that the 5-2 finish was better than the start of the season, and the team did play well in certain areas – primarily on offense as Aaron Murray developed at quarterback. The accomplishment of consecutive games with 30+ points is significant, but so is the point that 30 is just an arbitrary benchmark. If your offense is capable of scoring more and needs to do so in order to compete and win, 30 points is meaningless. We’ve heard plenty about the seven straight games with 30+ points scored. We’ve heard less about the Dawgs giving up 30+ in their last four games against FBS competition.

That 5-2 finish included a 3-2 SEC stretch. Above-average, but hardly what I’d call “pretty damn good,” and not up to the standards of what we’ve come to expect from a Mark Richt team. None of those wins were over a ranked team or anyone with more than six wins*, though there were three bowl-bound teams in there. Losing to Auburn was no shame this year, but there was a huge missed opportunity against a Florida team whose late-season dive was put on hold for one productive afternoon in Jacksonville. It’s to Georgia’s credit that they didn’t lose games to teams with similar records like Tennessee, Kentucky, or Georgia Tech, but that’s setting the bar pretty low.

I don’t take Richt’s quote to mean that he thinks everything is just fine. We’ve already seen changes with the strength program, he’s noted the need for a team that’s physically and mentally tougher, and he realizes that the defense has a ways to go.

I still don’t know that the team I saw down the stretch had improved to the point that I’d say the South Carolina, Arkansas, or even Mississippi State games would have turned out differently. Those teams improved a good deal themselves.

* Bowl game result pending

Pining for Muschamp

I caught this line from Mr. SEC in a post over at Get the Picture. The hiring of Will Muschamp at Florida might have the effect of tweaking more than one program, but I have my doubts that Muschamp coming to Florida really bothered Georgia fans all that much (other than the obvious: he’s still Florida’s coach, after all).

There are probably a lot of Georgia fans who are upset tonight. As a Georgia grad, Muschamp was viewed as a “someday” coach of the Bulldogs. You can bet the folks who wanted to blow out Richt and hire Muschamp this offseason are bummed.

Oh, I’ve seen some of what he’s talking about, but it’s nowhere near the reaction of “a lot” of Georgia fans. If anything, the typical reaction from what I’ve read seems to follow along these lines: first, mild amusement (as opposed to being “bummed”) that Florida turned, of all things, to a former Georgia player and, second, a small sense of excitement – even if misplaced – that Georgia won’t have to face Meyer or Mullen or Stoops in Jacksonville for the near future. Muschamp is (or was) a Bulldog in good standing whose progression from walk-on to starter to co-captain to rising coaching prospect is admirable, but let’s not pretend that this was a beloved icon like David Greene heading to a rival’s sideline. Most of us couldn’t pick him out of a team photo without a cheat sheet.

Frankly, I’ve found the whole Muschamp-as-prodigal-son meme to be much more a creation and fantasy of those outside the program rather than of those who follow the Bulldogs. It’s the same connect-the-dots logic that had Dan Mullen as the all-but-announced successor to Urban Meyer. Once you get to the small subset of fans ready to “blow out” Richt after this season, Muschamp was about as informed a choice as Gruden, Petrino, or any other name that usually comes up when fans play athletic director. If you anticipated that this offseason would include the firing of Mark Richt and the pursuit of Will Muschamp, you deserve to be bummed.

Florida is raising their home football ticket prices by $5 per game next year. The increase is expected to bring in over $3 million annually in additional revenue, and that should go a long way towards paying a new corch and his staff. They’d also like to get a little more money out of their trip to Jacksonville:

Ticket prices for the Florida-Georgia game will rise $10, if Georgia approves.

Anyone expect Georgia to put up much of a fight on that one?

Run-of-the-mill Florida tickets have been around $40 for a while, so an increase wouldn’t be completely outrageous. For context, Georgia fans can expect to pay at least $65-$160 for their other 2011 neutral-site game against Boise State if the LSU-UNC ticket prices were any indication.

The trouble with Florida is that it’s full of Gators. So why not go with a Bulldog?

Saturday evening news broke that the Gators had reached an agreement with Texas defensive coordinator and coach-in-waiting Will Muschamp to replace Urban Meyer who had resigned earlier in the week. The move brought two questions immediately to mind:

• Who, and how many, had to say "no" before the name Muschamp came up?
• Who’s going to be on the staff?

The first question is really only interesting from a process standpoint.  The assumption along with Meyer’s resignation was that Dan Mullen would be the starting point of Florida’s search. Any other names would be speculation – we don’t know that Florida spoke with anyone but Muschamp.  It’s also common sense that feelers were put out to many more coaches with more experience. Georgia also went with an assistant with no head coaching experience for their last hire, and it worked out pretty well. The transition from career assistant to top dawg Gator is something to which Mark Richt can relate.

The second question is more to the point of how successful Muschamp will be as a head coach.  The Chizik story at Auburn should remind us all that a superstar coordinator can make even the most questionable hire look like a brilliant decision.  Mark Richt’s choice of defensive coordinator was a huge part of the run that led to two SEC titles in Richt’s first five seasons. The composition of Muschamp’s staff is almost as interesting as the choice of the head coach himself. With the presumed expertise of Muschamp on defense and with the importance of a strong offense in modern college football, Muschamp’s picks for offensive coaches will naturally receive the most scrutiny. 

The choice of Muschamp’s offensive coordinator will also lead to a related question:  what’s the future of the Mullen/Meyer spread option at Florida? Some variant of the spread is commonplace enough in college football today that it wouldn’t be a surprise for the new coordinator to have a somewhat familiar scheme, but it’s not likely to be a direct analogue.  Florida struggled in 2010 with round pegs at quarterback in the square hole of their offensive scheme, and Muschamp’s new staff will have the work of untangling that problem and the rest of the roster tooled for Meyer’s offense.

Though the spotlight will be on his picks for offense, it would be wrong to ignore the importance of Muschamp’s defensive staff. Again we go back to Chizik at Auburn.  Chizik was the defensive mastermind behind the undefeated seasons at Auburn and Texas in 2004 and 2005, but no one would argue that defense is the strength of his current team. Florida had a long and stable run on defense under Charlie Strong, but that came to an end in 2010. Florida’s defensive players will be facing their third different system in three years in 2011.  Muschamp’s skill and experience will help him with that transition, but he’s going to have a lot more on his plate than worrying about the defense.

Minus the head coaching experience, Muschamp has a lot of traits you’d look for in an SEC coach.  He’s been part of several winning programs, has coached under some of the best men in the business, knows and has recruited the South, and he brings the requisite energy and passion for the game. Florida and the rest of us now get to find out if he’s head coaching material.

A December press conference about the future of the Florida football program? Brett Favre nods and approves.

– It’s OK, Julian Royal. I’m sure Mark Fox can still find room for you on next year’s team if you ask nicely this spring.

– Is it me, or is Urban Meyer’s approach to discussing Steve Addazio starting to resemble the he’s-not-off-the-team-but-he’s-not-with-the-team language he used when talking about Chris Rainey?

– Of course the current state of the Tech basketball program had a lot to do with the empty seats last night, but it’s also a consequence of charging 50% to 100% more than the $20 Tech is charging to see its other nonconference opponents. This isn’t football; Georgia fans weren’t going to buy up a few thousand discounted tickets. But the inflated prices did do a good job of keeping all but the most committed of Tech fans at home. I’ve been to games against Georgia and ACC opponents over the past 20 years where the “Thrillerdome” effect was in full force. Those days are long gone. Scenes like that will be what forces the Tech administration to stomach a large buyout and make a change.

– Finally, if you read nothing else today, read this story about the connection between a group of Georgia football players and one special 16-year-old fan.

It wasn’t Georgia’s best showing on either end of the court, but a 7-of-9 night behind the arc from junior point guard Dustin Ware gave the Dawgs just enough to secure a 73-72 win on the road at Georgia Tech Tuesday night.  Ware’s final three-pointer came with just 15 seconds left and broke a 70-70 tie, providing Georgia’s final points in a game that surprised no one by coming down to the wire.

A sluggish start meant that Georgia played catch-up for most of the night.  Travis Leslie spent most of the first half on the bench with two fouls, and the Bulldog inside game was generally ineffective early on.  Thompkins, Price, and Barnes combined for just eight first half points, leaving the guards – minus Leslie – to take up the load.  Ware and Robinson were up to the task, and Georgia reduced a double-digit deficit to a manageable six points at halftime.

Tech was able to keep Georgia at arms’ length for the first part of the second half, but the Dawgs finally drew even at 43 on a pair of Trey Thompkins free throws.  The sizable Georgia contingent had been pretty subdued to that point, but erasing Tech’s lead brought them to their feet.  Georgia soon went ahead for the first time on a pair of Sherrard Brantley three-pointers, and a 13-5 Bulldog run established a six-point Georgia lead inside of eight minutes left.

Georgia missed an opportunity to extend the lead to eight when a Price layup fell short, and a three-pointer on the other end got the hosts right back in the game.  Tech went on a late 10-0 run to turn a five-point Georgia lead into a 70-65 Yellow Jacket advantage as the Dawgs went cold on offense.  Thompkins picked Georgia up with a huge three-point play, and Ware’s final jumper with 15 seconds left capped an 8-0 run by the Bulldogs to win the game.  Tech had a final chance to win after Gerald Robinson missed two free throws, but a long pass was intercepted, and Georgia held on as the clock ran out.

It’s always great to beat Tech, but as I said it wasn’t a terribly good showing – it was much like the football game in that respect. Georgia’s a better team, and it would have been an upset to lose.  Despite having a stronger inside presence with Thompkins, Barnes, and Price, Georgia was outrebounded 43-30 and only had two more points in the paint.  Thompkins eventually heated up in the second half with 15 points in the final 20 minutes, but Barnes and Price never found much success on offense.  Another thing keeping Tech in the game was Georgia’s free throw shooting.  The Dawgs were a wretched 7-of-15 from the stripe, and Robinson’s missed pair at the end opened the door for Tech to win.

Neither team was especially strong on perimeter defense.  Georgia, led by Ware, shot an amazing 55% from behind the arc.  The Dogs were well over 50% from outside but only 44% overall and 46% from the free throw line.  Tech wasn’t much worse from outside at 40%. They cooled off though only hitting 33% of their three-pointers in the second half, and that helped to fuel Georgia’s comeback.

The win is Georgia’s second in Atlanta since the series left the Omni for the respective campuses in the 1995-1996 season.  Georgia’s last road victory against Tech came in 2000 when another Bulldog guard, D.A. Layne, dropped 28 points on the Yellow Jackets.  Meanwhile, Tech has yet to win in Athens since the series went home-and-home.  Thanks to those two road wins, Georgia enjoys a 10-6 advantage over Tech in the post-Omni era.

The Bulldogs are a respectable 6-2 now and will be off for the next ten days during exams.  Chances are good that the Dawgs will be at 11-2 when SEC play begins.  There are four winnable games in Athens during the latter half of December, and a December 23rd game at Mercer in Macon is the only road game left before the conference schedule.  

We’d rather have been a part of Championship Saturday, but staying home gave us the chance to see everything from Cammy Cam Juice to the always-entertaining arrest of a mascot. The regular season was ultimately anti-climatic, but that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing to talk about.

• This is easy to say in hindsight, but Auburn faced their demons in Tuscaloosa, and I never had a doubt that they’d lose the SECCG. It reminded me of Georgia finally getting over the hump in 2002 at Auburn. It’s one thing to be a team of destiny, but it’s something else to see a good team hit its stride. Once Georgia managed that in 2002, Tech, Arkansas, and FSU never stood a chance. I don’t think Oregon will either.
• Cammy Cam Juice might’ve been the most ridiculous, and therefore the most enduring, moment of the 2010 SEC season.
• That said, the Gatorade bath is stale. Cam should have just made it rain on the sideline instead.
• This is the time of year when people gripe about there being too many bowls. They’re wrong. More college football is always the right answer.
• Congratulations to Willie Martinez: he’s now been a part of three conference championships and four BCS teams in the past ten years. When you recall that Martinez originally accepted a position at Stanford after leaving Georgia, he’s worked for not one but two teams bound for this season’s BCS.
• I think everyone was encouraged by the approach outlined by Coach T. late last week. We’re on to the “show me” stage rather quickly. The skepticism Tereshinski will have to overcome is this: was the decision to move forward with Tereshinski so obvious that it required no other interviews or a search of any kind? Georgia’s had some pretty high-profile strength coaches with Eric Fears back in the Donnan era and of course with Van Halenger. I hope Tereshinski is ready for his turn in the spotlight. Ben Dukes has some good additional perspective.
• Two teams from the state of Florida are ranked in the final coaches’ poll, and neither is Florida or Miami.
• Tech is offering Independence Bowl tickets for $14 to the first 5,000 purchasers. Does anyone else find that optimistic?
• Yes, UConn is going to get drilled in front of their 17 fans who make the cross-country trek. I’m glad though to see another school, much like Arkansas, get to experience a BCS bowl for the first time. It’ll be a great time for the fans who do go, and it’ll probably be the most-watched UConn football game ever. Outside of the championship game, the BCS has nothing to do with “best teams”. They won their (wretched) conference, and I hope they enjoy the reward.
• FSU never had much of a chance without Ponder, but Virginia Tech has to be wondering where they’d be now having scheduled Idaho State rather than Boise State. The pleasure of watching a team adjust and develop as the season goes on is one reason why I’m never sorry to see a team with a few early losses go deep in March Madness. It’s also why I wonder how many of the teams ranked ahead of Virginia Tech are really better than the Hokies right now.
• Newton and Auburn’s offense deserve all of the accolades thrown their way. You’ve started to see though an increasing role for Auburn’s defense in their success. They held Georgia to 10 points after the first quarter. Certainly they were adept at adjusting and not caving after Alabama jumped on them. Most impressive was their performance against South Carolina. We can debate whether the pressure put on an opponent by Auburn’s offense creates opportunities for the defense, and I’d agree that it does. Lattimore was limited, and it’s hard to stick with a ground game when you’re down by 14.
• Auburn’s Hail Mary had about the same effect that their onside kick against Georgia had. South Carolina had just scored to get within 7 and would open the second half with the ball. You can’t predict how things would have gone, but you can see an increased role for Lattimore in a closer game, and perhaps Auburn’s offense is kept off the field for a while longer. While we’re at it, is a squib kick ever a good idea? I understand the risks of kicking to the designated return man, but the rare long return seems like a small risk to take versus the field position you’re almost certain to give up. Does Auburn take a knee if they’re starting inside their own 30?