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?

From the St. Petersburg Times:

In a report set to be released this afternoon, the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions said that the school must vacate all wins in which 61 student-athletes in 10 sports – football, men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s swimming, men’s and women’s track and field, baseball, softball and men’s golf – competed while ineligible during 2006 and 2007.

If that holds, move 14 football wins off the ledger. Joe Paterno’s lead over Bobby Bowden for career wins would increase from one game (383 vs. 382) to 15 games.

PS…is vacating wins and individual records the most meaningless punishment ever? You know that game you won or the tournament you played in? Never happened. Seriously. Report to Rekall, Inc. to have those memories erased.

A quick two-game winning streak to finish the regular season snapped an unprecedented five-game losing streak and put the Lady Dogs squarely in the middle of the SEC standings entering this season’s SEC Tournament in Little Rock which gets underway today. In most seasons the SEC Tournament is a formality for Georgia, but the mission is much different this year. There’s no question that the Lady Dogs must turn some heads this weekend in order to earn an NCAA Tournament bid and avoid missing the national tournament for only the third time in program history.

Georgia heads to Little Rock as a classic bubble team: several impressive wins and several devastating losses. First, the good: three wins over ranked teams who are also three of the top four SEC seeds. The bad: losses to Ole Miss and Arkansas, a late-season five-game losing streak, and five nonconference losses against a pretty weak slate. In a sub-par season by Georgia standards, the Lady Dogs have occasionally thrilled and often disappointed. They’ve shown that they can beat the teams that stand between them and the semifinals, but with the WNIT not an option do they have a season-saving run left in them?

After several seasons of LSU and Tennessee duking it out for top honors in the conference, both of those powerhouse programs are rebuilding this year. That has allowed a bit of a shakeup in the SEC standings this year, and names like Bonner, Wirth, and Dotson have taken over for Parker and Fowles. The biggest difference this year is that the SEC hasn’t proven to have a national contender. Auburn is a Top 5 team with only two losses, but their only real nonconference test was Ohio State. No one else has looked like more than a Sweet 16 team.

Auburn won the regular season title with room to spare, and they avoided the slumps that can get to the best of teams. Now they get to deal with the pressure of the top seed. That might not be a big deal for some of the other top seeds who are more used to the spotlight, but Auburn was just the sixth seed last year. This is a talented team in new territory as the favorite, and we don’t know how they’ll respond.

Back for its third season is my breakdown of the SEC Women’s Tournament field.

The Favorite

• #1 Auburn (12-2). The dominant play of Auburn has been the story of the season. They raced to a 20-0 start punctuated by a 82-68 dismantling of Tennessee. Setbacks to decent Vanderbilt and Georgia teams come with the territory and showed some vulnerabilities, but the Tigers have been the class of the league this year. Likely SEC Player of the Year DeWanna Bonner leads the way at forward, but solid guard play provides nice balance.

Contenders

• #2 Vanderbilt (10-4). With wins over Tennessee, LSU, Auburn, and Florida, you’d expect Vandy to be one of the favorites to win the tournament. They’ve already beaten the rest of the top seeds. But puzzling losses to teams like Georgia, Ole Miss, and Mississippi State show that there isn’t much margin for error for this team. If Vanderbilt has a glaring weakness, it’s lack of size. They rely a lot on the potent outside shooting of Wirth and Marsh and depend on effort and position from an undersized frontcourt for points and rebounds inside. In the season finale, they were outrebounded 45-23 by Tennessee yet weren’t that far away from winning in Knoxville. Bigger opponents can be effective inside against Vandy, but the Commodores usually shoot and defend well enough to handle most SEC teams.
• #3 LSU (10-4). A few weeks ago, LSU was 5-4 in the SEC with games left against, among others, Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee. Van Chancellor’s team had massive turnover after saying goodbye to seven seniors last year, and true freshmen now make up the bulk of the LSU lineup with the exception of standout guard Allison Hightower. The Tigers took their lumps early in the season, but since that 5-4 record they’ve won five straight and have vaulted from the bubble to become one of the SEC’s stronger teams. They still play tough defense, keep the scoring low, and have found enough offense to stand as one of the hotter teams entering the tournament. That winning streak will likely be tested on Friday by Mississippi State who beat LSU twice during the regular season.
• #4 Florida (9-5). If any team could challenge Auburn for the best start to the season, it was Florida with their 22-2 record. A lone road loss at Auburn was their only SEC blemish. But since Feb. 12, Florida has lost four of five games and slid from a likely #2 seed to a shaky #4 seed. Defense has become spotty; opponents scored over 80 points in three of those four losses. The Gators were the #11 seed just two years ago, and their rapid rise might have led them to think they were better than they were. Still, this is a team that has impressive wins over FSU, Pitt, Arizona State, and Tennessee. But if they don’t snap out of this recent funk, they might not survive a Friday rematch with Tennessee.
• #5 Tennessee (9-5). It’s been a down season by Tennessee standards, but you still have to include them as a contender. For only the second time in program history they aren’t among the top four seeds and will have to play on Thursday. Tennessee, like LSU, lost a tremendous amount of talent from last season, and they’ve had their difficulties getting the newcomers to play at a consistently high level. They’ve been prone to significant lapses in scoring and have had to rely on effort in defense and rebounding to keep them in a lot of games. That effort has been hit or miss at times, and it’s been frustrating to Pat Summitt to have to coach effort out of her young team. They’ll surely be up for the tournament and should have no problems with Alabama, but after that they’ll have to avenge regular season losses in order to advance. It’s been that kind of season where I wouldn’t be surprised to see Tennessee reach the finals…or get bounced on Friday.

Looking to make noise

• #6 Mississippi State (8-6). At 21-8 overall and 8-6 in the SEC, MSU seems set in the NCAA Tournament. They have a season sweep of LSU and a win over Vanderbilt to their credit, and they have really no bad losses. Even a close loss to Arkansas doesn’t seem that bad now. If seeding holds, the path to the finals goes through three teams they’ve beaten during the regular season. The possibility is there for a big improvement in NCAA seeding if they can make a deep run. Alexis Rack will shoot the ball from anywhere on the court. If she’s hot, look out. If not, they won’t last long.

Please, sir, just 30 seconds of rest…

On the bubble

• #7 Georgia (7-7). After getting swept in two games against Kentucky (including an SEC Tournament loss) last season, the Lady Dogs hope to return the favor this year. Thanks to the clutch play of Ashley Houts, Georgia emerged with a win in Lexington just a week ago. But it wasn’t easy or pretty. Houts will be key again in the rematch against a relatively weak UK backcourt. Phillips and Robinson can match up with Kentucky’s strong frontcourt, but they’ll need to avoid foul trouble. When Houts, Phillips, and Robinson play well, Georgia is usually successful. When they get that plus a contribution from Marshall and/or Puleo, they can run with any team in the league. The biggest danger sign is early foul trouble on a post player, and a sloppy night from Houts usually means disaster. Kentucky tried to focus on stopping Houts last week, and she still came up big. They’ll likely try the same strategy in the rematch, and she’ll need to be every bit as determined this time around. Win and the postseason hopes remain alive. Lose and the season is over.

Spoilers

• #8 Arkansas (6-8). Before losing badly to Auburn in the regular season finale, Arkansas had reeled off five straight wins to overcome a 1-7 SEC start and climb out of the cellar. During their winning streak they knocked off Georgia and Florida. They’re athletic and play straightforward without any complicated offense, and they’ve been an interesting story down the stretch. But it’s unlikely that they’ll get past Auburn on Friday.
• #9 Ole Miss (5-9). Wins over Georgia and Vanderbilt highlight an otherwise unremarkable season for Ole Miss. They’ve looked dangerous in close losses at Tennessee and Auburn but have shown no consistency. They lost by 11 to Arkansas just a few weeks ago, and they’ll have to come up with some more road toughness to survive another game with Arkansas in Little Rock.
• #10 Kentucky (5-9). The Cats were the #4 seed last year and lost a bit of talent, but a win over Tennessee proved that they still have some punch. They don’t score or shoot particularly well, but they can rebound and play quality defense. Their frontcourt can match up with most in the league. Victoria Dunlap is the SEC’s top rebounder in addition to being a productive scorer, and wing Amani Franklin is a dangerous player who can score inside or outside.

Didn’t make hotel reservations

• #11 South Carolina (2-12). At times, South Carolina has been able to put a scare into SEC teams. They came within four points of Auburn, six points of Georgia, ten points of Vandy, and seven points of LSU. They have the ability to challenge Mississippi State on Thursday but likely won’t get past a motivated opponent.
• #12 Alabama (1-13). The Tide have had a single SEC win in each of the past two seasons. They won’t improve on that against an angry Tennessee team.
  

Just awesome. I’m thrilled for the guys. Georgia’s won only four times at Rupp – ever – but three of them have come this decade. Just a few weeks ago we were wondering if this team would win an SEC game, and now they’re 3-3 over the past six games. This latest win – a road win of all things – couldn’t come against a better opponent, and it might’ve dealt a serious blow to Kentucky’s NCAA Tournament chances.

Terrence Woodbury’s line was unreal. 7-13 from the floor. 4-4 from outside. 12-12 from the stripe. 5 assists. 30 points. First Florida and now this – I guess all it takes for Georgia to be competitive is Woodbury going off. Hopefully he can go out with a similar game on Saturday in his final game at Stegeman.

Yesterday I mentioned (again) the Mark Richt factor in keeping Rodney Garner at Georgia despite overtures from Auburn and Tennessee. That theme came up again in John Jancek’s decision to turn down the opportunity to become a defensive coordinator at South Florida.

Jancek told Marc Weiszer that "we love it here. We love coach Richt and the staff." I grant that coaches in this position often say things that sound like the Bull Durham "I’m just happy to be here and hope I can help the ballclub" babble. Garner didn’t yell "cha-CHING!" after turning down Tennessee and Auburn though he got a nice raise out of it.

Still, you get the sense that there is some sense of loyalty to Richt beyond what you usually see in a very necessarily mercenary business. It’s not that Georgia has zero turnover. More than half the staff has turned over. It’s even encouraged sometimes. When Garner considered leaving for Auburn this past December, Richt seemed anything but obstructive.

"I’m definitely rooting for Rodney," Richt said. "What a wonderful opportunity to be considered at your alma mater in the Southeastern Conference at a wonderful program like Auburn. I think it’s a tremendous honor for Rodney, and I think it’s a great compliment for Georgia, too."

"…You encourage and try to help in every way. Rodney’s been open with me in every opportunity he’s ever had, and this one, I’m more of a cheerleader right now. I want him to realize his dream if that’s possible."

Keep in mind that he was facing the possibility of losing not only a productive position coach but also his recruiting coordinator to a century-old conference rival. But that kind of encouragement and reinforcement to make the right decision is what builds loyalty among those who choose to stay. It’s the same way in which Richt approaches recruiting, and it’s been a consistent and successful approach.

Contrast that with the environment in Tampa. Jim Leavitt sent his offensive coordinator packing for considering a job with Florida. "I’m not going to have my offensive coordinator out visiting with other schools," huffed Leavitt. As the Wiz notes, "assistants have no doubt taken a look at how Leavitt treated Greg Gregory in January."

I’m not going to pretend that everything is always rosy in Athens and that there aren’t occasionally conflicts among the staff. We’ve even seen some of it spill over onto the sideline. Again, coaching is ultimately just a job. We’ve all had those professional conflicts in even the best of situations. Once you separate out the stuff that comes with the territory, you’re still left with people that would rather work with Mark Richt than take more money or a promotion elsewhere.

We learned over the weekend that the football coaches, some more than others, got a bump in compensation. The key word is "value" – we get a quality staff for a reasonable amount. Georgia is by no means playing on the leading edge of compensation, but they are competitive and capable of paying to keep the top assistants around.

Coaching is ultimately just a job. There are employees, bosses, meetings, paperwork, and all of the fun stuff that everyone else deals with in the working world. The bizarre saga of Mike Leach is a reminder of that. A loose cannon employee who happens to be a high producer doesn’t get along with his boss. It happens in coaching, creative work, programming, sales, you name it. This time it’s just out in the open and those who have the benefit of impartiality can only shake their heads.

These coaches certainly notice the escalating pay scales, but they also have families, and a spot on a stable staff in a positive environment can be a rare and valuable thing (though it must never be allowed to decay into complacency). Last week we pointed to Rodney Garner’s comment about turning down a higher-paid position at Tennessee.

"The attraction of Georgia to me is Mark Richt," Garner said. "I’m going to be honest with you, I love the community and I love the institution, but I work for a great man and that’s the main reason I stayed."

Academic discussions about motivation will inevitably get into Herzberg and his satisfiers, and salary is only part of the picture (and is often not a motivator itself). Of course you’re not going to get away for long nickel-and-diming the coaches; this isn’t exactly volunteer work. But given that Georgia’s compensation is competitive and in light of Garner’s comments, working for Mark Richt seems to carry a significant value that you’ll never see on these compensation reports.

UPDATE: Garner and Searels weren’t the only Georgia assistants to turn down overtures from other schools. According to FootballScoop.com, linebackers coach John Jancek recently turned down the opportunity to become the defensive coordinator at the University of South Florida.

The Athens area had some of the heavier snow on Sunday, and the University was closed today. Dancing in the Endzone has some pictures of Sanford Stadium doing its best impersonation of a late-season Big 10 game.

If you want to target the discriminating bourbon drinker in Columbus, Ohio, taking a shot at Michigan with a giant billboard can’t hurt.

One of the MGoBlog commenters, a Michigan fan living in Columbus, confirmed the authenticity of the billboard. Though if you’re a Michigan guy in Columbus, aren’t you more or less just crying yourself to sleep every night anyway?

Michigan fans looking for an alternate, though far less potent, beverage might want to consider VitaminWater. The Coca-Cola-owned beverage company is filming a commercial that should go over really well in the heart of Maker’s Mark country.

According to a KSR source, Vitamin Water is producing a new television ad featuring Christian Laettner and Rick Pitino which is likely to run throughout the NCAA Tournament. According to the source, the advertisement was shot yesterday in Louisville and will show Laettner following Pitino around his house making “the shot” over and over to torment him.

Item: Jim Calhoun gets into it with a reporter over his $1.6 million salary while the state of Connecticut faces a massive budget deficit.

Comment: At first glance, this isn’t the conversation one wants to hear when hoping that Georgia will aim high for its next basketball coach. On the other hand, Calhoun’s right. How many other state employees have the ROI of a successful major sport coach?

Item: The Music City Bowl’s decision to invite hometown feel-good story Vanderbilt contributed to a $17 million decrease in the local economic impact of the game. "It was really a worst-case scenario," said Scott Ramsey, Music City Bowl president.

Comment: It’s refreshing to see Vandy draining money from someone other than the SEC for once.

Item: Will Georgia miss Stafford or Moreno more in 2009?

Comment: We’ll miss both at times, but I agree that Moreno is the slightly bigger loss. Georgia has had some good seasons without a standout tailback (2003, 2005), but the Georgia offense really clicked in 2002 and 2007 when Smith and Moreno got it going. The point about the offensive line is worth noting. Even though Searels and his troops did very well under the circumstances, Stafford and Moreno often made the line look better than it was. There were plenty of scary moments over the past two years. Now the tables are turned and the linemen will have more experience than the guys they are protecting and blocking for. A good line can make even a serviceable quarterback look like an all-conference candidate (right, JPW?).

Item: North Carolina is facing questions about its ability to present competitive counteroffers after three assistant coaches departed the program within a month. "There is a dollar difference, I can’t deny that,” AD Dick Baddour admitted.

Comment: No one is immune from the pressures of the marketplace, but Georgia twice dodged that bullet during the offseason. Rodney Garner showed that sometimes factors other than money come into play.

"The attraction of Georgia to me is Mark Richt," Garner said. "I’m going to be honest with you, I love the community and I love the institution, but I work for a great man and that’s the main reason I stayed."

Richt’s approach and way of doing things seems to work as well in the volitile world of recruiting as it does in retaining his best assistants.

If you’re one of the Georgia fans who used the three-game packages from Georgia Tech to get tickets for the game in 2003, 2005, and 2007, you’re either going to have to dig deeper this year or look to the secondary ticket market.

The 2009 Tech ticket brochure is clear on this point:

The Georgia Tech vs. UGA home game is ONLY available as part of the season ticket or as an additional request from GT season ticket holders. There will be NO 3-pack option or other packages that include the Georgia Tech vs. UGA game.

Tech season ticket packages start at $260. A total cumulative score of 30,000 Hartman Fund points is required to be eligible to order Georgia Tech game tickets through UGA. Somehow I imagine there will still be plenty of Georgia fans in there.

We already knew that Oklahoma State has a similar policy. If you don’t get tickets through UGA, you’ll have to buy OSU season tickets or scalp your way in.

The story of Georgia track freshman Torrin Lawrence is spreading quickly, but Lawrence could probably outrun even his own hype. In just his sixth college meet Lawrence posted an incredible split of 45.1 seconds in the anchor leg of a 4×400-meter relay race to come from behind and knock off #1-ranked Florida.

The video says it all.

And before you ask, no, he isn’t going to play football.

A rough accounting of the Hartman Fund contributions reveals that the total will be off by about 11%, or about $3 million, from last year’s record high. Blame the economy, the “disappointing” 2008 season and comparatively low expectations for 2009, or any other factor you like. The athletic department should be just fine – ticket and TV money aren’t going anywhere (yet), and there are strong cash reserves built up just in case.

Just from anecdotal evidence, people I’ve talked to are more likely to have donated the minimum necessary for their season ticket renewal. In years past many people would add to their contribution in order to build up their cumulative total for out-of-town tickets. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that reduction or elimination of that extra donation is behind a good bit of the lower bottom line this year.

For those hoping that the downturn will free up some more season tickets, there will still be competition. Associate AD Alan Thomas expects a return to a more normal season ticket turnover of about 2 or 3%. Over a season ticket base of 53,000, that’s only about 1,000-1,600 season tickets that will come available.

The Stinchcomb brothers set the bar pretty high for academic achievement among Georgia offensive linemen, but incoming guard Chris Burnette will be coming to Athens with an academic profile every bit as impressive. If you followed recruiting, you probably know that the Troup County senior stands a good chance of finishing as his class’s valedictorian. If that happens, Mark Richt promised that he’d be there to hear Burnette’s graduation speech.

The AJC reports that an NCAA rule will prevent Richt from following through on that promise. Here we have a student-athlete who has already signed a letter of intent, and Mark Richt can’t be there to honor his future player’s academic accomplishment. If Richt were invited to speak at the football team’s banquet and honor athletic accomplishments, that would be fine – it’s done all the time, and it’s within the rules. So what is different about showing up at the graduation of a student-athlete for whom the recruiting process is over?

It’s doubtful that the rule will change or be waived, and both parties are resigned to the change in plans. Richt still plans to watch a recorded version of the speech if Burnette graduates on top. As a bright guy Burnette understands the world we live in, but that doesn’t make the outcome any less absurd.