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April 8, 2009

Confirmed: Mark Fox names Philip Pearson as Assistant Basketball Coach

The AJC has confirmed what we projected yesterday. Mark Fox has named Philip Pearson, former Alabama interim head coach and assistant for 11 years, as an assistant head coach for the Georgia Bulldogs. The Birmingham News also confirmed the hire.

As we outlined yesterday, Pearson had more success recruiting highly rated high school talent from the state of Georgia over the past 10 years than Dennis Felton and Jim Harrick's staffs combined.

Early this morning, Kevin Scarbinsky of the Birmingham News spoke glowingly of the rumored Pearson to Bama move.
"Everybody who thinks Georgia didn't get it when it went outside the conference, the region and the box to hire new basketball coach Mark Fox, get this:

Fox gets it. He's thinking of hiring Philip Pearson.

Sealing that deal would be the smartest move the Georgia coach has made since accepting a job that'll pay him $1.3 million a year for six years."

This could be the best assistant coaching move for UGA basketball since Hugh Durham hired Tevester Anderson. Old time UGA hoops fans know that was a compliment.

UPDATE: The team had their first practice with Fox, Pearson and Kwanza Johnson today.

PWD
Georgia Sports Blog

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's REALLY good news. Wonder how much we're paying him.

JADAMS said...

Didn't the AJC also "confirm" Ken Griffey Jr. was going to play for the Braves??

Anonymous said...

But Terrance Moore said that Cracker ain't the corch for us.

The Watch Dawg said...

Gotta hand it to you PWD, you saw this one coming. Good call.

Bernie said...

Tevester Anderson - good analogy. Every great recruit from the mid-80s to the mid 90s. Bell and Strong, Green and Anderson.

Come on over Pearson, let's right this ship.

C. Paul said...

+1 on the Tevester Anderson analogy.

Go Dawgs!!

Anonymous said...

So, who are the rumored candidates for the 3rd and 4th positions?

Anonymous said...

Anon,

There are 3 full-time assistant coaches and I think they are allowed one more guy who doesn't recruit.

Coach 1 = Pearson
Coach 2 = Kwanza Johnson
Coach 3 = ?
Coach 4 = ? (Non-recruiter)

I heard a name two days ago for the 3rd job, but they haven't announced him yet. That makes me think he might not have gotten the gig for whatever reason.

So, we'll see.


PWD

Anonymous said...

I would assume that the third recruiting assistant will be a younger guy with Pearson as the Associate Head Coach, and Kwanza as the number two assistant pay-wise. Based on the 960theref interview with Mark Slonakar, it appears Mark and Tom Brennan have suggested that Coach Fox tap a former UGA grad for one of the remaining positions (Jonas Hayes, GG Smith, Shaun Golden, etc). Should be interesting.

William Neilson Jr. said...

The only thing I worry about is that we expect too much too soon.

I know people will say "2-3 years" but you know that people will go nuts next year no matter what we do except if we make the tournament

We can get incredibly greedy, imo.

Anonymous said...

Is Hermann gone for sure? Should he be??

jb said...

Kris durham is out for the year.. Damn

Ubiquitous GA Alum said...

This sounds promising ... Coach Fox is making the calls to the Atlanta area coaches. At least he contacted Derrik Favors coach - not to recruit Favors. He's just making himself known. Coach Reddick had this to say ...

"He wasn’t asking about Derrick. [Fox] said he just wanted to establish communications with coaches in the area. He said he doesn’t want to let great players get out of Georgia. ... [Fox] said once he gets settled next week, he’s going to make contact and stop by the school in the near future. He said he wants to hit the ground running. I was impressed.”

http://blogs.ajc.com/recruiting/2009/04/08/ugas-basketball-coach-establishes-contact-with-derrick-favors-coach/

Anonymous said...

+1 on Fox's reaching out. Also, I don't think it is too greedy to expect success. I believe the AD does. The real question is what is success and how do we leverage that to build the program into a powerhouse.

 
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