(from Connor Nolte's Passer'sRemorse.com)
During the off season, I frequently used my typical joke about Georgia basketball. "We're only two players away...Shaq and Kobe." Actually, now that I think about it...that might be an adaptation of a very old Dantzler line from Harrick's first season.
In reality, we're probably not two players away from being a tourney team right now. The wins over ranked Vanderbilt, Tennessee and Georgia Tech (plus an Illinois team that will likely be ranked by tonight) show this team in its current construction can beat anyone on any given night. The painfully close losses at Kentucky, at Mississippi State and at home vs. Arkansas and Ole Miss further reinforce that we could be much closer than I anticipated.
Maybe we're only one player away. Maybe that player is an experienced ball handling handling guard who can create his own shot, break the press and perform under pressure. Fox thinks we've got that guy now in Gerald Robinson, transfer from Tennessee State.
In an interview last week with UGASports.com he said this about Gerald Robinson:
"For instance if we had Gerald Robinson and he did not have to sit out we would have five, six or seven more wins," Fox said. "That's a lot to put on one kid, but we've had a lot of single possession or two possession outcomes where an experienced, a guard with some quickness and some athleticism , the ability to score and break down a defense, would make a huge difference in our team, but the reality is we don't have him for another year."How good is Robinson? The scuttlebutt around the program preseason suggested that he was the second best player on the roster. Even today, the rumblings and whispers are all extremely positive.
Robinson, who started both his years at Tennessee State, averaged 15.2 points as a freshman and 17.8 as a sophomore, going over the 1,000-point mark in his season finale at the school.
He led the Tigers in every major statistical category his sophomore season.
Here are some of his stats against BCS opposition while at Tennessee State:
- Freshman Year:
at Georgia Tech: 24 pts / 3 steals (his 2nd college basketball game)
at Indiana: 7 pts and 3 steals
at Vandy: 24 pts and 5 rebounds
at Illinois: 9 pts and 2 steals (TTU won this game)
Sophomore Year:
at Alabama: 15 pts, 7 rebounds and 5 steals
at Kentucky: 25 pts, 5 rebounds and 3 steals
at Georgia Tech: 16 pts and 5 assists
We just need Trey to do the right thing this off season and stick around for his junior year.
As for this season...if the Dawgs are ever going to figure how to win a game on the road in the SEC, it should be at Auburn on Wednesday night. The Tigers aren't a very good team, and their fans are passionately ambivalent towards their b-ball program. Win on the plains and we have a chance to take three in a row with the Gamecocks coming to town on Saturday.
See Also:
-- Dawgs will be tough out in the SEC Tourney - Legge
-- Fox ranks among the SEC's Best - Ching
PWD
*Note the videos don't support my thesis that he's going to help us next year. They are just cool. For more gameday trick shot videos, follow Connor Nolte on Twitter.
11 comments:
Thanks for the continued words of hopes. I lump myself in the part of the fanbase that has a difficult time getting on board w/ the hoops team when times are tough, but I've tried to follow them the best I can this season.
You hit on the close losses that they've experienced, but you didn't mean the absolute shellacking they took at the hands of UF. Is Florida really THAT GOOD, or is the hoops teams stricken w/ the same voodoo the football team has when it comes to UF? Wins over ranked teams are nothing to sneeze at, but surely the beating UF game the Dawgs can't look good on their year-end tourney review.
Any thoughts about that?
Ben
And all those stats were accumulated on the road.
Very impressive.
I haven't been able to go to a practice this year, so I haven't seen him in person, but each player I've talked with to a man has echoed Coach Fox's sentiment about winning 4 or 5 more games if GRjr was suiting up.
The b-ball team has done better vs. UF over the past 10 years than the football team IMO.
In the SEC, anyone can get beat on the road and almost anyone can get blown out.
PWD
If you only get blown out once a season in SEC play, and that on the road, you're a pretty good team.
I think we're still one or two players away, but the encouraging this is that they don't have to be Shaq and Kobe.
Obviously an SEC caliber guard would help as we give up points and can't score down the stretch. We're asking McPhee to do a heckuva lot more than we want to.
It'd also be nice if we had one more big man and he had some small amount of offensive ability. Ajax can play D and foul really well, but his put-back and layup misses are near bewildering. I'm disturbed that under Felton he was expected to be a scorer.
All that aside, the positive vibes that Fox has brought are awesome. Felton really sucked the wind out of the program. And not just with the fans but his own players. What coach is so insufferable that players routinely quit the sport as opposed to play for him?!
To piggy back on Mike's reply, I think the most impressive thing about CMF's first season has been player retention.
I'd gotten so used to bizarro incidents with players smoking weed or brandishing knives or just plain quitting under Felton.
Reminds me of the Jarvis/Jonas Hayes situation when they transfered from Western Carolina. Has to be frustrating to have your best guard sitting out. Can't wait to see what he can do next season.
The first poster, Ben, is so typical of our idiotic fan base when it comes to hoops. He picks out our worst performance in conference and chooses to be indifferent because of that. Yes, it was Florida, but it didn't count more than any other game and UF has always been a tough out on their home court. Florida lost to SOUTH ALABAMA at home earlier this year. Does that make S Alabama good? No, UF had a bad game. Quit looking for reasons NOT to support your team.
"We just need Trey to do the right thing this off season and stick around for his junior year."
When was the last time we could say that about a player?
I know what you mean, but I see no reason to call Ben an idiot if he wants to vent. I actually had forgotten about the Florida game; indeed, that was a rough one.
Don't forget Travis. He's progressing into an NBA player, and the question is just how soon he wants to get paid. IMO, he's closer to "NBA-ready" than Trey if just because he clearly has the athleticism. As Leslie improves his floor game (which he'd improve best here under Fox than in the NBA where coaches are more concerned with winning now than individual player development), he can become closer to being an NBA player, but he has the athleticism to survive now. Trey on the other hand will be shorter and have less ups than his competition in the NBA. He can hit shots, which the NBA always loves, and is a better player than Travis, but how many successful NBA big men are 6'8 without a huge wingspan or 40" vertical?
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