Looking forward at Georgia's basketball schedule

One of the recurrent questions I heard at the Mercer game from the folks I was sitting with is what is our over under on wins this year? Honestly, what is our upside, our expected win total, and our downside.  That takes some tea leaf reading, but hey, I have a blog and tea leaves, so why not.

First let's look at Georgia's remaining schedule, the records of those teams, and associated RPIs for each team (from realtimerpi.com):

12-22		USC	4-6 (0-0)	123
12-29		Florida A&M	2-7 (1-0)	334
01-04		Geo. Washington	4-6 (0-0)	197
01-09	at	Florida	7-1 (0-0)	6
01-12		Mississippi St.	3-6 (0-0)	247
01-16	at	Missouri	9-1 (0-0)	74
01-19		LSU	6-1 (0-0)	36
01-23		Florida	7-1 (0-0)	6
01-26	at	Texas A&M	7-2 (0-0)	14
01-30		Auburn	4-5 (0-0)	239
02-02	at	South Carolina	6-3 (0-0)	196
02-06	at	Tennessee	5-3 (0-0)	58
02-09		Texas A&M	7-2 (0-0)	14
02-12		Alabama	5-3 (0-0)	45
02-16	at	Mississippi	7-1 (0-0)	57
02-21	at	Arkansas	5-4 (0-0)	120
02-23		South Carolina	6-3 (0-0)	196
02-27	at	Vanderbilt	5-4 (0-0)	176
03-02		Tennessee	5-3 (0-0)	58
03-07		Kentucky	7-3 (0-0)	62
03-09	at	Alabama	5-3 (0-0)	45

Keep in mind, Georgia's current RPI is in the 250 range. Based on that, we should be favored in one game (Florida A&M) based solely on schedule. We get a break in that our two most winnable games in conference, Auburn and Mississippi State, are at home. We should be favored in those two due to home court advantage. Also, we've always seemed to come up with one performance against a very good team (think Florida last season) and win a game we have no business winning.

If you are doing the math at home, that is 7 wins and 24 losses. Since this is the simplest way to look at a median number of wins, I'm ok with calling this our expected number and go with 7-24.

What about the upside?
Realistically, we cannot be expected to beat Florida either time this year. Same goes for Texas A&M or Alabama. For that matter, the only road games we should be anywhere close to being competitive in would be South Carolina and Vandy. Furthermore, any home game against a team with a sub 100 RPI would be a huge upset. I'm willing to say we can win one of USC (not likely, but possible) and George Washington (who has struggled recently and also lost to Youngstown State).

That leaves Florida A&M, one of George Washington/USC, Mississippi State, Auburn, South Carolina at home, one of South Carolina/Vandy on the road, and that one crazy game that we always have at home where we slip up and surprise someone. For good measure let's say we have two of those games. That is 11-20.

Isn't 7-24 the downside?
God no. We could go 1-17 in the conference and only win one of the remaining OOC games. That'd be a gut wrenching 5-26. For that matter, we could go 0-18 in the conference if Fox loses the team. The SEC, while far from being as good as it has been in some years is much better than it has been. Furthermore, Georgia's schedule, looking forward, is very tough. We get four of the top five RPI teams in the conference twice. We only play one of the other bottom feeders (South Carolina) twice.

Like I said earlier, the only thing that gives me any hope for better than 10 wins is somehow the younger lineup starts to gel and we find some offense to go with the plodding game pace. You can complain about the pace of the game, but we aren't going to win many any games in which an opponent scores 80 points. If we can squeeze another .10 of point out of each possession, we could be close to .500 for the rest of the season. That would put us at 14-17 on the season.

Then the question then becomes is 14-17 good enough for Fox to keep his job?

TD

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