The delicate line between rebuilding and winning now

I don't believe any reasonable person would tell you they thought Georgia was going to make significant progress with a new head coach. We could all debate what we thought significant progress means, especially considering the winning percentage of Mark Richt, but very few would have thought losing to a bad Vanderbilt and nearly doing so against a much worse Nicholls team was on the table.

Hell, I thought we'd be 9-3.

That being said, Kirby is balancing winning now with building the program he envisions.

Those two things are in direct competition with each other, with the hearts, minds, and dollars of Georgia fans at stake. Think I'm kidding?

“I know that Kirby is going to build it - I really do believe that because I know what he’s about from over the last two decades. I know he’s going to get it. He has major drive. He has an edge,” another said. “But I’m not going back to games until he does. When he builds it I will be there. I don’t have time for that stuff right now. I’ve got kids. We are busy.”

That is from one of Legge's insiders.

It bears watching as we go through the season. Here's the thing: There isn't another game on the schedule that is a 'no way we can win' game. The flip side is that 6-6 is on the table. When you add in an increase in cost for 2017, that could spell a significant decrease in season tickets sold for next season.

While it isn't time to send Kevin Bacon into the homecoming crowd yelling 'all is well, keep calm,' those problems go higher up than the football program.

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Georgia is "kind of far out there in Athens"

Very cool read from Kevin Ware, former Louisville and Georgia State basketball player, on his decision to transfer to Georgia State from Louisville. Most interesting to me, the Georgia basketball fan:

Going home to the Atlanta area, I didn’t have a lot of choices. Georgia Tech wasn’t an option because Louisville had just moved to the ACC, and I’d have had to sit out a year if I transferred within the conference. Georgia was an option, but it was kind of far out there in Athens, and I wanted to be closer to my mom. I even entertained the idea of going to Auburn because of coach Bruce Pearl.

Georgia is "kind of far out there," while Auburn isn't. He was committed to Tennessee under Pearl, so they had that prior connection over telephone calls and cook outs at Pearl's house, but still. Georgia is kind of far out there.

And keep in mind, Ware is from Conyers. It is only 16 miles further to Stegeman from Conyers than it is from GSU Sports arena to Conyers.

Georgia is kind of out there in Athens.

Fix that attitude within ATL AAU culture, and you are on to something.
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The Georgia Way

Last night, I saw the discussion Dan Wolken was having on Twitter about Georgia and started several times to write something about the issues being further up and more ingraned than simply 'Mark Richt is too good a guy to win it all.'

It's just a weird vibe around UGA. Almost like the school would feel guilty acting like a real football power.
— Dan Wolken (@DanWolken) November 3, 2014

Thankfully, Blutarsky took the time to write something that hit the nail on the head:

What they’re unwilling to give any hard thought to is how to win doing things the right way.  Whether that’s out of a sense of guilt, as Wolken surmises, or because it’s too hard to make the effort, I can’t say.  But it’s clear, and not just to me.

The one thing I'd add is that 'the right way' isn't a binary decision. There are plenty of things that are the right way, that frankly it feels we are afraid to do as an athletic department. This isn't a fire Richt or even a fire McGarity sentiment. This is a view that the decision makers view success in a different way than the rest of us do. Which is why Blutarsky sums his post up with

Because if the folks in Butts-Mehre are anything these days, it’s comfortable.

And as long as there is plenty of money and butts in seats, I don't see that changing.
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Charles Mitchell to transfer to Tech

Looked for a while the Maryland transfer would come to Athens. The 6 foot 8 inch power forward would have been a nice fit to fill the hole being vacated by Donte Williams. Alas, we'll face him to open the season on November 14th at Tech.
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Fox going somewhere? Ahmed Hill thinks he might.

Michael Carvell has an interesting interview with Aquinas' Ahmed Hill (same high school as UGA TB Brendan Douglas). Hill is the second rated hoops prospect in Georgia, behind Missouri commit JaKeenan Gant, and is a shooting guard who reminds me a lot of KCP.

The entire piece is pretty interesting if you are into basketball recruiting, but he has some very interesting comments about Mark Fox around the 1:30 mark. Georgia isn't on his short list (Marquette, Missouri, Indiana, Florida, and Florida State), but if Hill is hearing rumors about Fox's tenure at Georgia, because you have to think didn't hear them from Georgia's coaches, I wonder who thinks they know something we don't.

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Early Georgia Lines

Golden Nugget will offer lines on 250 'Games of the Year' on Friday. Today they dropped a few teaser lines. Not surprising at all, eight of the ten feature SEC games, with six being conference games.

From the Golden Nugget:
Aug. 31 (in Atlanta)
Alabama -17 vs. Virginia Tech

Sept. 14
Alabama -6 at Texas A&M

Sept. 28
LSU at Georgia -6

Sept. 28
Wisconsin at Ohio St -11

Oct. 12
Florida at LSU -4

Nov. 2 (Jacksonville)
Florida vs. Georgia -4

Nov. 9
LSU at Alabama -11.5

Nov. 23
Texas A&M at LSU -1

Nov. 30
Florida St. at Florida -2

Nov. 30
Ohio St. -6 at Michigan

The Nugget will also release lines on the other games, including the Clemson, South Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri, Vandy, Auburn, Kentucky, Tech games.

Any chance Georgia is a dog in any of those games?

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McGarity's Comments on Fox's Need for Improvement

There has been some of talk lately about Greg McGarity's recent comments that he wants to see improvement from the basketball team. 

At a high-level, I agree with what McGarity said when he told Seth Emerson:

"It's like any other program: You look for continuous improvement. We do not with any coach set any type of minimum wins, things of that nature. Coaches have enough pressure on them anyway," McGarity said. "And even if you ask the coaches they would probably say the same thing, as far as continued improvement. That's the challenges that lie ahead with every sport. How do we improve every year, how do we get better."

Conceptually, he's right. As Nick Saban says, program building is a Process, and he doesn't want to be backed into a corner with a win total hanging over Fox.  The need for improvement is a reasonable expectation. Honestly, an NIT bid would probably be enough to begrudgingly have me accept giving Fox a sixth year despite the overall snail's pace of progress and improvement up to this point.

However, McGarity's comments to Anthony Dasher have lead me to just stare in disbelief at the small, incremental vision for the program articulated by McGarity.

Right now, when you are competing against the storied programs in college basketball and Georgia has had such a fertile recruiting ground, you need someone to take that leap. Kentavious took that leap. I'm not really sure where Charles (Mann), Kenny (Gaines) and Brandon (Morris) … I know there were a lot of schools involved in their recruitment, so they kind of took a chance on Georgia.

First off...I don't think we need to out recruit UK, Duke, UNC or Florida or any other regional storied programs....for now. But we should be able to out recruit the parade of historic also-ran programs who are coming into the state and picking off talent. We shouldn't be left days before signing day fighting with Lamar (who I assume is a college) for kids in Mississippi or fighting off UNC-Wilimington and Western Carolina for kids in North Carolina. Those aren't "storied programs."

McGarity's attitude is the same defeatist look at the program that Vandy's administration held for their football program for decades. The idea that we'll slowly dig our way out of this if kids will just "take a chance on us" is an uninspiring message.

The last thing we need is our AD articulating our opponents' anti-home state recruiting pitch against us.

You don't hear James Franklin complaining about how hard it is to win at Vandy.  He walked in the door, and he said that he expected to start punching people in the mouth right away. He immediately promised that other teams would "know they played Vandy" after the game. He told his players, his admin and his boosters that he wasn't taking a backseat to anyone.  He brought an exciting level of physicality to the team, and he's working his balls off on the recruiting trail.  Franklin's obnoxious, arrogant no excuses approach has resulted in 15 wins in 2 years and a staggering 9 wins last year.  That's roughly the hoops equivalent of making the Sweet 16 for us.

At some point, we need an administration and/or coach that will go out on a limb and expect more from top to bottom for hoops. You can't reinforce the message points of the competition who is trying to position us as a Tier 3 BCS destination.

People bash Damon Evans as an AD and for good reason. But when he shared his vision for hoops he talked about where the Gators were until the early 90s and where they are now in basketball. He said there is no reason we can't replicate that model. Then Damon spent $42 million on bball facilities to support the program.

When Spurrier got to SC he said "why not us". Just because the Gamecocks never had success didn't mean they never would. All he talked about was the future. Spurrier didn't dwell or wallow in the past. He moved forward.

If all we do is constantly talk about how hard it is to win here and hope for a slow grinding climb out of the cellar it will not happen. There is too much apathy to dig out of this mess slowly.

It's going to take a kick in the pants to break us out of this spiral. We need a lot more than an AD making it sound like top recruits coming here are taking a risk in doing so.

PWD

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