As Aretha Franklin once sang, “R-E-S-P-E-C-T!” The Georgia Bulldog basketball team has been an afterthought since the Jim Harrick scandal in 2003, as the team has slipped into mediocrity under former coach Dennis Felton. Even when Felton engineered a lightning-in-a-bottle SEC tournament championship in 2008, the Dawgs were still looked at as a joke with a double-digit seed. Last year under new coach Mark Fox, the Bulldog basketball team earned some respect with Trey Thompkins’ outstanding play and Travis Leslie’s ESPN Top Plays dunks and Connor Nolte’s Youtube trick shots. Last Saturday though, Georgia pulled off a big win over No. 11 Kentucky. The AP headline read: Trey Thompkins helps Georgia stun No. 11 Kentucky in SEC opener. This headline was found on ESPN.com’s front page and all over CNNSI. While I am sure Dawg Nation appreciated the front page blurbs, I wouldn’t exactly call Mark Fox winning at home a “stun” job. Eamon Brennan of ESPN.com’s college basketball agrees with me. On Brennan’s Saturday wrap up blog, he wrote:
No offense to the AP -- I'm a huge fan, guys! -- but the use of the word "stun" in the aforelinked headline is a little bit questionable. Georgia, in addition to being at home, is also a pretty good team. The Bulldogs' only two losses this season came in double overtime to Notre Dame and by seven points to Temple all the way back in November at the Old Spice Classic. Otherwise, this Bulldogs squad has been playing just fine, thanks. Trey Thompkins and Travis Leslie remain underrated; Thompkins scored 25 points and grabbed 11 rebounds, while Leslie put on his trademark dunk show on the way to his 15-and-eight afternoon. Good win for Georgia, but this one is probably about as much of an upset as Kansas State-Oklahoma State. Which is to say, not much of an upset at all.
The AJC gave the game both a live blog and post-game response from Mark Bradley in addition to the normal coverage from Tim Tucker, the Georgia beat writer. Bradley was quick to praise Fox following the game and admitting he was wrong about the Fox hire, which he initially disagreed with. Of the Bulldogs, Bradley gushed:
“This team won’t be outclassed by anyone it sees. It has the players, it has the blend, and it darn sure has a coach. Georgia could/should be in the SEC East chase until the last dog dies, and don’t be surprised if the last dog standing is a Bulldog.”
Meanwhile columnist Jeff Schultz a few days prior to the game wrote a glowing piece on Fox and how he is succeeding in changing the basketball culture at Georgia. Schultz said in the piece that of the two major college programs in the area, Georgia is the only one “obviously” going in the right direction.
“The job he has done in a short time is nothing short of remarkable. He took over a wreck of a program, engineered a few upsets, put a scare into Kentucky in Lexington and finished 14-17 — a losing record, but a clear 180 for the team.
Schultz would end the piece by saying that Fox “game over,” has won the perception contest. Georgia getting a bit of respect. Mark Fox and company will take it…for now.
What did the Falcons do to warrant the recent foreboding playoff prognostications from the so-called experts over the last week? Apparently playing well enough during the regular season to clinch home field advantage throughout the playoffs was not enough for Peter King and a few other ESPN personalities that are calling for a one game-and-done showing from the Falcons in these playoffs. The Falcons are 20-2 at the Georgia Dome and 1-0 this season at home vs. the Green Bay Packers yet many are thinking that the Falcons will be bounced two stages before Dallas and the Super Bowl. After so much love all season long for Matt Ryan, Michael Turner and Mike Smith, it just seems weird that a switch would be thrown so quickly to shove dirt on the best team in the NFC through the 2010 regular season. (And we won’t even get into the fact that, if the NFL had the BCS, the Falcons would already be in the Super Bowl, ready to square off against the New England Patriots)
680 The Fan received a bit of national attention last week from its Frankly Fran segment when former Georgia quarterback Fran Tarkenton was very critical of his alma mater and its football coach Mark Richt. Several other outlets picked up the comments and ran with them, but if you’ve followed this segment throughout the course of the college football season or even followed Tarkenton’s comments in 2009 on 790 The Zone in regards to Brett Favre should know that this isn’t anything new. Apparently Tarkenton’s MO for getting a mention is to go on the air and throw out negative harpoons towards current big-name targets in the hopes that the smear will float his name around the blogosphere and the sports radio world. He also got into a war of words with ESPN’s Marcellus Wiley that had an air of Andy Kaufman vs. Jerry Lawler in that it got both some cheap publicity over a topic that neither really had a real connection to. I understand the purpose of the show was to simply to get a Georgia legend to say something negative about Georgia and its current struggles, but Tarkenton came off like a mad man shouting at the snow for making his drive take twice as long. It even seemed to make another Georgia quarterback that the station employs uncomfortable in Buck Belue of Buck & Kincade. He seemed to shy away from endorsing the comments, due to his ties to the school. Maybe Tarkenton is angry that his name is never brought up when changes are made to the football broadcast coverage? 680 The Fan ultimately got what it was looking for I guess. The interview has been talked about across the country on radio and in print. Kudos?
Can You Believe He Said That
So Andrew Luck won’t be the QB in Carolina next season. It’s a bad development for the Panthers, obviously, but what can you do? The Panthers need to give (their) quarterback some weapons. Green is an absolute stud.
That was from NFL Fanhouse, who now predicts that former Georgia wide receiver AJ Green could be the No. 1 overall pick in the upcoming NFL draft. No receiver has gone No. 1 since Keyshawn Johnson in 1996, though Georgia Tech wideout Calvin Johnson went No. 2 in the 2007 draft. While Green is certainly a freak of an athlete, he never really lived up to the promise and hype he came to Athens with. Aaron Murray and Mark Richt will miss him certainly, but the roster does have replacements.
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