Sorry, I enjoyed my President's day long weekend without updating the blog. Let me start by saying, GREAT win by Fox and company Saturday in Knoxville. As I mentioned last week, seems this team has really turned the corner when it comes to winning road basketball games. We now have 7 road wins this year after having ZERO last year. In fact, you could certainly argue that we are now a better road team than home team. Looking at this calendar year, we are now 3-4 at home in 2011 and 4-2 on the road. Amazing how that happens in a year. Course when it comes to the NCAA tourney which the UT game helped our chances in a BIG way, you play on the road-neutral you could say but certainly not at home. Next up for us is a Thursday night game in Gainesville against the first place Gators. They currently have a 2 game lead on second place Vandy, a 3 game lead on us. The guy that KILLED us in the second OT, Chandler Parsons, is listed as questionable for the game on Thursday. UF is in a pretty cozy position within the division and as far as the NCAA tourney goes. They are 21-5 and 10-2 in conference. They also have what I would consider a VERY difficult schedule down the stretch-home vs. us on Thursday, at Kentucky on Saturday, home vs. Bama next Tuesday, and close out at Vandy on March 5th. So, do they rest Parsons another game (he sat our on Sunday as UF won at LSU) or do they play him against us hoping to get the win at home knowing that winning in Lexington Saturday will be very tough? UF is good enough to beat us without Chandler Parsons BUT certainly taking a SR leader away from that team, a guy that scored 18 points and 12 rebounds against us in the first game, I would love it if he didn't play. If we could pull off the win on Thursday, wow, talk about a team that would be on a good roll with two games, SCarolina and LSU coming up that we should be able to win-even playing at home!! Regardless, the win at UT did a couple things, it improved our NCAA resume for sure, it gave us 7 conference wins and again, we have two very winnable games left out of 4-I would argue we have 4 very winnable games but certainly 2 that we should NOT lose. It also really hurt UT in that it puts them behind us in the division, they are at 16-11 and still have at Vandy, Miss State, at SCarolina and home vs UK. You have to figure they will lose at least one more game so the win really helps us as we try to get the 3 or at worst 4 seed in the SECe for the tourney. If the NCAA somehow only selects 4 teams from the SECe, our win against UT certainly helps us in that discussion. Back to the game, Jeremy Price came up HUGE with 20 pts, Travis chipped in 15, Ware with 12 and Trey will 11. Now, Trey continues to struggle at times without question but you have to think he drawing doubles every time he touches it really does help out Jeremy Price-in fact Dean Legge did a piece last week about Price being the key to UGA's success. I am not going to say Price is truly the key but he certainly is a big factor IF teams continue to double Trey-Jeremy is going to have opportunities to get open shots and he has to knock them down. But, another key will be our ball movement because if a team is doubling Trey, SOMEONE is wide open and it is up to the players on the court to find that open guy-then that guy has to make his shots. It was crucial that Dustin Ware hit 4 free throws down the stretch after missing a couple as well. Another bright spot, as has been the case a lot lately, we built a big lead only to let the opponent come back. UT actually took the lead on us in the second half but we battled back and took over again and then held on. You have to be encouraged that our last 3 trips we have won TIGHT games on the road-at Arkansas, South Carolina and UT.
I found an interesting site that contains projected brackets from many sources-I think this is maybe the best way to view where we stand at the moment. The encouraging thing is, as of now EVERYONE has us in. We range from an 8-12 seed but everyone projects us in. Course the bottom line is for us to be in on Sunday, March 13th but you would rather be in right now than be out.
http://bracketproject.50webs.com/matrix.htm
Of course yesterday the story broke about Aaron Murray, with the all kinds of rumors-broke his foot, high ankle sprain, broke his ankle etc. Turns out, just an ankle sprain-see link below.
http://blogs.ajc.com/uga-sports-blog/2011/02/21/murray-injury-will-be-examined-info-expected-later-today/?cxntfid=blogs_uga_sports_blog
Seems pretty minor in the grand scheme of things, he should be ready for spring practice so we can all take a deep breath now. Even if he was out for spring, not a horrible thing as LeMay and Mason could have waged a serious battle for number two. Of course they can still do that now even with Murray being there, we need to make a decision on LeMay and for me, I think unless Murray is gone for several games, Mason should be the backup. Now, certainly it is a luxury to have a quality backup QB in place but I think we all wished DJ Shockley would have had two years to play instead of just one after David Greene left-and DJ did redshirt of course. That would have pushed Stafford to maybe never come to Athens of course or he would have pushed him to redshirt his first year perhaps-bottom line, 2006 would have likely been a much better season with SR DJ Shockley playing instead of FR Matt Stafford. My point being, LeMay by all accounts is a very talented QB, to me every effort should be made to redshirt him, let him back up Murray for two years and then he takes over for two years. Back to Murray, seems he got hurt playing soccer. Obviously you would rather him not be out playing a contact sport of any kind where injury can occur but he is a college kid and you can't restrict him from having fun. I know a lot of our plays play intramural basketball, you can hurt an ankle very easily.
It is now known the coaches salaries for our new hires, seems like we are saving about 40K from the two coaches these guys replace but bottom line, our coaches are well compensated I think. We don't seem to be mid to low when it comes coaches salaries as we were back a few years ago. Here is the Tim Tucker article about what our new guys are getting paid. I really think we made two good hires with Friend and Olivadotti, let's hope these guys can come in and do great with their two very important positions. I think OL and LB will be two HUGE areas where improvement can make us a much better team in 2011.
http://blogs.ajc.com/uga-sports-blog/2011/02/21/what-ugas-new-football-coaches-will-be-paid/?cxntfid=blogs_uga_sports_blog
Another interesting thing to report, seems the top RB's for the class of 2012 are already committing-Bama has already received two verbals as has UF. Bama has verbals from two top Ga RB's, UF from one of the top in Ga and also Matt Jones, the top back in Florida who for a long time was rumored to be a strong UGA lean. What this tells me is this-running backs in the class of 2011 are plenty scared of one thing-getting any carries from Isiah Crowell. That being said, UGA is thought to be the leader for Keith Marshall, a top 2012 RB from NC. Below is his profile. From what I have gathered, Marshall is a strong UGA lean and is likely to be the top if not top 2-3 RB's in the nation for the class of 2012. SO, if we can land Marshall, we will have perhaps the top RB duo in the nation to go along with Aaron Murray as a JR. We just need to get a big time WR to go along with Marshall in the class of 2012.
http://rivals.yahoo.com/uga/football/recruiting/player-Keith-Marshall-104798
This kid has a 4.1 GPA, he will enroll early from what I have heard so I would imagine he will make a decision pretty soon as well. From what I have gathered, UGA and UNC might be the the top two for him.
A couple of negatives to close, UGA baseball was swept at Stetson over the weekend. Not a good start as Coach Perno tries to bring the winning ways back to the diamond but it is a long season so not ready to panic yet. First home games is Wed at 5pm against Furman. The Lady Dogs lost in hoops yesterday to #4 Tennessee, which clinched the regular season title for the Lady Vols. They have not lost in conference this year and average margin of victory has been just over 24pts-they simply have dominated the league. Still, the Lady Dogs have 20 wins and likely will finish second or at worst third in the league-make the NCAA tourney yet again. If anything, Coach Landers and his program is consistent. Only problem is, UT is just better and then you have UCONN who basically might lose at most 1-2 games a season. It is a tough climb to get to the top when it seems UCONN and UT get the top players from all over the nation every single year.
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