Georgia’s juggernaut of a men’s tennis team repeated as national indoor champions yesterday with a 4-0 win over Ohio State. Only an injury kept Georgia from the outdoor title last year and a perfect undefeated season, and they look to be every bit as strong this year – or stronger as freshmen gave the team a spark in singles play yesterday. Congratulations to Georgia’s first national champions for the 2006-2007 academic year!

Going back to last year, Georgia has won 38 of 39 matches with the sole loss coming in the outdoor national championship match last year. This year, the outdoor national championships will be held in Athens from May 17-28 at the Dan Magill Tennis Complex.

It just hasn’t been the Buckeyes’ year against SEC teams. We’re awaiting comment from Jim Delany.

For the second consecutive game, the Lady Dogs went on the road to face a middle-of-the-pack SEC team that was desperate for a high-profile upset that would punch their ticket for the postseason. On Thursday, Georgia held on in overtime at Kentucky. On Sunday, Georgia withstood a tenacious challenge from Auburn before emerging with a 62-55 win.

Janese Hardrick picked up at Auburn where she left off during overtime at Lexington. After an early flurry that included three-pointers from Darrah and Houts, Hardrick was Georgia’s main threat from outside. She was also effective penetrating to the basket, added seven rebounds, and she helped to seal the game at the foul line. It was a very solid 20-point performance from the senior, and her spark off the bench was the difference in the game. Auburn was effective in preventing Tasha Humphrey from getting on a roll, particularly in rebounding, but Tasha still finished with 14 points.

Georgia shot just 24% from outside, and Humphrey was well-defended, so Georgia had to find points where they could get them in this low-scoring game. Christy Marshall had 12 points on some tough penetration and mid-range jump shots. Megan Darrah contributed nine points, mostly in the first half, and she was big on the glass with seven rebounds. Struggles from outside and a relatively high 17 turnovers made it difficult for Georgia to pull away and let Auburn hang around until the final minutes.

The Lady Dogs have the week off before their regular season finale on Sunday against Arkansas. All eyes will be on tonight’s Tennessee at LSU game. Should Tennessee win, all Georgia would need is a win on Sunday against Arkansas to earn the #2 seed in the SEC Tournament. If LSU manages the upset at home, Georgia would earn the #3 seed. Regardless, they’ll get a Thursday bye in the conference tournament. We’ll have a preview next week of the tournament, held March 1-4 in Duluth, Ga.

As much as Georgia looked as if they were going through the motions against Kennesaw on Wednesday, they came out the exact opposite in front of a sold-out crowd yesterday against Auburn. Georgia won 86-79 to move to 7-5 in the SEC. In a whistle-happy game that saw 60 fouls, 70 free-throws, and 5 Auburn disqualifications, Georgia looked much more like a team regrouping for a run at the postseason than they did earlier in the week.

They had control of the game from the start, mixing inside and outside on offense. They had 20 points before you could blink. Though it was a track meet for a while there in the first half without much defense, Georgia just had too much. Auburn wasn’t able to put many runs together, and Georgia extended the lead to double-digits by halftime.

Georgia led by as many as 21 in the second half before garbage time. Auburn hit some threes down the stretch and came within as close as six points, but Georgia held on and hit enough foul shots and baskets to hold them off. The game was disjointed and over-officiated in the second half, and that can’t take away from the outstanding effort.

Georgia had outstanding offensive balance with six players scoring at least nine points. Sundiata Gaines scored 21 points and wasn’t far away from a triple-double. His penetration made the offense work – he was able to drive and either get a shot off, get fouled (more often than not), or dish to Brown. This is Gaines at his best, and, with the help of a few timely three-pointers, this is the strength of the Georgia offense. If they attack this way in their remaining games, we should be just fine. For the second straight game, Georgia didn’t stand around outside jacking three-pointers. Though they did attempt 21 from outside, the 43% success rate shows that those shots weren’t forced and came from within the offense, usually after a kickout from penetration.

Next up is a trip to Ole Miss where the Rebels will be smarting from a bad loss at Arkansas.

Georgia is getting some media attention this week for some new academic rules for student-athletes that include fines and loss of playing time for missing classes and tutoring sessions. Imagine the bill if you got fined $10 every time you blew off a class.

I have mixed feelings about these policies. I’m not pleased when we add another layer of oversight for coaches and administrators whether we’re talking about academics or disciplinary matters. (Why is the coach always compelled to do something if someone on his team has a suspended driver’s license?) Sure, it’s in the coach’s best interest to have his players eligible and out of trouble; it’s hard to play someone who’s in jail or not enrolled. Still, at some point they need to do their job instead of monitoring attendance at study hall.

On the other hand, if we are going to hold coaches and administrators responsible for the education and graduation of student-athletes, then I don’t blame them for introducing such policies.

I think this is one of those things that will go under the radar until a high-profile player misses a big game because of these rules.

Along with the decision to scrap Rule 3-2-5-e a few days ago, the AJC also reported some other related changes proposed by the Rules Committee. Again, all of these still must be approved by an oversight body in March before they become official. The theme still centers around reducing the total length of games, though the impact on the game clock itself is much less under these changes (until 2008…see below).

Kickoffs will be from the 30-yard line instead of the 35. The clock won’t start until the receiver touches the ball; last season it started as soon as the ball was kicked.

This rule is getting the most attention and comment, but I like it. Kickoff returns add excitement to the game, and both a good return unit and a good coverage unit can affect field position one way or the other. Touchbacks can be the reward for exceptional kickers.

Coming out of a television timeout, the play clock for the first play of a possession will be 15 seconds instead of the normal 25.

That’s another rule I like. You’ve had three minutes on the sideline – get out there and play ball. 15 seconds is enough time to audible depending on what the defense shows. So long as you have a clear sign from the officials that the TV timeout is coming to an end, this rule shouldn’t be a problem.

Charged team timeouts — not TV timeouts — will be cut by 30 seconds.

If I have problems with one of the proposed changes, it’s with this one. Team timeouts are often used just to stop the clock, true, but they’re also used to deliberate strategic decisions. Is 30 seconds enough? Probably. But if we’re going to allow two minutes for replays and allow for many long TV timeouts, taking this time away from team timeouts seems a bit miserly.

On kickoffs, the play clock will start once the kicker is handed the ball by the official. In the past, the kicker could take as much time as he wanted before kicking the ball.

Note that this rule just starts the play clock and not the game clock. It’s not a bad idea – tee it up and let’s go. I wonder if allowances will be made for wind blowing the ball off the tee.

The time allowed for instant replay reviews will be capped at two minutes.

Ehhhh. As the AJC said, replays last year took an average of 1:49. No big deal. While some replay decisions could drag on, the real problem often seemed to be the frequency of replays. In most conferences, they tell us that "every play is reviewed by the booth" and that the officials can choose to examine a call without a request or challenge from a coach. I think that happens too often sometimes. Of course you want to get the calls right, but anyone who remembers the first quarter of the 2005 Georgia-Georgia Tech game knows how bogged down things can get when play after play after play gets reviewed. This area needs further discussion; it’s not just a clock issue.

The article also lists a rule which will be put into place for 2008:

"The rules committee also announced that starting in 2008, college football will go to a 40-second play clock like that now used in the NFL. The 40-second clock will start at the end of every play. College football currently uses a 25-second clock that doesn’t start until the ball is put in position and declared ready for play."

I’m pretty skeptical about this one. Part of the outcry over 3-2-5-e was the number of plays it cost us. This rule seems headed in that same direction. Unless it takes longer than 15 seconds to set the ball currently, this rule will likely result in fewer plays. Teams can also start taking a knee with two minutes remaining in the game if the opponent is out of timeouts.

J Huggins has some good thoughts on the proposals in the comments here. Anyone else?

Last night’s Lady Dogs game at Kentucky was every bit the tough test I thought it might be. Georgia finally prevailed 82-72 in overtime with an outburst of 16 points in those five extra minutes. Kentucky played with the urgency and emotion that you would expect from a team who put the "must-win" label on the game. Georgia had Kentucky down by twelve in the first half and eleven in the second half, but the Wildcats kept fighting back. Other recent Georgia teams might not have survived this fierce of an upset bid – Georgia had in fact lost in Lexington two years ago – but this team was able to stay just far enough out in front to hold off the late challenge.

Tasha Humphrey was spectacular again with 28 points and 10 rebounds. Five Lady Dog players scored in double-figures and Ashley Houts added nine points. Georgia got to the line 29 times and hit 24 of them. Janese Hardrick scored six points in overtime after some costly mistakes towards the end of regulation.

Kentucky stayed in the game with one of their better perfomances of the year behind the arc. Both teams shot over 40% from outside. That isn’t so impressive for a Georgia team with the second-best percentage behind the arc in the SEC, but Kentucky was shooting under 30% from outside. Samantha Mahoney scored 23 points, including 12 from behind the arc, and several other Wildcat players came up with big outside shots. Georgia played to the scouting report and favored a zone defense focused on the inside game over tight perimeter defense. Kentucky made the most of those open looks and also got some baskets from the high post. Though Georgia outrebounded Kentucky, a lapse on the defensive glass helped Kentucky get back in the game. With Georgia up by eleven in the second half, Kentucky scored off of offensive rebounds on consecutive possessions to cut the lead to seven and started a run that would reduce Georgia’s lead to one.

I was a bit surprised that Georgia didn’t show much of the full-court pressure that had been so successful in the past two games. They forced turnovers on Kentucky’s first two possessions, and the Wildcats are near the bottom of the league in turnover margin, so I thought the potential for effective pressure was there. As it was, Georgia had to play a lot of halfcourt defense, and they only forced 14 Kentucky turnovers. It didn’t help in terms of pressure that Houts, Georgia’s steals leader, had to play the entire second half with four fouls.

The Lady Dogs are now in control of third place in the SEC and could move into second if they continue to win and if Tennessee wins at LSU. Georgia’s remaining games at Auburn and against Arkansas – two teams in the lower half of the conference with a bit less to play for than Kentucky. So the Lady Dogs seem to be in good shape if they can remain focused and driven heading into the tournament in Duluth in two weeks.

The SEC standings are very crowded, and there still could be a lot of movement in tournament seeds over the final week of the regular season. Right now it looks as if just one loss could separate the second seed from the fifth seed, and a very capable Kentucky or Mississippi State team could wind up as Georgia’s quarterfinals opponent.

The Lady Dogs face perhaps their most difficult challenge left in the regular season tonight at Kentucky. As I said the other day, Kentucky is backed into a corner right now. They started the season ranked, but now they’re desperate to salvage this season and earn another postseason bid.

Last year, Georgia’s speed at guard ate Kentucky alive for a blowout win. The Wildcats are coming off a loss to Tennessee in which they had a season high in turnovers. That’s a good sign for a Georgia team which has thrived off of turnovers and the transition game in its last two outings, but now they face a better opponent with something to play for. If they keep up the defensive fire they’ve shown over the past week, they’ll be in great shape and should be able to get out in transition again.

Things could become more difficult for Georgia in a halfcourt game. Kentucky has some nice size inside, and Georgia will need solid foul-free performances from Robinson, Humphrey, and Darrah to keep Kentucky’s front line from hurting them. They’re not a particularly good three-point shooting team, so Georgia’s effectiveness in denying the entry passes will be key. Kentucky’s best bet is to keep the game low-scoring and make Georgia grind out the offense. With that strategy, Kentucky has beaten Ole Miss, come very close against Vanderbilt, and lost 53-51 to a Top 10 Ohio State team.

The Dawgs overcame a six-point second half deficit last night to avoid a huge upset at the hands of Kennesaw State. With Georgia still in the discussion for a postseason bid, a loss in this game would have been devastating. With the game tied coming out of the final official timeout, Georgia finished strong, hit their free throws, and got some key backbreaking shots from their upperclassmen. We had hoped this would be a game in which the Dawgs regrouped and built on the win at South Carolina, but instead they got caught in a fight for survival.

Though Georgia shot well from the floor and the free throw line, they only had 48 field goal attempts. Kennesaw did a lot to minimize Georgia’s possessions. They had 15 offensive rebounds. They used the clock well to shorten the game. Most importantly, they took advantage of Georgia’s carelessness and created 18 turnovers including 14 steals. Though Kennesaw only got 18 points off those Georgia turnovers, they still meant empty possessions for Georgia.

Like many, I looked at the game as a glimpse of what life would be like without Mike Mercer. While we can’t say how things would have gone with him in the lineup, we can at least look at the areas where he usually had an impact. The first obvious one is on defense. Kennesaw had a 6’4" guard hit six three-pointers as Georgia’s wing defense suffered without Mercer. Turnovers were another problem – Humphrey , expected to be Gaines’s backup at point guard, had a team-high four turnovers.

The biggest difference without Mercer might have been in Georgia’s offensive mindset. They only attempted 15 three-pointers in the game. Georgia has often attempted over 15 three-pointers in the first half alone. The Bulldogs eventually got past what Humphrey called "selfish" play and finally worked the ball inside. They shot over 60% in the second half while attempting only four three-pointers. They fed the ball to Takais Brown, and Sundiata Gaines was effective getting to the basket. When it came down to it, Georgia leaned on their two emerging go-to guys, and they responded. Though turnovers were a problem, Georgia got the ball to their playmakers, and the shots were efficient. That’s a positive development, and we’ll see if they carry that into the Auburn game or fall back into bad habits.

The one really big thing to take away from this game is that while we kick around what-ifs about the end of the season, this team is not good enough to overcome poor effort in SEC games. Though there are several chances to earn wins coming up, playing flat or with less-than-optimal effort will likely result in a loss in any remaining game.

It was disappointing to hear coaches and players acknowledge that the team was flat. They’ve worked so hard and have such a great opportunity in front of them, and they nearly blew it all last night because they weren’t up for the game. Sure, it wasn’t an SEC game or a big-name opponent. Sure, the crowd was lethargic. Sure, the team might still be a bit numb from the loss of Mercer. Regardless of the opponent you’d still hope for a bit more instensity, hustle, and focus from a team with so much to play for and less than a month left in the regular season.

What should give us a bit of concern is that it seems as if the team is struggling to buy into good game plans and coaching. Humphrey admitted, "We didn’t come in with the game plan that we had planned to do, and we got exposed by it. It really should’ve gone to the post every time down court because their tallest player was 6-6. We went away from that and played selfish again." I’m glad he recognized that fact and demonstrated why Georgia was able to be so effective at the end of the game, but why in the world at this point in the season are we still talking about guys getting away from the game plan? That’s a red flag for the stretch run if guys continue to freelance and get away from scouting reports and game plans. Tournament teams need cohesiveness, discipline, and a good strategy.

We can hope that they just sleepwalked against a and that their heads will be in the game starting on Saturday. Georgia had a run of sluggish starts before the nice win at South Carolina; it was almost as if the emotional stretch leading up to the "Do it for Broph" win over LSU took its toll on the intensity of the team. The home crowd should be back in force for Auburn; there are only a handful of tickets left. Though all of the remaining games are important now, a home game against an SEC West opponent is as close to a must-win as there is.

Rule 3-2-5e is nearing death.

Bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; college football is alive again.

Thomas Stinson of the AJC has the news and details of some additional rules tweaks that will try to clean up the mess from last year’s misguided attempt to shorten the length of college football games. The decision and recommendations of the NCAA Rules Committee still must gain approval from the Playing Rules Oversight Panel on March 12, so we can’t quite bury this rule yet. But the priest is giving last rites.

In the understatement of the year, rules committee chairman Michael Clark admitted, "The changes we made last year, overall, did not have a positive effect on college football at all levels."

The committee "recommended new measures to restore the missing 12 plays without effecting game times" (or affecting commercial time we presume). We’ll take a closer look at those later.

(HT: EDSBS)

Bracketology wears me out.

I’ll come right out and admit that. I just don’t get the point of calling the #7 seed in the Midwest Regional in February. Many of us, myself included, were sure that Georgia was heading for a postseason of some kind after beating Alabama in early February 2006. Then the rest of the season happened.

More than that, I just get tired of the politicking that goes on around the bubble and projecting which teams will be in and out. What I really dislike about it is the mindset it forces on many of us. We get the idea in our heads that 9-7 or even 8-8 is the goal, and we do the RPI calculus to show how that record distinguishes us from the truckload of other ordinary teams who also flirted with .500 in their conferences. We work backwards from that 9-7 mark to identify those nine wins and hope that we don’t drop one and have to win at Ole Miss to make up the difference. To me, it’s like focusing on becoming bowl-eligible. Why not just play the games and win?

This mindset is all over the SEC this year. With an undefeated Florida well out ahead of a slew of teams all with at least four conference losses, the label “Florida and the Seven Dwarves” is unfortunately pretty apt. That label comes from a very interesting piece today in the Chattanooga Times Free Press by Darren Epps that talks about the strength of the SEC with Jerry Palm of CollegeRPI.com. Palm attempts to deliver a dose of reality to the SEC: there aren’t very many impressive teams in the SEC once you get past Florida. He projects just five SEC teams in the NCAA Tournament.

Palm correctly points out that the strength of the SEC isn’t so much a lot of good teams as it is the lack of really bad teams. Other than South Carolina, most SEC teams can hold their own. That’s just good enough to get you in the discussion though. From there, you’re hoping that your good features outshine your warts. You’re left with weak and pathetic arguments like Randolph Morris’s "the way we played should say something about our team." Close is good enough in horseshoes, hand grenades, and Kentucky games against Top 25 teams.

Palm is brutally honest to the SEC West. "I see six NIT-quality teams in the West," he said. The winner of the SEC West might have an 8-8 conference record. Preseason favorite and last year’s great story LSU is bringing up the rear. That’s not parity to be celebrated; it’s just not good basketball. They’re not bad – any of them – but a game or two separating first and last place isn’t a sign of exceptional quality.

The East is a bit better, but they have their own problems. Tennessee might be the second-best team in the league, but they stumbled enough early in the season to be just around .500 in conference at this point, and they haven’t done much yet on the road. Kentucky looks to be just strong enough to merit a postseason bid, but they don’t seem likely to hang around long. Vanderbilt had a tremendous run against ranked teams but has been inconsistent and found it hard to gain traction. Georgia is dangerous but is vulnerable to poor shooting and has lost a key starter.

I’m by no means saying that these SEC teams, especially Georgia, should be left out. Teams don’t have to be flawless to get postseason bids, and they’re competing with other teams with their own pluses and minuses. All conferences will be campaigning to get as many bids as possible, and most have teams in the same position as the SEC’s "dwarves" . The fifth-place team in the ACC is just 5-5 right now. There are so many teams in this boat that selection committee chairman Gary Walters said, "conference tournaments could take on increasing significance this year in helping us to separate teams."

We’re all happy with the progress that the Georgia team has shown this year, and it would be gratifying for the all of the sacrifice and work put in over the past three years to be rewarded. The best way they can get there is to forget about aiming for 8 or 9 wins and have the kind of finish to the season that separates themselves from the rest of the SEC pack that’s drifting towards room temperature. If they do end up around that 8-8 or 9-7 mark, they’re putting an awful lot of pressure on themselves for the conference tournament, doing a lot of scoreboard-watching, and leaving their fate in the hands of the selection committee. Do better and the only bracketology they’ll have to worry about is their seeding.

Chip Towers in the AJC reports that MRI results indicate that Mike Mercer “only” tore one ligament in his freakish injury on Saturday. While an ACL tear might not sound like good news, consider that the worst case scenario with that kind of knee dislocation is an Albert Hollis-type tearing of multiple ligaments complete with blood vessel and/or nerve damage. As it turns out, Mercer’s damage is limited to an ACL tear and a moderate MCL sprain. That’s one hell of a strong knee.

Mercer will have surgery and begin the road back from ACL surgery, but at least there is apparently a road back now and a chance that he will be on the court again in the future. All of that was in doubt until these MRI results came out. The six-month recovery mentioned by Felton puts him back prior to the start of next season, but we’ll see how ready he is to go full-speed at that time. In many cases, it can be as long as a year to eighteen months before someone is really back from an ACL tear.

Best of luck to Mike in his recovery.

Georgia fans are very familiar with the academic excuse from Tech fans when it comes to competing in athletics. You know how it goes – Georgia has an unfair advantage because their academic standards are so much lower. Student-athletes like Reggie Ball make it a tough point to counter.

Big 10 (you know, the conference with 11 members) commissioner Jim Delany plays this card in a defensive and almost apologetic letter to conference fans. His comments make some puzzling connections between athleticism and academic standards:

I love speed and the SEC has great speed, especially on the defensive line, but there are appropriate balances when mixing academics and athletics. Each school, as well as each conference, simply must do what fits their mission regardless of what a recruiting service recommends. I wish we had six teams among the top 10 recruiting classes every year, but winning our way requires some discipline and restraint with the recruitment process. Not every athlete fits athletically, academically or socially at every university. Fortunately, we have been able to balance our athletic and academic mission so that we can compete successfully and keep faith with our academic standards.

Apparently there is an inverse relationship between speed and intelligence. Delaney should have just gone all the way and called SEC student-athletes "clean and articulate."

Can you imagine even writing this letter? Has the public perception of the Big 10(11) taken such a hit since the BCS Championship game that one of the most influential figures in college sports has to play "who is the best conference" blog parlor games? Notre Dame athletic director Kevin White called Delany "clearly the most powerful figure in college athletics." Many suggest that he is the single biggest obstacle to a college football playoff. And here he is defending his conference against the big bad SEC as if the Big 10 were the Mountain West. Is that not just a little pathetic?

Lady Dogs

The Lady Dogs continue to roll with their second straight rout. After a 41-point win at Alabama on Thursday, they ran South Carolina out of Stegeman yesterday. They used a stifling defense to jump out to a 36-8 advantage and cruised the rest of the way to an 81-57 win. Tasha Humphrey recorded another double-double, the three-pointers were falling again, and Georgia outrebounded a much taller South Carolina team. Georgia’s pressure kept South Carolina from even getting the ball to their post players, and the large deficit forced the Gamecocks away from their strength inside into a jumpshooting team.

Georgia’s most difficult challenge in their remaining three regular season games might be this Thursday at Kentucky. The Wildcats are a quality team, and it will be a hostile environment at Rupp Arena. This is a classic "take care of business game". Kentucky, at 16-10 (5-6 SEC), is fighting for the postseason and trying to finish in the upper half of the SEC after their best season in decades a year ago. In short, they’re backed into a corner and desperate. With a shot at the SEC’s #2 seed, Georgia must win out and have Tennessee beat LSU. The Lady Dogs look to be building into good form late in the season, and we’ll see how ready they are to make a push into the postseason with their performance at Kentucky.

Gym Dogs

I don’t know much about gymnastics, but I do know that a score of 198 is pretty damn good. It’s especially nice coming against rival Alabama. Some Bama falls made the margin wider than usual, but this was much more of a meet that Georgia won than Alabama lost. It’s obvious that this team has the ability to compete at a championship level again, so we’ll tune back in for the SEC championship. With Florida, Georgia, and Alabama ranked 1-2-3 nationally, the SEC championship could be an NCAA title preview.

Georgia Baseball

The news wasn’t as good for the baseball team. Bullpen meltdowns led to a sweep at the hands of defending national champion Oregon State. On Friday and Saturday, Georgia carried big leads into the late innings before giving up six runs in Friday’s ninth inning and seven runs in Saturday’s eighth inning. On Sunday, three runs in the seventh inning broke open a 2-2 tie. It’s way too early to panic, but Coach Perno is considering some remedies. "We’ll probably pull one of our starters and put him in the bullpen to solidify things," he said.

Though the bullpen was ultimately the big story of the weekend, Georgia’s starting pitching was pretty solid against a good opponent. It was also a good debut for a number of younger players like right-fielder Matt Cerione who will be counted on later in the season. They have a ten-day layoff before a trip to Mercer which will be their only road game in the early part of the season.

For much of Saturday night’s game against South Carolina, the news was all good for Georgia. They were well on their way to another season sweep of the Gamecocks. They were shooting from around a 50% clip from outside while still getting the guys inside involved. They were playing disruptive defense. Levi Stukes became Georgia’s top career three-point shooter.

Though Georgia cruised to a relatively easy 73-54 win, they were hit with a devastating injury. With just under ten minutes remaining, Mike Mercer drove quickly towards the baseline, stopped abruptly, and had his right knee dislocate. The prognosis isn’t good. According to head coach Dennis Felton,

“His knee did come out of socket. They were able to slip it back in socket probably within about 90 seconds. But there’s significant ligament damage and he’s likely out for the year.”

Mercer will have an MRI on Sunday to determine the exact extent of the injury. The timing of the injury is very unfortunate: Mercer was just starting to turn his game around. After some pretty public criticism (including on this site), he showed much better shot selection and some more discipline on offense in the two most recent games. Before his injury, he had 12 points, five assists, four rebounds, and was shooting 50% from the floor against South Carolina – by far his most efficient offense in quite some time. “It’s frustrating on behalf of Mike because he was getting back to playing very well,” said Felton.

What Now?

While our first concern is with Mike and his recovery, we also have to think about the impact the injury will have on the lineup. Mercer led the team in field goal attempts, and until recently he had led the team in scoring. His strength on offense was an explosive drive to the basket, and he was a valuable defender and rebounder. Georgia’s offense is losing one of its best slashers and transition finishers. Felton explained, “We don’t have anybody else like Mike. He’s got that kind of electric athleticism – very, very quick, very, very fast and long.”

It seems logical that Terrance Woodbury will move into Mercer’s starting role. He’s a more prototypical small forward with a bit more size and bulk than Mercer though not as quick. Woodbury has shown some spectacular flashes on offense this year off the bench as his defense comes along. Many of us have wondered what Woodbury could do with more playing time, and I guess we’ll get our wish now. Georgia might get a bit of a boost in the halfcourt offense with Woodbury’s size and steadier shooting, but the tradeoff will come in the transition offense and in creating steals and turnovers.

If the Dawgs want to go smaller, Billy Humphrey made a case for more playing time against South Carolina. He scored 14 points on extremely efficient 5-for-6 shooting, had nine rebounds and five assists, and was a big part of Georgia’s defensive effort with seven steals. Not a bad night for the sophomore – it was probably his best all-around game.

Mercer’s injury will probably be felt most at the point guard spot. Mercer was already the backup-by-default at the position behind Sundiata Gaines because there aren’t many other guards with point guard experience or skills on the team. Georgia suffered significantly when Gaines was injured in December, and now they have much less behind him. I would expect that Humphrey will see those minutes behind Gaines.

Georgia’s next game against Kennesaw should be a laugher where they should have the luxury of lots of time in which to try different personnel groupings. The Auburn game next Saturday will be the first SEC test for the lineup with which Georgia will make its late push for the postseason.

As I write this, it’s 46 degrees and overcast in Athens. But they’re playing ball over at Foley Field as the Diamond Dawgs begin the 2007 season against defending NCAA champion Oregon State.

Georgia roared back from a slow SEC start last year to reach Omaha. Though they’re picked to finish fifth in the SEC East, the great thing about college baseball is that the amount of turnover from year to year gives most any team a chance to put a good season together.

What do I expect from the Diamond Dawgs this year? First is a repeat trip to the NCAA Tournament. Though the Diamond Dawgs have been to the College World Series three times in recent years, they’ve often followed up those trips with a down year and no postseason. I would like for them to show that consistency this year and at the minimum earn another NCAA Tournament bid. They lost some good players from last year’s team, so it will take some good coaching and some newcomers stepping in for that to happen.

My second expectation? Simple. Take the season series from Georgia Tech. Again.