Beautiful…then comes the crash

If the Sugar Bowl was, as Colt Brennan said, the biggest Hawaiian event since statehood , the aftermath has been the biggest disaster to hit the state since…well, we won’t go there.

First was June Jones’ departure for SMU. Jones chose the scorched earth strategy on his way out of town by firing off a letter criticizing the athletic department for its lack of support. Only when SMU showed interest did Hawaii make an attempt to improve its commitment to the program, claimed Jones.

It didn’t take long for athletics director Herman Frazier to be forced out, and of course speculation centers on that fact that Frazier couldn’t pull several million dollars out of thin air to fund the Hawaii program to the level Jones wanted.

In the span of a week, the Hawaii program has gone from the feel-good "Bad News Bears" story of the 2007 season to smoldering ruins of a program. I was completely wrong last year when I thought that Boise State’s 2005 loss to Georgia would result in lasting trauma for that program, but here I go again. The Hawaii program was on the brink of being dissolved when Jones took over, and it took his unique scheme to get some success from the limited talent base and limited resources available to him.

Receiver Davone Bess will head to the NFL, and of course Brennan is gone as well. There are definitely some quality players coming back, but one wonders how long the new coach will be able to keep things going. The Hawaii wave looks to have crested, and there’s no telling now what gets washed up onto the rocks. It’s kind of sad to see – there was something fresh and enjoyable about the state using the team as a point of cultural pride.

Congratulations to LSU.

For what it’s worth, Georgia finished #2 in the final AP poll and #3 in the final coaches’ poll. I’m among those who think Georgia’s final position matters; it’ll give the Dawgs a good starting position next season, and it’s something to recognize Georgia’s best AP poll finish since 1980. Congratulations to the Dawgs on a memorable and successful season.

Last week the Arizona women’s team had to finish a game 5-on-2. Hopefully it won’t get to that point for the Georgia men’s team, but at this rate of attrition who knows? Center Rashad Singleton has left the program to transfer to another school where he might see more playing time. He becomes the third player to leave the program since practice began. The 7’0" Singleton was still very much a project as a junior, and he had been replaced in the starting lineup by freshman Jeremy Price. Singleton was a factor if only for post depth, but his departure won’t have nearly the impact that the loss of Mercer and Brown had.

The Singleton-less Dawgs paid a return visit to the west coast over the weekend and dropped a game to Gonzaga. It wasn’t a surprise to lose to a quality team like Gonzaga, but the difference in offensive production from this game to last season’s win over the Zags was pretty stark. Billy Humphrey poured in four three-pointers for Georgia’s first 12 points of the game, but Georgia couldn’t keep up from there. To their credit, they were able to cut the lead to single-digits by the end (what a regrettable foul at the end by Corey Butler), but they never put the outcome in doubt.

It’s not worth harping on the team’s problems now because 1) they’re many and 2) they’re familiar and expected. Scoring is an issue without Brown and Mercer, and it’s just going to be that kind of year where significant games come down to Gaines playing out of his mind.

A weak SEC might be Georgia’s saving grace this year, but so far they are contributing to the conference’s weakness instead of looking to be in a position to take advantage of it.

I said a few weeks ago that a win over Tech was one of the big things I looked for this season, and this Wednesday’s game looms huge now. It’s not just the rivalry. Tech is a struggling, beatable team. It’s an opportunity for the Dawgs to show some balls against a vulnerable opponent in a game that means something to even casual Georgia basketball fans. With the personnel losses, even if understandable, and a lukewarm performance through the schedule so far, Felton ‘s program needs an injection of good news and goodwill. A win over Tech would give it to him.

Lady Dogs record their first loss

With a 13-0 start and a #7 ranking, one would think all was well in the world for the Lady Dogs. But that start and record was a bit of fool’s gold, and that was exposed in a decisive loss at Xavier on Sunday.

Georgia’s schedule this year has been uncharacteristically soft. Just a year ago, the Lady Dogs beat Stanford and Rutgers in the first few games of the season. This year, for the first time I can recall, the Lady Dogs have yet to face a ranked team. That fact will change, of course, as SEC play begins and the Lady Dogs take a midseason trip to Oklahoma. En route to that 13-0 start, the Lady Dogs struggled with several good-but-not-great teams like Temple, USC, Georgia Tech, and FSU. Those are teams that will likely be bubble teams at the end of the regular season, and it’s been all Georgia can do to get past them.

While no one was glad to see the first loss of the season come, it has also been clear for some time that this team wasn’t playing Top 10 ball. One can hope that the loss jolts a bit of urgency into the team on the eve of SEC play. It’s likely though that the problems are more fundamental. To sum up, the team has looked slow, soft, and shallow. They got a single point off the bench against Xavier, and the starters weren’t able to do nearly enough. While the radio team wrote it off as "one of those days," offensive production has been a problem for the team all season. Tasha Humphrey will usually – though not always – score in the high teens or 20s. Ashley Houts usually manages double-figures also. After that, consistency is out the window.

Coach Landers is disappointed with the lack of fight against a physical opponent. "What does a competitor do when someone comes out and punches? They punch back," he said. "We didn’t punch back. We didn’t compete. It’s surprising. It most certainly is. It’s sickening, is what it is, it’s sickening."

Both the depth issues and lack of offense are puzzling given that two very talented scorers are on the bench. Christy Marshall lit up the SEC as a freshman last year but has really struggled this season. A concussion back in December hasn’t helped her progress. Brittany Carter was one of the top prospects in the nation and drew comparisons to Deanna Nolan, but for whatever reason she hasn’t seen much playing time. The only newcomer to see significant time has been Angela Puleo who earned a starting job as a freshman. But Puleo seems to start out of necessity; players like her are usually sharpshooters who make an impact for a few minutes off the bench. They’re not everyday starting 2-guards.

It might look silly to seem down on a 13-1 team, but there are some big questions facing this team as they start SEC play with Ole Miss this Thursday. Coach Landers seems concerned too with ominous statements about bench production and toughness.

Three schools were moved ahead of Georgia by the pollsters in the final BCS standings. Two have played their bowl game. Both have lost in upsets. Just sayin’.

Hey, but at least they won their conferences…

I’m sure Georgia did learn a lot from their 2006 Sugar Bowl loss to West Virginia, but even before last night’s Fiesta Bowl I thought it was a mistake to put West Virginia in the “little guy” class with Boise and Hawaii. West Virginia has been a quality nationally-competitive program for three seasons now, and they’ve sustained a reasonably high level of play over that time (with the occasional slip of course). While I’m glad Georgia approached this year’s Sugar Bowl the way they did, I’m still confident that the team which sleepwalked into the 2006 Sugar would have won pretty easily on Tuesday night.

Don’t mess with punters from Laurens County.

Hawaii offensive line coach Dennis McKnight:

We didn’t block them. We didn’t execute. They’re no faster than guys we’ve played. Everybody has speed. We just didn’t do our job. We didn’t protect early. We didn’t play good at all on the offensive line. It’s that simple. We’re not trying to sugar coat it.

The standout quarterback who showed plenty of guts in the face of that pressure disagreed:

It was the hardest, fastest team I’ve ever seen.

Dennis Roland, Sr., father of former Bulldog offensive lineman Dennis Roland, passed away yesterday after a fight with cancer. Roland had coached at two schools in Gwinnett County, most recently Central Gwinnett, and had an impact on the communities in which he worked and lived.

It wasn’t a great night for the conventional wisdom. I’d like to claim that I saw all of this coming, but of course I can’t and won’t. I probably thought most of these points myself. Instead, here is a healthy dose of hindsight as we look at some of the widely-accepted pregame analysis leading up to the Sugar Bowl.

Quick passes from the run-and-shoot offense neutralize pressure.

When Colt Brennan spoke with Tim Tebow about the Georgia defense, hopefully Tebow was able to offer his unique perspective on taking a sack from the Bulldogs. Brennan’s quick instincts and strong arm might have saved him from eating through a straw for a few months. Georgia’s pressure on Brennan was relentless, and their eight sacks only begin to tell the story of the harassment. The pressure also affected Brennan’s famed accuracy, and Georgia’s defensive backs made Brennan pay for forced passes. "We wanted to make Colt throw it faster than he wanted to," explained Mark Richt after the game, and the Bulldog defense executed that plan to perfection.

Georgia will run, run, run and control the time of possession to keep Brennan off the field.

Can you believe that Hawaii won the meaningless time of possession battle? Georgia’s running game was adequate but nowhere near spectacular. Knowshon Moreno and Thomas Brown didn’t run roughshod through the defense, and the Dawgs were generally ineffective at salting the game away on the ground in the final quarter. Moreno and Brown were able to find some early holes, and Moreno added two early touchdowns.

In a game in which the Georgia running game was expected to be showcased, the Bulldogs were held below their season average with 169 total rushing yards. Thomas Brown’s game-high 71 yards on 19 carries led the way, and an injured Knowshon Moreno didn’t break ten carries (though he sure made his few carries count). After some long gains in Georgia’s final few games of the regular season, the Bulldogs had no carries for over 20 yards in the Sugar Bowl.

You just have to accept that Brennan will get his.

Many people, myself included, had already penciled in 3-400 yards passing and around 28 points for the potent Hawaii offense. The big question would be Georgia’s ability to clamp down in the red zone and keep Brennan from turning his prodigious yardage into enough points to win.

We badly underestimated the Georgia defense. Brennan had just 169 yards passing. His replacement Tyler Graunke did most of the damage with 142 yards and one touchdown through the air in just one quarter.

Georgia, snubbed by the BCS, would lack motivation.

This one had been shot out of the water several weeks ago, but some still focused on the buildup to the game and its importance to Hawaii. You couldn’t be certain until the game started, but both the Georgia crowd and team were ready from the opening kickoff. Any disappointment about the national title game was taken out on the opponent.

To be fair, not all of the analysis missed the mark. One point in particular nailed it.

Limiting Hawaii’s yardage after catch is critical to controlling their offense.

This key to the game was dead-on. Georgia did a masterful job at preventing Hawaii’s short passes from turning into big plays. FOX’s stat tracker showed only one broken tackle for most of the night. When Georgia was able to get the Warriors into long-yardage situations on second and third down (which was often), Hawaii found it very difficult to get the large gains they needed to move the chains. This stat, combined with Georgia’s effective pressure, probably was the story of the game.

Boise State indeed.  Instead of the 2007 Fiesta Bowl analogue that FOX and others seemed to want so desperately, Hawaii took us back to Boise State’s 2005 trip to Athens – a game in which Jared Zabransky was reduced to a thumb-sucking mass of jelly by halftime.  This time, the victim was Hawaii’s Colt Brennan; he was pounded into ineffectiveness and left the game around the beginning of the fourth quarter.  Instead of a display of offense for the ages, Hawaii and Brennan gave us a different sort of record-setting performance:  a BCS-record six turnovers and a 41-10 Georgia win.

The totality of the win was obvious by the end of the third quarter as Thom Brennaman and Charles Davies made fools of themselves excusing Hawaii’s play and criticizing Mark Richt for trying to score against a team known for prodigious comebacks en route to their 12-0 regular season.  That just skims the surface of a disappointing broadcast, but we’ll leave that to others for now.  I would though like to thank FOX for introducing the post-kickoff commercial to the college game.  That element of pro coverage was sorely missing on the other networks.

Looking back, the game set up like a typical 3-14 first round NCAA Tournament game.  If the underdog gets a few breaks early and hung around, maybe the favorite tightens up a bit and you get the upset.  Georgia took control of the game from the opening drive, and there would be no comeback or tense finish.  As Musberger cooed about a Rose Bowl “as it was meant to be”, the nation got treated to its third BCS mismatch of the day – yes, including Missouri who, when it comes to the subject of proving who belonged, showed infinitely more than Georgia’s opponent.

I’m proud of Georgia, the coaches, and the seniors for drawing on the lessons of 2005 and ensuring that West Virginia’s Sugar Bowl win was the exception and not the rule.  Great job guys, and hopefully the lopsided win is the springboard to leaving no doubt in 2008.

Though tickets don’t seem to be much of a problem, one Hawaii cable company is going to some lengths to make sure that residents who can’t make the trip to New Orleans are still able to watch the Sugar Bowl in style:

Oceanic Time Warner Cable announced yesterday that 6,000 high-definition TV boxes arrived this week – in time for Christmas and the highly anticipated Sugar Bowl game between Hawai’i and Georgia.

The company had many of the boxes flown in to meet the growing demand for HDTV.

“Over 3,000 subscribers on a waiting list since the 1st of December will now get their boxes in time for the game,” said Alan Pollock, vice president of marketing at Oceanic Time Warner Cable.

No word yet on how the cable company plans on handling 5,987 returns on the morning of January 2nd.

Kyle has done the digging over at Dawg Sports to get to the bottom of Mark Richt’s contract and the associated buyout clauses. I agree with his ultimate conclusion that Mark Richt will end his coaching career in Athens. We’d be very fortunate for that to happen.

Something tells me though that the end of Richt’s career will come sooner than we think it will. He won’t be one to hang on until he dies in the job or stays on out of hubris in pursuit of immortality. Given his already-impressive involvement in his church and community, I could almost picture a “career change” – a moment years down the road where Mark Richt steps away from coaching several years before the norm to devote his energy to his family, faith, and faith community while he is still able.

Clearly Richt sees coaching as a position where he can make a positive impact on others, and I’m sure that’s a big part of what fires him up each day and each year. As he said in 2005,

I coach because I love these players; I want them to succeed in life, and I hope that I can make a positive impact on their lives to where they can become a very good husband, a very good father, a very good employee, a very good citizen.

No one knows if the time will ever come, but it’s possible that Richt might one day conclude that his talents and time could make a bigger impact in a different type of service. If his coaching career continues on the same trajectory, the Bulldog Nation will be as simultaneously proud and heartbroken as it was the day Herschel Walker left for the USFL.

I don’t suggest that such a time is imminent or even foreseeable or that I want it to come any sooner than you do. Selfishly, I want the Richt era to last as long as possible. I just don’t see it ever getting to the point where we’re asking whether or not the game has passed by a 75-year-old Mark Richt.

It was the can’t-miss bowl pick of the year.  Nearly 98% of ESPN’s College Bowl Mania participants had picked #24 Boise State to handle ECU – no other pick came close to its certainty.  So of course in this season of upsets, ECU had to win, and they did.  After blowing a 38-14 lead, the Pirates drove for a game-winning field goal with no time remaining.  It was Boise State’s turn to get a taste of the Cinderella medicine, and ECU has earned the right to enjoy life for a while after a couple of 1 and 2-win seasons recently.

Though the story last night was the record-breaking performance of ECU’s Chris Johnson, their leading receiver was a guy named Jamar Bryant.  Bryant, in fact, was ECU’s leading receiver for the season with 48 receptions for 704 yards and 6 TDs.   

You might remember that Bryant originally signed with Georgia in 2004 out of Rockingham, NC.  He did not qualify academically and attended Hargrave prep school during the 2004-2005 academic year.  Then things got interesting.

As late as May 2005, Bryant seemed poised to become a Bulldog.  “Jamar is qualified,” Hargrave head coach Robert Prunty told UGASports.com. “He got his paperwork in and he’ll be there (Athens) real soon.”

That wasn’t quite the case.  In July, with Bryant’s academic status still up in the air, Bryant requested and received a release from UGA. He enrolled at ECU in 2005 but did not join the Pirate football team until the next summer as he worked out lingering eligibility issues.  Though four years out of high school, he was considered a sophomore in 2007 and will return for his junior year as ECU’s established top receiver.

Georgia signed another prospect out of Rockingham in 2004, but the story of Dannell Ellerbe has turned out a lot better for Bulldog fans.

While the football teams will be playing to determine one of the nation’s best football teams in a little over a week, the basketball teams will meet Saturday at 4:00 (ET) to determine last place in the Rainbow Classic. Georgia’s last-second loss against Tulane last night gives them two losses in the tournament and forces them to beat the hometown team in order to avoid the Golden Pineapple. With emotions already charged over the upcoming Sugar Bowl, you can bet that local sentiment will be against the Dawgs this afternoon.

The grumbling has predictably (and justifiably) picked up against Felton this weekend. After a national spotlight piece the other day in which Felton claims, “we’re as talented as we’ve ever been,” one doesn’t expect losses to ETSU and Tulane, especially on the same day.

I really expected (and still expect) three things from this season:

• Beat Tech. Georgia has yet to lose to the Jackets in Athens since the series went home-and-home in 1995. Keeping that going could be the last chance Felton has to hold off mass revolt.
• Finish at least .500 in the SEC. They managed it last year, and the league doesn’t look that impressive this year.
• Make the postseason again. We all want the NCAA Tournament, but given the unexpected losses of Brown and Mercer, any postseason would be something at this point.

All three of those objectives look more difficult after the past two games, but I think meeting all three is still a necessity for Felton to continue to claim consistent – if not incremental – improvement in the program.

It’s been a great 2007 in Georgia athletics, and we begin a look back with – wait for it – the highlights of January.

January 3: Notre Dame was waxed in the Sugar Bowl. It would be the highlight of 2007 for the program.

January 5: Nick Saban arrived in Tuscaloosa. Soon the world would be introduced to Alana Colette Connell.

January 8: Stacy Searels was hired as Georgia’s new offensive line coach. The former Auburn lineman chose Georgia over an offer to join Nick Saban’s fledgling staff at Alabama. Though the addition of Searels was universally praised from the beginning, no one could have imagined how well it would go. Faced with only two returning experienced scholarship linemen, the Dawgs approached the season with a "fake it till we make it" outlook up front. By the end of the 2007, Searels and his young and inexperienced line had paved the way for the emergence of Knowshon Moreno while giving up only 15 sacks.

January 8: Florida won the national football title and more or less emasculated the Big 10.

January 15: Chan Gailey was a candidate for the Miami Dolphins job. I think both the Dolphins and Jackets wish this had happened.

January 17: Steve Newman’s improbable buzzer-beater completed a last-minute comeback at Arkansas.

January 18: Rep. Jack Kingston stood firm against the Gators in Congress.

January 20: The Dawgs followed up the Arkansas win with a devastating loss at Alabama. Though the game ended on a questionable no-call, the story was Georgia’s second half collapse after leading by 15 at halftime. In hindsight, this loss probably cost Georgia a trip to the NCAA Tournament.

January 22: Bruce Pearl gave the people what they wanted at a Lady Vols game.

January 24: The roller-coaster ride continued for Georgia basketball with an overtime win over Kentucky.

January 27: They did it for Brophy: with a buzzer-beating three-pointer, Georgia upset LSU on a day set aside to honor the memory of Kevin Brophy.