Kris Durham made a name for himself as a true freshman with his size and hands. The lanky 6’5" receiver had a slight build, but his ability to make tough catches earned him a spot on the field as a true freshman.

In Saturday’s G-Day game, he did everything but complete a pass to his own team. His intercepted pass on a trick play was about the only hiccup in a solid performance. He showed the value of his length and hands on a diving touchdown catch, and he also showed a promising ability to break tackles on a second touchdown. With that performance and flashes of promise last year, you’d think that Durham was about to emerge as a key member of the receiving corps. I even said below that he "is going to be a ‘glue’ guy on this team for several years," and I believe that.

But we learned today that it had been an inconsistent spring of doubt for the rising sophomore. "Kris had a couple of times this spring where he had his head down a little bit and started to wonder if he could compete at this level, I think," said Coach Richt. Durham admitted, "I had an up-and-down spring. There were some days where I didn’t come out very focused. (Saturday) I seemed to be focused, and I just had a lot of fun. I think it’s paid off."

There’s no questioning Durham’s abilities, but it’s revealing to see behind the scenes and realize that G-Day performances, good and bad, didn’t necessarily tell the story of a month of spring ball.

I had heard some scuttlebutt that redshirting was a possibility this season for Durham. Looking just at his G-Day performance, that seems insane. But in the larger context of the spring, it makes more sense now. Durham probably would have redshirted last year if not for the injuries to Bailey and others. He’s done a lot in one year to increase his strength, and you have to wonder what kind of receiver he’d become with an additional year to develop physically.

The skills are there for him to become a very valuable receiver, but the depth makes you wonder from where the opportunities will come. Bailey is back. Henderson has vaulted into the picture with an outstanding spring. As Richt points out, there are now seven upperclassmen among the receivers, and they’re starting to play like it. Younger receivers like Michael Moore, Tony Wilson, and Durham are fighting for time on the field. Can Durham’s strong finish to the spring do enough to distinguish him from the rest of the receivers, or would a year of development move him into a much better position for his final three seasons?

Talking about redshirting your leading G-Day receiver might sound like crazy talk, but one has to wonder if the thought came into Coach Richt’s head as he watched the receiver position during the spring.

pwd is doing his usual strong job staying on top of the TV schedule puzzle, but one thing is certain: Georgia will not be playing on Thursday nights.

Athletic director Damon Evans made it pretty clear that Georgia has its limits on how far it will go for TV exposure.

“As long as I’m the athletic director here, we won’t have Thursday night football, plain and simple,” athletic director Damon Evans told the University Council’s Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics last month.

Thursday night games are worth an extra $500,000 per school, Evans said, but also mean more class time missed for players, thousands of students out late on a week night and the campus disrupted by fans streaming into town early to tailgate.

Evans neglects to mention Georgia’s state-wide fan base who would also be inconvenienced by mid-week games, but fans haven’t been part of the scheduling equation for some time now.

With the trend towards more midweek games showcasing lesser teams who would play at 3:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning if ESPN said so, it’s a good development to see someone stand up to it. Let other teams play on Thursday. College football belongs on Saturday.

First the good: Georgia’s #1-ranked men’s tennis team clinched the 24th regular season SEC title in program history over the weekend with a 5-2 win over #7 Ole Miss. The tennis Dawgs are a perfect 21-0 overall and 10-0 in the SEC with one conference match remaining against Tennessee. They’ll also get an interesting test this week as #4 Baylor comes to town on Thursday.

Now…is it too early to stick a fork in the Diamond Dawgs? By dropping two of three at Ole Miss, they are 4-8 in the SEC and 11-21 overall. Last year, they started SEC play 7-11 but recovered in dramatic fashion to roll through the end of the season into the College World Series. Saturday’s win at Ole Miss ended a six-game losing streak, but they started a new one with a big loss on Sunday. Is such a recovery possible this year? Not likely. There just isn’t any punch. Georgia has scored two or fewer runs in 40% of their games, and college baseball isn’t kind to low-scoring teams. If they are going to start to turn it around, it’s going to have to be on the road this weekend at Alabama. The Tide are just 5-7 themselves in the SEC.

A more hospitable location for next year’s game.

Fans can be funny. Georgia’s offense finally showed some punch, and of course everyone is now fretting about the defense. Had the defense played better and stuffed the offense, we’d be back to trashing the receivers and calling for an offensive coordinator (oh…wait.). If anything, G-Day was entertaining for once this year. In 2006, G-Day was all but over after Stafford’s first pass. If it’s just a spring exhibition for the fans, it might as well be fun, and at least this year’s game had action for the 21,000+ fans who braved the cold.

The performance of the offense is a good thing. Though the playcalling took a few more liberties in the spring game, there was still a good variety of formations and calls. Execution helps – there were few, if any, bad drops. Tailbacks ran well. The new offensive line, a universal source of concern this spring, held its own.

At the risk of contradicting myself, the defense didn’t look terribly impressive. It was a bad performance. Kelin Johnson said, "It was just horrible, man, horrible.", and he should know – many of the more successful plays of the day were across the middle. Coach Martinez didn’t use the excuse of a spring scrimmage to slack off – he was in faces early on about the lackluster play. "We just gave up too many big plays," Martinez explained. "It’s been happening a lot in the spring. It’s happened way too often. We just have to get it corrected. We just have to reshuffle our lineup and see if we can get it straightened up."

The Dawgs are replacing six of seven starters along the defensive front seven, and it showed. There were enough bright spots on defense among the first and second units to show that potential answers are on the team, but the questions still remain. Based on Martinez’s statement, we’ll probably see a lot of experimenting with different solutions before the season. Is it time to panic and abandon the season? Of course not. That’s what the next four and a half months are about. If improvement stopped after spring, we’d never be very good.

If there was a "story" to G-Day other than the big plays, it was the recruiting class of 2006. Rashad Jones made an immediate impact as a ball-hawking safety. Knowshon Moreno showed a great burst and power at tailback. Tony Wilson made some noise at receiver. Members of that class who did not redshirt, like Matt Stafford and Kris Durham, also had impressive afternoons. Without reading too much into a single spring scrimmage, here are some quick hitters from the game:

• Damn was it cold. Not chilly. Cold. The 2003 Tech game came to mind.
• Tripp Chandler seems ready to assume the starting tight end spot. He made a couple of tough catches, holding onto one as he got hit hard right after the reception, and he drug several defenders on a long completion across the middle.
• Jason Johnson continues to hold the Johnny Brown Award for the best G-Day performance from a guy least likely to see the field during the season. Last year, Johnson had nearly 100 yards on the ground at G-Day but didn’t get a single carry in 2006. This year Johnson had 48 rushing yards at G-Day, only five fewer than starter Kregg Lumpkin. Johnson also added a touchdown pass to his stat sheet this year, setting a whole new standard for this honor.
• The offense did a lot of its damage on big plays, and that can distort some good defensive plays and shaky moments on offense. Stafford had some great passes but was also a relatively inefficient 6-of-12. He struggled throwing swing passes, and there were some obvious miscommunications with receivers. It’s spring. Barnes fumbled, Massaquoi ran into his blockers on an end-around…there’s still plenty to do on that side of the ball as well.
• Brandon Miller’s move to middle linebacker continues to look good. He led the Black team with six tackles.
• It was clear why Georgia recruited a punter in the 2007 class. Butler might be called upon early. Coutu had a nice punt, but I’m sure we’d all prefer he focus on placekicking if possible. Mimbs was inconsistent.
• An interesting diversity at receiver is emerging. Sean Bailey is back and made a superb catch along the sideline. Massaquoi remains steady. Durham is going to be a "glue" guy on this team for several years. Henderson got open deep again and was the spring MVP. Tony Wilson had an impressive debut. We didn’t even see guys like Bryant or Harris or Gartrell. Don’t forget Moore either.
• As always, the best news is that no long-term injuries came out of the game. Cornerback Bryan Evans hurt his hand on Chandler’s long reception, but that kind of thing won’t affect his 2007 season.

Cori Chambers’ hometown paper writes about her selection in yesterday’s WNBA draft. At Connecticut, she’ll only be an hour or so away from her family.

Savannah’s paper weighs in on a hometown issue of their own. Sonny Seiler has more to say about the future of Uga VI and maintains that there are no set plans to retire him.

The AJC is reporting that Jon Stinchcomb, David Pollack, Will Witherspoon, and Hines Ward will serve as honorary coaches for Saturday’s G-Day scrimmage.

Coach Richt indicated that it’s not a one-year thing. “We thought it would be a good idea to initiate a tradition to also have players as guest coaches at G-Day,” he said.

Personally, I wouldn’t mind if they suited up.

G-Day 2007
2:00 Saturday, Sanford Stadium
CSS TV live and rebroadcast several times next week and probably all summer

Tickets are $5 for adults and $3 for students high school aged and younger. UGA students will be admitted free with their UGA card. Tickets are on sale Thursday and until 3 p.m. on Friday at the UGA ticket office in the Butts/Mehre Building.

Tickets will go on sale beginning at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday at Sanford Stadium at the main gate (underneath the bridge), as well as gates 2, 4 and 6

The Connecticut Sun selected Georgia guard Cori Chambers on Wednesday in the second round of the 2007 WNBA draft. Chambers became Georgia’s most prolific career three-point shooter in January, and her 228 attempts and 85 made three-pointers in the 2006-2007 campaign established Georgia season records. Her career totals of 282 three-pointers on 742 attempts are Georgia career records and rank #3 and #7, respectively, in SEC history.

Chambers gives the Lady Bulldogs nine players on a current WNBA roster. She joins Kara Braxton, Kedra Holland-Corn, Deanna Nolan, Kelly Miller, Coco Miller, Christi Thomas, Sherill Baker, and Keisha Brown in the league. Braxton, Nolan, and Holland-Corn play for the Detroit Shock, the defending league champions. Cori and the rest of the players will report for preseason camp in little more than a week, and the 2007 season will begin in mid-May.

Coaches have to love spring games. In the span of two hours, fans will form their expectations for the players and the upcoming season. Freshmen who don’t shine will be busts. Reserves who impress should get more playing time. Just look back a year ago…

• The entire quarterback question was settled for most fans on Stafford’s first 64-yard pass. Henderson caught just seven passes in 2006, but he did go on to become a valuable return man in Thomas Flowers’ absence.
• Ramarcus Brown and Asher Allen were stars on defense at G-Day. Each played a big role in 2006, but it was Bryan Evans who missed the spring game that eventually emerged as the answer opposite Paul Oliver.
• Jason Johnson won the "Ronnie Brown Award" for a great performance by a guy unlikely to see much time during the season. He was the leading rusher for G-Day 2006 with 97 yards on 13 carries. Johnson didn’t see any time at running back during the 2006 season, but he did get in on special teams.
• Tight end Tripp Chandler was the leading receiver in the game. After two first half drops, he caught four passes for 99 yards. He then caught a total of two passes during the 2006 season.

That’s not to say that the spring game tells us nothing. Going against Paul Oliver, Mohamed Massaquoi had just one reception. Oliver turned out to have a stellar season, but the game also foreshadowed a season of struggles for Georgia’s star receiver. Charles Johnson dominated G-Day, and he played well enough during the season to enter the NFL draft. No one from Georgia’s "three-headed monster" of tailbacks really stood out in the spring game, and that continued into the season. While Joe Cox threw several interceptions, he was also the most successful at driving the offense, and that came in useful in a desperate hour against Colorado.

It also won’t show you everything. While everyone was impressed with the gaudy interception returns last spring, few could see the secondary being beaten as badly as it was against Tennessee or the defense struggling as it did during the middle of the season. Stafford showed glimpses of why he would be the man, but not many figured that the quarterback decision would be stuck in quicksand for a few more months and that there would be so many expensive lessons in costly turnovers.

Based on the buzz, here’s what people will be looking at this year:

• For most of us, it’ll be a chance to see the new offensive line in action for the first time. Coach Searels will have a lot of eyes on him during this game. Nowhere will newcomers be more scrutinized than the early enrollees and JUCO transfers along the line.
• There’s also a lot of new faces among the defensive front seven. The Dawgs are replacing three starting defensive linemen and three starting linebackers. With a defensive end legacy of Pollack, Moses, and Johnson, is the next wave ready?
• Of course everyone wants to see Knowshon Moreno. An incredible amount of hype could be poured on this guy within a week.
• Will the offense have changed much under the continued direction of Mike Bobo?
• How will the passing game look with a more mature Stafford, the return of Sean Bailey, and Massaquoi and Bryant as upperclassmen?
• A big story this spring has been the strong play at the safety position. There are a lot of heavy hitters, and they’ll look a bit different than the undersized Tra Battle. But they’re mostly young, and this is the first chance to perform for many of them.

Me? As always, I just care about getting out without any long-term injuries. The team and the depth chart will change between now and August, and we’ll worry about it all then.

Click to see AJC screen capture.

Click to see Macon Tel screen capture.

Chip Towers is reporting in the AJC that Sonny Seiler plans to retire the current Uga following the 2007 season. Uga VI took over from his father in 1999 during a “Changing of the Dawg” ceremony before the South Carolina game. Since the indication is that the next transition will take place after the 2007 season, it doesn’t appear as if there will be a similar ceremony this time.

Uga VI is the largest bulldog in the line to date, and he has faced some health problems for years because of that size. Seiler maintains that Uga VI is in fine health for a bulldog of his age and should be up for his ninth season on the sidelines. The life expectancy of a typical bulldog isn’t much more than ten years, but we know that Uga isn’t just a typical bulldog.

While not as famous as his movie star father, Uga VI has been more effective on the field. He has presided over two SEC championships and witnessed wins in 76 of the 101 games in which he has been the mascot since that debut victory against the Gamecocks in 1999.

No word yet on Uga VII or when he will be introduced, but Sonny assures us that “I’ll just say if we needed to put our hands on a puppy, we’d be ready.”

UPDATE: Seiler denies setting a firm date for Uga VI’s retirement. Josh Kendall in the Macon Telegraph quotes Seiler, “Why should we draw a line any place?” Kendall writes,

None of the dogs in the Uga line has served beyond the age of 10, so there’s no guarantee the current Uga, officially named “Uga V’s Whatchagot Loran,” will be around for the 2008 season, but there’s also no reason to say he won’t, Seiler said.

It’s possible that the original articles might be edited, so I’ve taken some screen captures of the originals. It’s a few days too early for an April Fool’s joke like this.

If you haven’t heard of Bobby Reid, you will by the time Georgia’s football season opens against Oklahoma State on Sept. 1. Reid emerged as a decent Big 12 quarterback last year for the Cowboys with 24 touchdown passes and over 2200 yards through the air. He added 500 yards on the ground. He was second in pass efficiency in the conference behind only Colt McCoy of Texas. Not a bad player, right?

He nearly came to Georgia. He wanted to come to Georgia.

The class of 2004 was a bumper crop of quarterbacks. Henne. Xavier Lee. Brohm. Weatherford. Ainge. McGee, Harrell, Bomar, Patton, and Reid gave the Big 12 alone five of the best prep quarterbacks in the nation.

Georgia was in on a good number of them. Henne considered the Dawgs. Harrell named Georgia his front-runner. And of course Reid all but committed to the Bulldogs. So what happened?

Georgia signed two quarterbacks in the 2004 class. A.J. Bryant committed on Signing Day 2003. He has been a receiver his entire career at Georgia, so we forget that he was considered a quarterback/athlete for recruiting purposes (and rated the #1 “athlete” in the nation by Rivals.com that year). He was Georgia’s lone commitment for months.

Things heated up in late July during camp season. Georgia was zeroing in on three quarterback prospects. There was Reid, Harrell, and Blake Barnes of Mississippi who was rated the ninth-best pro-style quarterback in the nation. Reid really began to favor the Dawgs after a July 2003 visit to Athens. Likewise, a summer visit to Athens put Georgia at the top of Harrell’s list ($). Barnes also attended camp in Athens in mid-July and received an offer after that camp ($).

The Dawgs weren’t going to take more than two quarterbacks in a class. So with one quarterback already in the fold and three leaning heavily towards Georgia, it was a matter of who would commit to take that remaining spot. We all know that Barnes was that guy. He committed on July 28 and chose Georgia over offers from Auburn, Ole Miss, Michigan, and Mississippi State. That commitment set off a chain of events with the others. Reid describes how he got home from the Elite 11 camp to find a letter from Georgia breaking the bad news. Harrell waited just a day or two before committing to Texas Tech on July 30th ($). Reid committed to Oklahoma State a week later ($).

It’s easy now to look at Barnes’ position on the Georgia depth chart while watching Reid and Harrell start to make names for themselves as Big 12 starters and think that Georgia somehow made a mistake. That’s hindsight, but there was no mistake at the time that Barnes was a quality commitment. David Cutcliffe of Ole Miss, who developed quarterbacks like Heath Shuler, Peyton Manning, and Eli Manning, didn’t let up on the top signal-caller from the state of Mississippi. Michigan had offered him right alongside Chad Henne.

This story is a great behind-the-scenes illustration of just how tight and even random some of these recruiting decisions can be. There’s no telling if the other guys would have been successful at Georgia. We’ll never know if Barnes would have flourished in another system. Might the emergence of a Harrell or Reid in Athens have affected the decision of Matthew Stafford? The recruiting trail, much like the game we love itself, is full of such individual decisions that cause ripple effects and aggregate to affect programs, games, seasons, and even careers.

The latest: The University police department has issued an arrest warrant for offensive lineman Tanner Strickland for possession of a fake ID. Strickland is a 2007 signee and an early enrollee.

This looks to be a pretty comprehensive case: at least twelve people, including Strickland, are named in the same case, and Strickland’s warrant doesn’t carry the “criminal attempt” or “intent to distribute” charges that others in this case will face.

UPDATE: Ching confirms that this warrant is part of a larger investigation initiated by a US Postal Inspector. If the case involves distribution of fake IDs through the US Mail, that could bring along a whole different set of problems for those with some of the additional charges. Using the mail in the commission of a crime isn’t a smart thing to do.

SID Claude Felton told the AJC that Coach Richt is aware of the issue and “will be handled in a manner (Richt) feels appropriate.”

No story lead has become more dreaded by Bulldog football fans than this: "Georgia’s already-thin offensive line suffered another loss…"

Fortunately, Saturday’s first major scrimmage of spring brought no such news. The Dawgs have already had two minor injuries on the line this spring: Vince Vance and Josh Davis have missed time, but both are expected to return soon. The lack of serious injury is the best kind of news you can get this time of year.

The story of the scrimmage was reportedly the defense. Brandon Miller’s move to MLB seems to be paying off, and we continue to hear good things about tailback Knowshon Moreno. Other takes:

• ABH
• AJC
• UGASports($): Offense / Defense
• Chattanooga (Paschall)

I’ve given up on trying to read too much into spring ball. Depth charts will change and are often motivational at this point. You’ll have the Ronnie Powells who will light up spring practice and G-Day and then disappear in the fall. Everyone knows that we are trying to piece together an offensive line. They’re also trying to replace several starters on the defensive line and bring along a receiving corps that will be key to Matthew Stafford’s development. None of that is new to those who keep up with the program, and we’ve learned not to really expect answers until August.

G-Day is in two weeks (April 7th).

Following last night’s 78-65 season-ending loss to Purdue, Andy Landers said something that didn’t just apply to the Purdue game but could also serve as an epitaph for the season. "When we didn’t score, it seemed to take some of the life or mission out of us defensively," he said, explaining how Georgia’s defensive intensity waned after a strong start. The Lady Dogs had another 25+ win season and another trip to the Final Four, but in almost all of their losses they faced inconsistency on offense and a sub-par defensive effort that seemed coupled to those problems on offense.

This feast-or-famine storyline played out in dramatic fashion during the postseason. It began in the SEC Tournament where Georgia routed Kentucky in record-setting fashion. They were on the other side of the rout the following night against Vanderbilt, failing to score 20 points in the first half. Another sluggish effort followed in the NCAA opening round when they struggled to score and got a scare from an overmatched Belmont team. Thing swung back around the other way for the second round game against Iowa State, and neither offense nor defense was a problem.

Loss hurts Houts, but she’s got a bright future. (Photo: AP)

Inconsistent teams rarely advance far in the postseason. Georgia was good enough to advance. They’ve recorded wins over three Elite Eight teams this season. Their inconsistency buried them last night. Purdue’s consistent senior sharpshooter Katie Gearlds went for 30 points. Georgia’s starting seniors combined for ten points and two field goals.

Tasha Humphrey and Angel Robinson were effective inside. Humphrey scored 20 points, but it was on the other end where she ran into familiar problems. Foul trouble put her on the bench for key stretches in both halves. With her watching from the pine and Chambers cold, Georgia’s scoring fell to freshmen and role players. They were valiant and kept up as much as they could, but they weren’t going to keep up with Gearlds and Wisdom-Hilton.

Last season ended for the Lady Dogs with a proud and defiant Landers refusing to get down about the way with which Georgia lost to UConn. The Lady Dogs fought that game with their best effort and lost on a miracle shot. "We didn’t lose," Landers said after that game. "You lose when you don’t go out and apply the ability and talent that you have to the challenge that faces you. When you apply yourself like we did, you don’t lose. You get beat."

No such statement could be made about last night’s game. Georgia’s offense fizzled but for a few brief runs, and the defense couldn’t react quickly enough to the screens they knew they’d face. "They did what we knew they were going to do," said Cori Chambers. "They run off screens, and I didn’t do what I needed to do to stop them." She wasn’t alone, but unfortunately Cori has been the poster child for the feast-or-famine season. She set Georgia’s career mark for three-pointers back in January, but she has battled through struggles on offense for much of the second half of the season while drawing some tough defensive assignments.

This has been a tough team to figure out all year, and it must be frustrating for Coach Landers to have to pull and plead to get results and leadership. They started the season beating teams like Rutgers and Stanford without Tasha Humphrey. After she returned, the team struggled for a bit as their identity changed. Then they got it back together for a second-place SEC finish that included wins over Vanderbilt, LSU, and Ole Miss. It ended with the wild swings in both the SEC and NCAA Tournaments.

Though the Lady Dogs lose Chambers and Hardrick, the future of the team is in a core of three freshmen honored this year by the SEC. At least six players will be joining the team next year, four of them in the backcourt. With Tasha Humphrey entering her senior year, the window is closing on building a championship team around her.

John Kaltefleiter reports in the ABH that Georgia basketball assistant Mike Jones is chasing the dream that most assistants have. He has applied for the head coaching vacancy at Division II Columbus State.

Jones said,

I do, just like every other assistant coach, want to be at the top of his profession and that means being the head coach of his own program. I’d be happy to have the opportunity to coach my own team.

You can’t argue with that. We wish him the best of luck going after his goals.

Random bits of news today:

The Lady Dogs’ Sweet Sixteen game against Purdue in Dallas is set for Sunday the 24th at 7:00 ET. ESPN2 will have the game.

Georgia baseball beat Mercer last night for their fourth win in a row. The Bulldogs were more or less left for dead with a punchless offense after losses to Kennesaw and Western Carolina, but they rebounded to sweep a ranked Auburn team last weekend and now have a bit of momentum as the SEC schedule starts to heat up. Four games is a nice little streak, but there’s a long way to go. It’s good to see the pitching stay solid now that some more timely hits are coming.

There’s quite a bit of talk coming out of yesterday’s pro day in Athens. Charles Johnson injured his hamstring. We have the interesting story of Danny Ware. After making the questionable decision to leave early, he’s trying to impress scouts with his physique. Ching has a lot of thoughts on pro day both on his blog and in the Columbus paper. He thinks Ware might have helped himself the most of anyone yesterday.

Ching and Kelly Quinlan of UGASports.com both spoke with defensive ends coach Jon Fabris yesterday. Ching focused mostly on the defense end position, and Quinlan got a few quotes ($) looking at a more abstract concept of player evaluation. I liked his caution against placing too much emphasis on the measurables at things like pro day and basing most of the evaluation on film.

I might take some chances on recruits based on potential, but I do not want to take a lot of chances just because a guy looks good on the hoof and what he might become. It is the same thing in the NFL. You have first and second round draft picks and you do not waste those on how someone teased you on Pro-Day.

…I could care less what kind of 40 times my ends run because they are not going to run 40 yards. I care about their first two or three steps. I care how hard they want to chase the football.

Fabris is a great interview when you get him speaking candidly like this. Lots of talk about Tarzan and Jane!