Georgia overcame a three-run deficit to beat defending national champion Washington 6-3 in their opening game of the 2010 Women’s College World Series Thursday night.

After Washington plated three runs in the bottom of the first, it looked as if this year’s WCWS opener would follow the same script as last year’s.  Erin Arevalo came in as a relief pitcher and settled things down on defense, but Georgia’s bats remained silent against All-American pitcher Danielle Lawrie.

The Bulldogs cracked the scoreboard in the fourth with a solo shot by Kristyn Sandberg, but they had to work out of a jam in the bottom half of the inning.  Arevalo shut the door, and the Huskies couldn’t add to their lead.  Georgia posted two more runs in the fifth thanks to a barrage of pesky singles and the speed of Taylor Schlopy on a force play at home.

It was fitting that Georgia’s hottest batter broke open the game in the sixth inning.  Megan Wiggins golfed a low pitch over the center field wall to provide the final margin. 

Freshman Allison Owen answered the bell in the final two innings.  With Arevalo struggling in the 6th, Owen entered the game and got out of a bases-loaded jam with a key strikeout.  Owen finished off the game by striking out the side in the seventh.

Georgia’s next opponent is another familiar foe.  Tennessee and Georgia split four games during the 2010 season, but Tennessee bounced the Dawgs from the SEC Tournament and is the most recent team to beat the Bulldogs.  Tennessee, like Georgia, is red-hot in the NCAA Tournament and has yet to lose a game.  They swept #2 seed Michigan on the road to get to the WCWS and destroyed Arizona 9-0 in their WCWS opener.

Georgia and Tennessee will play at 9:30 on Friday night (ESPN) with an important advantage at stake.  The winner will remain in the winner’s bracket, earn a day off on Saturday, and will only have to win one game on Sunday to advance to the championship series.  The loser will have to come back on Saturday and win that game and win twice on Sunday in order to advance. 

Tim Tucker leads with what will be good news to would-be Georgia season ticket holders:  "The cost of getting into Sanford Stadium as a first-time season-ticket buyer is dropping." The picture Tucker paints might be seen as one of declining enthusiasm surrounding the program evident in "a rise in ticket cancellations and a decline in donations."

Fan frenzy certainly isn’t what it was heading into the 2008 season, but let’s be clear what’s going on here:  there will still be a cut-off score for new season tickets, and there will be some Hartman Fund donors who ordered first-time season tickets but will see their order refunded due to excess demand.

The current cut-off will be nowhere near the lofty 10,651of 2008 or even the score of 4,205 that was required a year ago.  But the fact that there will be a cut-off at all is still news.  The cut-off was as low as 1,991as recently as 2007 and non-existent prior to that. Even with a down economy and a disappointing 2009 season, demand hasn’t cooled off to the point that Georgia will have unsold season tickets.  

For perspective, here’s what other schools around the area are dealing with.  These are all major programs who are having to go beyond donors by selling season tickets or ticket packages to the general public.

• Clemson’s IPTAY members bought 48,039 season tickets.  That’s about 1,000 more than last year but well short of selling out.  Clemson sold a record 58,134 season tickets in 2008.  The remaining season tickets are now on sale to the public.
• South Carolina is dealing with a general decline in interest and will also likely come up short of selling out of season tickets.  "Attendance at some Gamecock Club meetings was light this spring, according to Spurrier…Spurrier said enrollment for his football camps is down and figures season-ticket sales are off as well."
• Tennessee is selling groups of 3-game "mini-packs" to the public. They claim that these mini-packs are available "based on the number of tickets claimed by visiting teams," but the deals include the Florida game. Remaining individual seats will go on sale later in the summer.
• Georgia Tech also hasn’t sold out of season tickets, but their numbers are slightly ahead of last year as of late April.
• Auburn is currently selling season tickets to the public as of June 1st. They’re also offering a mini season ticket which excludes the Georgia and Clemson games.

It was announced this morning that Georgia’s September conference games against South Carolina and Arkansas would both start at noon E.T. with either ESPN or ESPN2 televising the games. David Hale mentioned yesterday that Damon Evans had spoken with SEC officials about campaigning for a few earlier kickoffs, and boy did he get his wish. I can only say that I’m glad to be skipping the South Carolina game this year – I’m sure it will be just lovely in Columbia for a noon game in early September.

We also learned that the Florida game will kick off at 3:30, but that’s no surprise given the perpetual relationship of that game with CBS. The Georgiadogs.com announcement also has more information about other SEC start times announced today.

Colorado announced that the Georgia game on October 2nd will start at 2:30 p.m. Mountain Time (4:30 eastern). The game will be nationally televised by Fox Sports Net. Colorado fans will find Bulldog partisans very receptive to the guests of honor for that game: the Buffaloes plan to honor the 20th anniversary of their 1990 consensus national champion team. We’ll be right there with them.

Are the two early kickoffs the result of Georgia losing some prime time stature? It’s possible, but it’s more likely that there are a few games a little more interesting nationally. CBS will be broadcasting the US Open tennis through Sept. 12, so they’re not an option that weekend. CBS will take Florida @ Tennessee matchup over the Arkansas @ Georgia game. Can’t argue with that. Prime time slots those weeks will go to a pair of interesting nonconference games: Oregon @ Tennessee, Penn State @ Alabama, and Clemson @ Auburn. Each of Georgia’s first two conference games should be compelling, but I don’t think they rate over those big name nonconference games. Most other weeks remain wide-open, and the networks will use their option to wait to see how the season goes before slotting those games. If Georgia comes out of September in good shape, they’ll be in line for several 3:30 or later starts.

We learned today that Georgia will be without a permanent mascot for its season opener on September 4th. Russ, the dawg who stood watch over Georgia’s season-ending wins against Georgia Tech and Texas A&M, will continue to fill in during the first few games of the season. Sonny Seiler told the Athens Banner-Herald that “we will use (Russ) for the first two or three games.” It’s true that Russ has yet to be tested against an SEC opponent, but he’ll get his shot in Columbia.

Since it’s unlikely that a new Uga would make his debut anywhere other than Sanford Stadium, the first opportunity to introduce a new mascot would be against Arkansas in the third game of the season. It’s not unprecedented that an Uga would make his debut for the SEC home opener; Uga V gave way to Uga VI before the 1999 South Carolina game, and that turned out just fine. The problem is that a new mascot might or might not be ready by the third game.

Seiler is waiting to see how a few young pups develop over the summer. It’s even possible that the next mascot will come from a litter that won’t be born for another few weeks. We know that selecting a mascot is a long, solemn, and thorough process, and a lot of thought will be put into the decision. As Seiler explains, it would be “at least two months” to determine whether or not any new pup has the stature and other characteristics needed by a dawg that can reign for the 8-10 years Seiler is hoping for.

If a replacement isn’t ready by the Arkansas game, Georgia’s next two games are on the road. Georgia wouldn’t return home until the October 9th game against Tennessee. By that point, Georgia could well be 5-0 with a seven-game winning streak under this interim mascot. Seiler admits that “it could be homecoming before (he) picks a permanent mascot.” Do you mess with that kind of a streak at the midpoint of the season?

I know that Russ is considered too old to become a permanent replacement, but giving him a Shockley-esque one year in the sweater isn’t too much to ask, is it?

While most of us spent the weekend next to the grill, the pool, and hopefully mindful of the reason for the long weekend, many of the remaining Bulldog athletes in action decided that winning was the best way to enjoy the holiday weekend.

Softball

The Georgia softball team completed an impressive sweep of Cal on Saturday to earn a consecutive trip to the Women’s College World Series. Can’t blame the ESPN crew for trying to build up as much SEC vs. Pac-10 drama as they could, but Georgia made sure that the series was as far from dramatic as you can get. The Bulldogs won the series by a combined 17-1 score, and they had each game more or less in hand by the second inning. LF Megan Wiggins was the star with a fantastic diving catch in the field and a grand slam in Saturday’s clincher. With Taylor Schlopy and Alisa Goler, I can’t imagine a more potent top third of a lineup in the nation.

Georgia gets to face a familiar postseason foe in the WCWS. Top seeds Alabama and Michigan were upset in their super regionals over the weekend, but third-seeded and defending champion Washington avoided the upset bug and will be Georgia’s opening opponent in Oklahoma City as they were a year ago. The Huskies lost their first super regional game to Oklahoma but stormed back with consecutive shutouts.

Georgia lost their opener to Washington last year but battled back through the loser’s bracket to earn another shot at the Huskies. Georgia won 9-8 in a thrilling extra-innings game to setup yet another game against Washington with a trip to the national title game on the line. Washington proved to be too much and went on to beat Florida for the title. If Georgia can take one positive from last year’s experience, it’s that they got to untouchable Washington pitcher Danielle Lawrie for ten earned runs over those final two games. They were also the only team to defeat Washington in the WCWS. Georgia’s offense is every bit as potent as it was last year, and they’ll have a bit of confidence going up against a familiar and talented foe.

Georgia faces Washington at 9:30 on Thursday evening, and the game will be on ESPN2.

W Tennis

The weekend was topped off with an individual national title: sophomore tennis player Chelsey Gullickson pulled off upset after upset during the women’s singles tournament and defeated Cal’s Jana Juricova 6-3,7-6(7)to claim the program’s third individual championship. Her quest to add a doubles title fell just short as her team fell in the national semifinals.

Though Gullickson was ranked a respectable 12th in the nation, her path through the field included four matches against higher-ranked players.

Gullickson’s road to the national championship featured six wins including over top-ranked Irina Falconi (Georgia Tech), second-ranked Juricova, fourth-ranked Hilary Barte and eighth-ranked Allie Will (Florida).

A national title that included wins over Florida and Tech? Chelsey Gullickson accomplished every Bulldog’s dream.

…and Bass Fishing?

How good of a weekend was it? Georgia’s Ben Cleary and Bo Page even claimed the 2010 BoatU.S. Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship. (h/t David Hale)

With pretty much every other spring sport over, Georgia softball is still going strong. The #6 seed Bulldogs open a best-of-three super regional series with Pac-10 power and #11 seed Cal on Friday in Athens with a trip to the Women’s College World Series in Oklahoma City up for grabs. All three games will be on either ESPNU or ESPN.

If the case can be made for Oklahoma to come out on top in 2010, do the Bulldogs dare to dream about returning to championship-level football this year? After all, the Dawgs are coming off an 8-5 season just like the Sooners. Georgia’s losses to the NFL Draft were mainly in the later rounds; Oklahoma will have to replace four first-round picks. Georgia returns tons of proven talent on offense, some of the nation’s best special teams personnel, and expectations are sky-high for the new defense.

Phil Steele tips his cap to this line of thinking by naming Georgia one of his possible surprise teams for 2010. Steele doesn’t go all the way and predict Georgia to be a top-10 team, but that’s understandable. Many are the preseason polls who went out on a limb for Georgia in 2008 and 2009 and were rewarded for it with consecutive seasons that finished below expectations. But Steele is at least acknowledging that the potential is there for Georgia to make some noise this year if a few questions get answered affirmatively.

There are enough differences between Oklahoma and Georgia to see why pundits like Steele aren’t as bullish on the Dawgs as they might be on the Sooners. It starts at quarterback where Landry Jones earned enough playing time last season to be considered a returning starter. Aaron Murray is pretty much where Jones was a year ago, but Murray at least has the advantage of knowing he’ll start as a freshman.

There’s also the difference in how each team got to 8-5 last year. Oklahoma lost four games to top-20 finishers by a combined 12 points. Georgia got routed by Florida and a middling Tennessee team and lost to unimpressive LSU and Kentucky teams. Oklahoma was missing its Heisman candidate quarterback and all-star tight end. Georgia had some injuries along the way including a key left tackle, but they came by their 8-5 honestly. Both teams can claim a certain amount of unluckiness – Oklahoma’s injuries and close losses and Georgia’s improbable turnover margin – but that’s football.

We can’t forget about the schedule. Georgia might have traded Oklahoma State and LSU for La.-Lafayette and Mississippi State, but they’ll still face four of Steele’s top-25, only one of which will be in Athens. We have no qualms with Oklahoma’s very respectable schedule, but they’ll face just two of Steele’s top-25 along the way, both of which will either be a home or a neutral game.

Stability is probably the biggest difference. Oklahoma had a small change on their defensive staff (welcome Willie Martinez!), but coordinator Brent Venables has been in place since 2004. Georgia will undergo a wholesale transformation of the defense, and it could be cause for concern that Georgia will be one of the few SEC teams to play three conference games in September – two of which will be on the road, and two of which will be against a Steele preseason top-25 team. The defense won’t have much time to find its legs.

Oklahoma will be a highly-ranked team heading into the Texas game if they can get through September and a decent nonconference slate unscathed. Georgia likewise should be on the rise and prove Steele right if the defense can survive September and head to Boulder without a blemish.

Let’s face it – it’s been a disappointing year for most Georgia sports programs. For most fans it all begins and ends with football, and the 2009 season wasn’t won of Georgia’s best. The men’s basketball program took a step forward and has us excited about the future, but the best they could do last season was to play spoiler. The baseball team just wrapped up a season whose futility was historic. Even stalwarts like gymnastics faltered during the past year. Michael Adams summed it up at today’s Athletic Association Board of Directors meeting: “It’s not been our best year on the field.“

While the Bulldog nation has been fending off bored columnists talking about the temperature of Mark Richt’s seat, Damon Evans hasn’t received much scrutiny. Much of that has to do with having a lot to like: the program remains financially strong, the APR results are worth bragging about, and Evans’ first high-profile hire, Mark Fox, seems to have been a good one. We looked at this topic last year on the occasion of Evans’ fifth anniversary as athletic director. There has been a downward trend in Georgia’s national Directors’ Cup standing, and I can’t imagine that the overall performance of Bulldog programs will improve that this year. The summary remains the same: everything else is stellar but actual athletics aren’t doing so well, and the trend remains downward.

It’s probably a surprise then to learn that Georgia finished second in this year’s SEC All-Sports trophy. The Bulldogs finished a distant second behind Florida, but there was also a healthy margin between Georgia and third-place Tennessee.

How did they do it? It should shock no one that Georgia’s women’s programs led the way. The gap between the Florida and Georgia women’s programs was much narrower than the overall gap, and Georgia’s women’s programs finished on average over two places higher in the SEC standings than the Georgia men. Despite that, it wasn’t as bad as you might think for the Bulldog men. Even with the major sports having sub-par seasons, Georgia’s men’s programs finished tied for fourth with Tennessee.

Here’s a look at how the Bulldogs did against the rest of the SEC this year. We use regular season standings where possible, but some sports like golf and swimming use a season-ending tournament or meet to decide the champion.

• Football: T-4th (T-2nd SEC East). Champion: Alabama
• Men’s Basketball: 11th (6th SEC East). Champion: Kentucky
• Women’s Basketball: 5th. Champion: Tennessee
• Baseball: 12th (6th SEC East). Champion: Florida
• Softball: 4th. Champion: Alabama
• Men’s Tennis: 3rd (3rd SEC East). Champion: Tennessee
• Women’s Tennis: T-2nd (T-2nd SEC East). Champion: Florida
• Men’s Golf: 1st (SEC Tournament). Champion: Georgia
• Women’s Golf: 4th (SEC Tournament). Champion: Alabama
• Women’s Soccer: 5th (3rd SEC East). Champion: Florida
• Women’s Volleyball: T-5th (4th SEC East). Champion: LSU
• Gymnastics: 3rd (SEC Championships). Champion: Florida
• Men’s Swimming/Diving: 3rd (SEC Championships). Champion: Auburn
• Women’s Swimming/Diving: 1st (SEC Championships). Champion: Georgia
• Men’s Track & Field: 5th (SEC Outdoor Championships). Champion: Florida
• Women’s Track & Field: 5th (SEC Outdoor Championships). Champion: LSU
• Men’s Cross Country: 5th (SEC Championships). Champion: Alabama
• Women’s Cross Country: 4th (SEC Championships). Champion: Florida

Note: Equestrian is not an SEC sport, but c’mon – they’re national champs.

Other than men’s basketball and baseball, most Georgia programs finished at least in the top half of the conference. Those results probably buoyed Georgia’s place in the All-Sports competition versus programs who might have done well in a few sports but poorly in most of the others.

While maintaining second place in the SEC All-Sport standings might be a nice surprise, it’s very possible that Georgia, for the first time in well over a decade, could dip out of the national top 20 in this year’s Directors’ Cup. Georgia was 25th after the conclusion of the winter sports, and they’ll be helped by several postseason appearances among the spring sports. It’ll be close.

Still, most fans just consider the strength of the football team a proxy for the state of the athletic department. What’s your verdict?

Georgia’s not exactly a stranger to the national semifinals of men’s tennis, but they were a darkhorse to advance that far this year. Georgia’s impressive run continues tonight at 5:00 on the Henry Feild Courts in Athens against #2 Tennessee. Tennessee beat Georgia by a convincing 6-1 margin during the year, but the Bulldogs’ strong play of late plus the partisan home crowd should have the team ready to give their best effort with a shot at the national title on the line.

Follow the scoring and watch live video from this page at Georgiadogs.com.

Few Georgia programs found much success against the Gators this year, and the men’s tennis team was no exception.  Florida was 2-for-2 against the Dawgs during the season, and the sixth-seeded Florida team had to be favored over eleventh-seeded Georgia in Friday’s round of 16 matchup in the NCAA Tournament.

Georgia had two things on their side: the home court and the home fans. The homestanding Bulldogs dug deep and came out with a huge 4-2 win over their SEC rivals and move on to the national quarterfinals on Sunday.

Georgia was set up in good position by taking the important doubles point.  Florida won two of the first three singles matches to finish and knotted the score at 2-2. The focus shifted to the ongoing matches at No. 1, 2, and 3, and whichever team won two out of three of those matches would advance. As it turns out, all three of those matches went Georgia’s way.

Nate Schnugg at #2 gave Georgia their third point with a 7-5, 6-4 win. #1 Javier Garrapiz clinched the win by taking a dramatic tiebreaker to upset the nation’s #7 player, Alex Lacroix, 6-4, 7-6(5). Georgia even had a bit of breathing room as Jamie Hunt at #3 was close to completing a furious comeback and led 3-6, 6-1, 4-0 when Garrapiz ended things.

Georgia will face unseeded Oklahoma on Sunday at 5:00 p.m. The Sooners themselves pulled a huge upset by taking down #3 Texas 4-2.  Oklahoma’s coach is no stranger to Athens and these courts: John Roddick was a four-time All American at Georgia from 1995-1999 and was named UGA Athlete of the Year in 1998.

It was shocking enough that the Diamond Dawgs pounded Kentucky 20-0 on Friday night.

Consider that Georgia didn’t score more than 20 runs combined in all but one of their SEC series this year.

The Diamond Dawgs have clinched their first SEC series win of the year, and they go for the sweep on Saturday.  Another win would give them six conference victories, and they’d avoid the ignominy of tying the record-setting futility of the 2000 Vanderbilt club who only won five SEC games.

Former Georgia guard Ashley Houts has earned a place on the roster of the WNBA’s Washington Mystics. WNBA roster spots are hard to come by – each team only has 11 players, and there’s not much turnover. The cut list contained many of the best players to come out of college in recent years, and Houts had to have that in mind when she was traded from New York to Washington just two days before last weekend’s season opener. She made the cut though, and the same toughness and conditioning that she showed during four years in Athens are big reasons why she has found a role playing at the next level.

Houts gives the Lady Dogs four active players in the WNBA. Kara Braxton’s Detroit team moved to Tulsa this year (and picked up Nolan Richardson as head coach!). Bulldog legends Kelly and Coco Miller are playing pro ball together for the first time as both signed with and made the cut for Atlanta. Deanna Nolan decided to sit this year out after Detroit moved to Oklahoma, but she’ll likely play again down the road.

Marcus Thornton, the 2010 Mr. Georgia Basketball, announced on Wednesday that he will play for Georgia ($).  Thornton, originally a Clemson signee before their recent coaching change, chose Georgia over Georgia Tech, Alabama, and Texas.  Thornton had also drawn interest from programs like Kentucky and North Carolina over the past couple of weeks.

The commitment of the 6’7” forward is a huge exclamation point on Mark Fox’s 2010 recruiting class.  Not to diminish the importance of the rest of the class, but coming out on top in a highly-visible recruiting battle for a top Atlanta talent is just what the Fox program needs to build momentum on the recruiting trail for the critical 2011 class. The results on the court last season demonstrated that Georgia has the coaching to be competitive, and they just need the players in order to take the next step.  Thornton is the kind of player Fox needed to get in order to make the kind of impact on recruiting that he had on the court last season.

Georgia’s 2010 class is now complete.

• Cady Lalanne – 6’8” F from Florida
• Sherrard Brantley – 6’2” JUCO guard
• Donte Williams – 6’9” F from Lithonia (Miller Grove)
• Marcus Thornton – 6’7” F from Atlanta (Westlake)

And let’s not forget that next year’s team will also add transfer shooting guard Gerald Robinson.  David Hale has more on the impact Robinson is expected to have next season.

Whether you consider it silly pot-stirring or a legitimate question, the topic is unavoidable. I suppose the fact that we’re even batting this question around gives it some sort of validity because it’s certainly not something we’re used to dealing with every season.

If you want to twist a Georgia fan up in knots, get them going about Mark Richt. Everyone starts out with the same disclaimers: genuinely great guy, glad he’s our coach, couldn’t ask for a better representative of the University, won’t forget that he brought SEC titles back to Athens. But then opinions really start to diverge.

As Matt Hinton reminds us – absent a national title – these are the glory years for Georgia football:

Since 2000, he’s ended the Bulldogs’ 20-year SEC championship drought in 2002, added another conference title in 2005, led a struggling team out of a midseason slump to a No. 2 finish in the final polls in 2007 and won at least 10 games six times. The Bulldogs finished in the top 10 four years in a row from 2002-2005, the longest streak of the decade in the SEC and matching the Herschel Walker years from 1980-83 as the best run in school history.

How on earth could anyone be displeased with that track record?  You might or might not buy into all of these, but critics have countered with a number of points:

• Georgia is just 10-10 against the SEC East since 2006.
• That divisional record includes home losses to Kentucky and Vanderbilt and 1-3 marks against Florida and Tennessee.
• The Bulldogs are 2-7 against Florida under Richt and haven’t even been competitive since winning in 2007. Through 2006, all of the losses were at least in close games.
• Georgia’s contributions to the NFL Draft, particularly on defense, have dropped off since 2006.
• Unless it happens this year, the best trio of offensive skill players to play on the same team at Georgia (Stafford, Moreno, and Green) will leave Georgia without any of them playing for a conference title.
• Off-field incidents continue to plague and embarrass the program.

What’s underlying the concern is the changing stakes in the SEC and the fear that a window has closed. Georgia won three SEC East titles in Richt’s first five years, but they’ve struggled to return to the Dome since while three other teams have emerged to split the past four national titles. There’s an uneasiness that even if the program regained the talent level and attitude of Richt’s earlier years, would it be enough to compete with entrenched national powers at Florida and Alabama?

We noted in the wake of last year’s jarring loss at Tennessee that what might’ve once been a defensive problem or kick coverage problem had become a program problem. There were few areas working well, and just changing an assistant or two wasn’t going to be an automatic fix. Mark Richt had to get his program back.

David Hale does a good job of framing the key questions, so I’ll close out by responding to those directly:

Have all the offseason moves left you with as much confidence in Richt as you ever had? Or did two years of stubborn insistence on a largely unsuccessful approach shake your belief?

I’ve been impressed with nearly every offseason move.  The hirings all made sense.  Grantham has given the fans plenty of red meat. The program has become more aggressive and effective on the recruiting trail despite all of the negativity. I’m not particularly bothered by the off-field stuff (other than it leaving Georgia thin at QB).  My confidence in Richt has never been shaken to the point of needing such a shot in the arm, but there’s no mistaking that just the air of change has improved spirits among the fans.   We’ll see how long that lasts once the product gets on the field.

Clouding the question of Richt’s future is the sad reality that, even after nine seasons, many Georgia fans still don’t have a sense of Richt. They mistake his demeanor for meekness – we saw all of those who insisted that he didn’t have the stomach to make the tough decisions following last season. They question his desire to match the obsessive Saban and Meyer both on the recruiting trail and on the field. They cling to the notion, disproved time after time, that seniority rules over merit. They mistake a sincere culture of loyalty with one of complacency and unaccountability.

Sorting through that fog makes it tough sometimes to get down to actual problems. Hale devotes some time to what might be a certain stubbornness from Richt. I don’t buy that Richt was aloof or bull-headed about making changes following the 2008 season; he made it clear that his decision to fire three coaches was “made over the course of time” and not “not a one year knee-jerk reaction to this season.”  If you think that’s being too deliberative, fine, but it does imply that Richt was aware of and thinking about issues with the program long before the 2009 season took a nose-dive.  Richt himself admits some flaws and instances of the staff trying to outsmart themselves, and correcting that aspect of the culture is as important as shaking up the staff.

Will you stick by Richt if Georgia finishes 8-5 again this year, but does it with a more fundamentally sound D, a better approach to kickoffs and a duo at tailback that understands how to play the position?

I don’t outright reject the possibility of another 8-5 season. The defense will take some adjustment. We’ve seen that even Vanderbilt and Kentucky are ready to pounce on a sign of weakness.  You can bet that everyone on the schedule from Mississippi State to Tennessee to Georgia Tech sees the opportunity to take their shot at a program that might be doubting itself a little. You only have to look over at Foley Field to see how the wheels can come off a season when negative momentum starts building. In fact, as Hale notes, the job the team did pulling it together at the end of last season against two big rivals is one of the underrated stories from a year ago (and is what keeps us from adding Richt’s first losing record to the ledger).

At the same time, it would be devastating to go 7/8-5 against this schedule.  You’re trading Oklahoma State and LSU for lesser opponents.  The home schedule is extremely favorable.  Five losses against this schedule would include some very, very bad losses as well as losses to rivals that don’t sit well even in the best of years. Think about which five teams on this year’s schedule you’d accept losing to.  Improvement in relatively obscure areas like kickoff coverage won’t mean much if the offensive line doesn’t live up to billing or if Georgia’s highly-rated starting quarterback isn’t ready for prime time.

That said, I do think the moves that have been made will lead to the wins that will make this discussion seem ridiculous in hindsight. Allowing myself that kind of optimism for this season, that should be my last word on Richt’s future for a long time.

It hasn’t been the best of years for Bulldog sports, but several programs still have their championship aspirations alive.

Georgia softball won a number of new fans last year with their deep run in the Women’s College World Series, and they’ve had another strong season. They’ve been strong out of conference with sweeps of ACC and Big 12 champs Georgia Tech and Texas, but they only managed 4th place in an ultra-competitive SEC. To illustrate how ridiculously strong the SEC is, Georgia finished 4th in conference and was bounced in the first round of the SEC Tournament, but they received the #6 national seed heading into this year’s NCAA Tournament. That means that Georgia will host both an NCAA regional and, should they advance, a super-regional.

The softball regional begins this weekend – times and ticket information are available here. Georgia will host Radford, Elon, and FSU in their regional.

Men’s tennis has advanced to the Round of 16 in the NCAA Tournament and will host a huge match on Friday evening when Florida comes to town. The Gators, as the #6 seed, are favored over the eleventh-seeded Dawgs. Georgia had a nail-biting 4-3 win over FSU to get this far, and they’ll need a strong home crowd on Friday evening to take on a Florida team that has swept both of its opponents so far. The match will be at 6 p.m. – ticket information is available here.

Georgia will be hosting both the men’s and women’s tennis championships from May 20-31, and it’s a great event whether or not the Bulldogs are still in it. The women were eliminated before this championship round, but the men will try to play the spoiler on their home court. You’ll find live scoring, brackets, highlights, and ticket information here.

Women’s golfer Marta Silva Zamora plays on as an individual at the NCAA championships, but the team failed to qualify for the team championship round for only the second time since 1998. Men’s golf resumes play this weekend at the NCAA South Central Regional in Bryan, Texas. The top five teams from the regional will advance to the national championships. The Georgia men won the SEC championship back in mid-April but haven’t had a competition since.