The refs were on Trey Thompkins like he slashed their tires in the parking lot before the game, and Travis Leslie couldn’t carry the team by himself, though he tried with 19 points and 17 rebounds. It was Georgia’s worst outing of conference play, and their first road win of the year continues to elude them. The only way this one could be worse is for the Kentucky coach to send the Auburn game film to the SEC office and get a Georgia player suspended for the next game.
The Dawgs will try to forget about this one when they host South Carolina on Saturday afternoon.
First, go read this item that the Georgia Sports Blog had last week about Travis Leslie. The development of Leslie, which – as PWD pointed out – has only picked up steam in conference play, is one of the real bright spots of this season. Here’s the key point:
Obviously, Leslie’s natural abilities are considerable, but it’s his ability to play within the system and grow his game that gives me considerable hope for Coach Fox’s ability to develop players.
We saw just what PWD was talking about in Saturday’s game against Vanderbilt. It’s one thing to see improvement in skills – Leslie is certainly a better shooter this year, and his range continues to increase. That’s significant by itself. But what’s really rewarding for a coach to see is when a player begins to understand enough about himself and the game to adjust his approach to the game on the fly.
Things weren’t going Leslie’s way in the first half on Saturday. He managed four points on a pair of longer jumpshots. Leslie’s bread and butter, the acrobatic plays around the basket, weren’t there. Vandy defended them well and was sure to put a body on Leslie when he tried to go to the basket. It was good strategy, actually. Leslie’s athleticism lets him play bigger than he is, but a physical style of play can get to a player like that. The strategy was effective: Leslie’s four points came on 2-5 shooting, and he was already responsible for three turnovers.
The contact around the basket could have and probably did frustrate Leslie. There weren’t going to be any Sportscenter-worthy highlights to come out of this game. To his credit, Leslie began to use the physical play of Vandy against them. Though he got few open shots again (just 2-of-3 from the floor in the second half), he kept going to the basket and, instead of losing control and turning the ball over, used the contact to draw fouls. Before long, he was into double-figures on free throws alone. Leslie ended up shooting 9-12 from the foul line in the second half after not going to the line once in the first period. He’d finish with a team-high 17 points and just one turnover in the second half not by putting on another show but by, as PWD put it, playing within the system and playing smart ball.
Leslie isn’t the only player to add to his game. McPhee’s baseline runner was a shock to see at first, but now you can more or less count on him going baseline at least once or twice a game and making nice use of the glass. Not bad for a spot-up shooter. These are the little things that have led to Georgia’s surprisingly effective offense. Coaching is taking root – Fox’s challenge to “be a basketball player who’s a great athlete as opposed to a great athlete who plays basketball” has been the driving force behind Leslie’s improvement.
Leslie and the rest of the Dawgs will try to take another step forward and earn their first road win of the year when they visit Auburn tonight (CSS, 9:00). They’ll also be trying for the program’s first consecutive conference wins since the tournament run in 2008.
PS…though this post is mostly about how Leslie has added to his repertoire, there’s no doubt that he remains the best dunker in the SEC. The SEC website has a poll up on that very topic – go vote early and often for “Top 10” Travis.
The story of quarterback Blake Barnes ended at Georgia in late 2007 when he decided to transfer back to Delta State in his home state of Mississippi in order to get on the field for his final season.
Barnes has resurfaced in Paris, playing football in a French league. He was one of the players featured in a CBS segment on Sunday (click for story and video). He joined the team just a week ago and is still getting adjusted. “You know, still kind of hard to believe I’m in France, living in Paris,” he told CBS. His first game went rather well: a 37-8 win.
The first stop as always is the official site at Georgiadogs.com. This year they’ll have the list of signings and have also added live chat and on-site video with Chuck Dowdle and Kelin Johnson with interviews throughout the day.
If it’s Signing Day, it must be time for points and counterpoints about the value of recruiting services and rankings. I can understand the doubts (but, really, how many times do we have to hear Thomas Davis’s name in these discussions?), and I can understand why many journalists don’t care to touch the subject. Following recruiting can be borderline obsessive, harassing, and at times straight up creepy. It used to be the province of subscription newsletters and 900 numbers. Now it’s big business online and into the mainstream. Did you think ten years ago that the ESPN crawler would be flashing a commitment by some 3-star cornerback who picked SMU over Central Florida and Maryland? Me neither.
Doc Saturday does the work – with actual math – and finds out that top-rated prospects are much more likely (per capita) to become All-Americans. Not all of them do – not even half of them or even most of them. That’s the basis of much of the criticism of recruiting rankings, but, as Brian Cook reminds us, those critics often < ahref="http://www.sportingnews.com/blog/the_sporting_blog/entry/view/53433/when_evaluating_recruiting_services,_dont_forget_to_divide">forget to divide.
With 120 FBS schools signing 20 or more prospects each year, that’s at least 2,400 guys entering Division I. The Rivals 100 or whatever list of top prospects you use makes up less than 5% of the incoming class nationwide. It’s reasonable that you’re going to have several individual success stories from among that 95%. 50 of the 93 All-Americans Dr. Saturday examines – the majority – were rated 3 stars or lower. That’s impressive until you do the math and see that those three-star or lower prospects make up the long tail which contains over 85% of incoming players.
The recruiting rankings might not be able to identify which specific prospects will make it big, but if they could they’d be several steps ahead of even the best coaches.
By now this is pretty well-worn ground, but I’ll just add the points I try to keep in mind during recruiting season:
Recruiting ratings aren’t perfect. Neither are the evaluations of coaches who are paid much more for their expertise.
Ratings can’t take into account intangibles like academics, an enjoyment of firearms, or brooding over that girl back home.
Since not every top prospect pans out, you’d rather have more than fewer and increase your odds.
Ranking players gets sketchier the greater the geographic area covered. High school football is just too big to see everyone out there.
Need matters as much as talent. You can fill your class with top-rated receivers, but not filling needs on the offensive line or in the secondary will lose you games.
Highlight videos are just that. You notice how they never show anyone fumbling or missing a tackle?
If you ever find yourself saying or agreeing with the statement “give me a bunch of 2-and-3 star guys who bleed [team colors] over some 5 star prima donnas,” don’t operate heavy machinery. Yes, of course we’d all like a fleet of 5-star guys who grew up reenacting in the backyard our team’s most famous highlight, but prospects choose schools for any number of reasons, and not all of them are warm and fuzzy. Give me the best talent every time.
When in doubt, look at the offers. Again, the enormity of high school football makes it possible for many guys to fall through the Tim Jennings-sized cracks and become the exceptions to the rule. But on the whole you’d rather be competing against your peers for a prospect and not the teams you schedule for Homecoming. There might be a reason why your Top 10 program is going after a guy also considering Akron and UMass, but it should be a good one.
It looks to be one of the more active signing days in recent years on Wednesday. At least eight top prospects still have to announce their intentions between now and Wednesday. Here’s a list of anticipated dates and times of those announcements culled from the various message boards and recruiting services. Making predictions is way out of my league, though the Bulldogs are legitimate finalists for all even if the Dawgs might not be the favorite. No one expects to get close to all of them, but the Dawgs should get a couple from this list.
WR Kadron Boone – Monday afternoon The latest: The 4-star receiver from Ocala, Fla. is a Texas Tech commitment, but he’s been visiting other schools since the coaching change in Lubbock and could choose either Georgia or LSU in addition to the Red Raiders when he announces on Monday.
DT Jeff Whitaker – Monday 2 p.m. The latest: Auburn is considered the favorite for Warner Robins’ Whitaker. Georgia and Miami have made late pushes with Georgia’s new defensive coordinator Todd Grantham making a favorable impression last week. Whitaker will choose from between Auburn, Georgia, and Miami.
LB Telvin Smith – Monday evening The latest: Smith, from Valdosta, committed to FSU over the summer, but he’s kept his recruitment open. Georgia got the last word with an official visit during the weekend of Jan. 22. If anyone can get Smith to turn from his FSU commitment, it would be Georgia.
DT Michael Thornton – Wednesday 9 AM The latest: Stone Mountain’s Thornton has been very deliberate with his recruitment, and his measured approach has made it tough to get a read on his favorite. Georgia, Kentucky and Penn State were the only schools to receive official visits from Thornton, but he maintains that the lack of an official visit doesn’t necessarily eliminate other schools like Auburn. Georgia figures to have as good of a shot as anyone.
WR Da’Rick Rogers – Wednesday 9:45 AM The latest: Few Signing Day announcements will get the attention given to this one in Calhoun. Rogers of course is one of the top receiving prospects in the nation this year, and his commitment to Georgia was considered quite solid up until a few weeks ago when Tennessee entered the picture. They’ve offered Rogers’ teammate and close personal friend Nash Nance who backed out of an earlier commitment to Vanderbilt in order to jump on the new offer from the Vols. It didn’t do much to calm the nerves of Georgia fans to see Nance and Rogers in Knoxville for the UT-Florida basketball game over the weekend. Still, Rogers has said nothing to indicate that he is de-committing from Georgia or even leaning towards Tennessee.
ATH Christian Green – Wednesday 3:30 PM The latest: Green, from Tampa, could develop on either side of the ball (receiver or defensive back) with his great physical talent. It’s between FSU and Georgia, and Green visited Tallahassee last week after receiving in-home visits from both schools.
WR Adrian Coxson – Wednesday 5 PM The latest: Baltimore’s Coxson was a Penn State commitment, but now it seems that he’s down to Florida and Georgia with Notre Dame an outside contender.
ATH Jordan Akins – Wednesday The latest: The home-state Bulldogs are the favorite for McDonough’s Akins, but he’ll also be considering several other schools including Maryland and Ole Miss.
All of the attention on Georgia’s defense lately has moved to the back burner the all-important competition to be the next starting quarterback, but I’m sure that will change soon. It will be a major storyline in spring, and we’ll see if this search for the next starter will follow the angst-filled 2006 model or the relatively calm 2009 example.
The odds-on favorite to win the job, at least in my opinion, is redshirt freshman Aaron Murray. There was even some talk well into the 2009 whether he would play, but a bout with tendinitis made the issue moot. To get a head start on his goal of starting at quarterback, Murray became one of a handful of signees each year who enrolls during the spring semester prior to his freshman season. He talks about that experience with the AJC and discusses the negatives – missing the end of his senior year of high school – along with the positives.
Today is Founder’s Day at the University of Georgia: 225 years ago today, the state legislature approved the charter that made the University of the Georgia America’s first state-chartered university. Anyone have 225 candles?
I’m glad to see fans like Kyle, for whom basketball is extraneous, taking an interest in this year’s squad. It’s hard not to like them, and part of making sure that Stegeman is full more often than not is capturing the interest of the casual fan. But is it really worth a post pointing out that – guess what – Georgia’s really not that great of a team? At this point in Mark Fox’s turnaround job, it’s a bit like chiding your kid not to get too pleased with herself for that refrigerator drawing – it’s just not Louvre material.
Picking apart Georgia’s record doesn’t really get to the point of what’s going on in Athens. I don’t think anyone – short of another miracle at the SEC Tournament – is expecting the team to go on a run that will have anyone thinking about the NCAA Tournament this year. It’s going to be tough enough just to remain at .500 overall and have a shot at any postseason. The margin of error for this team remains very thin, they play in a division with three ranked teams, and they’re going to lose more games.
The Dawgs were a unanimous pick to finish dead last in the SEC East this year. They still might. But most of the enthusiasm around the program centers not around its postseason prospects but around these observations: win or lose, they’re never boring, they continue to improve, and the Dawgs might just have hired the right guy. The development of Travis Leslie gives the Bulldogs two destination players – people come to watch what he and Thompkins will do. Interest is building in the program. For the time being, building and sustaining that fickle fan base matters far more than wins or losses.
Leslie flirted with a triple-double in Saturday’s win over Tennessee and set the tone with a beautiful steal and dunk early on. He finished the game with 19 points, 9 rebounds and 7 assists. Most encouraging were two jumpshots he hit that demonstrated mid-to-long range. If he develops as a jumpshooter, defenses will have to contend with his shot, the spot-up shooting of McPhee, and the inside-outside game of Thompkins. He won’t have to hit many to make a big difference.
Hassell’s performance on Sunday was impressive enough to earn top freshman honors for the week despite 1) being on the losing side, 2) coming off the bench and 3) playing only three minutes on Thursday. Hassell had an impressive game at Arkansas last weekend, but she and the rest of Georgia’s bench was used sparingly in their upset of Tennessee. Against Ole Miss Georgia starter Angel Robinson went down with an ankle injury in the first half, and Hassell had to go the rest of the way. She responded with a career-high 20 points, pulled down seven rebounds, and was perfect from the free throw line.
Jasmine James has already taken SEC Freshman of the Week honors four times this year, and ,along with Hassell’s emergence, is a strong sign for the future of the Lady Dogs program.
Meanwhile, let’s watch us some Travis Leslie – first with the steal and dunk, and then with the assist:
The former Georgia All-American is of course a starting offensive lineman for the Super Bowl-bound New Orleans Saints. Jon and his wife Allison also welcomed their first child – Mason – last week. Congratulations to the family!
Stinchcomb will be joining fellow Bulldogs Charles Grant (Saints) and Tim Jennings (Colts) in the big game. Grant won’t be in action though – a triceps injury has kept him out of the playoffs.
We had a good discussion the other day about whether Mark Richt and Todd Grantham should pursue a full-time special teams coach or go with another defensive coach to fill Georgia’s final coaching vacancy. According to members of the media who met with Grantham and new defensive backs coach Scott Lakatos this morning, Grantham expects to go after another linebackers coach. Grantham wasn’t specific whether he would coach inside or outside linebackers.
It’s common in a 3-4 defense to have two linebackers coaches – one for the inside linebackers and one for the outside. There’s a difference among the responsibilities of the linebackers even under Georgia’s old 4-3 system, but the difference between the ILBs and the OLBs in a 3-4 is even greater – the outside linebackers have to manage everything from hand-down pass rush on the defensive line to run support to pure pass coverage. The best outside linebackers (think Lawrence Taylor classically or DeMarcus Ware / James Harrison in the current NFL) are very much like the dominant weakside defensive ends in a typical 4-3. So if Georgia was going to split up the defensive front among two coaches in the old system, it makes sense that they’re going to coach the linebackers differently under Grantham’s system. Rodney Garner will remain to handle the entire defensive line now.
If you read Tuesday’s post, you know that this was the direction I favored. The transition that many of these players, especially defensive ends, will make from the 4-3 to the 3-4 will be a big part of whether the new defense is a success. It’s very reasonable to make sure that the transition has as much coaching attention as they can throw at it.
But of course the decision has a trade-off, and the implication is that Georgia won’t be adding a special teams coach. That tacitly puts the burden for improvement on special teams on Mark Richt. Georgia likely will again go with a committee approach among the staff for special teams coaching. It’s an approach that has worked at Georgia and other schools, but it’s also a risk that each element of special teams will be left up to someone with additional responsibilities elsewhere on the field. There was a lot to like about Georgia’s special teams last year, but the problem areas were glaring, and it will now be Richt’s responsibility to make sure that the right people are put into place to address those areas.
Georgia football fans can relate. The gridiron Dawgs could start any season 7-0, but the impending trip to Jacksonville always hangs over any aspirations for a championship season. The Lady Dogs started this season 16-0, and there were enough wins over ranked and quality teams to know that the strong start was no fluke. But fans knew that the grind of the SEC season lay ahead, and that included a visit from Tennessee – a team Georgia hadn’t defeated since 2004.
Georgia’s rapid turnaround from a disappointing 2008-2009 season was a much-needed shot in the arm, but it was clear that Georgia wouldn’t be “back” until they made a move to challenge the teams that have dominated the SEC over the past five years. That list of teams starts of course with Tennessee.
So Georgia’s 53-50 win over Tennessee Thursday night was an important statement by a team that many hope will be the start of a return to national prominence for the program. The game was a clinic of defense – no surprise for a Georgia team that has leaned heavily on its defense this year. Tennessee, with a tall and athletic backcourt, was able to extend a frustrating 2-3 zone and control the glass. Georgia did a strong job of frustrating Tennessee’s guards (only a combined 14 points for the starting UT backcourt) and creating turnovers.
An energetic game that saw a 30-30 halftime score settled into a slugfest as both teams turned up the defense in the second half. Neither team led by more tha four points. With five minutes left in the game, Tennessee led 41-37. Neither team had scored in almost four minutes. Through 15 minutes of second half play, Tennessee had scored only 11 points, and Georgia had managed just 7. Ashley Houts finally knocked down a three-pointer with just under five minutes remaining, and that shot seemed to break the logjam on both ends. The teams traded baskets and even the lead until Houts fed a great pass to Porsha Phillips who found herself in perfect position to give Georgia the lead for good inside of a minute to play.
With the game on the line, Georgia turned to its defense. They smothered Angie Bjorklund, Tennessee’s sharpshooting guard, on each of UT’s final two possessions. On the first possession, Jasmine James was able to force a steal, and Georgia pushed the margin to a more comfortable three points. That three point lead allowed Georgia to focus on its perimeter defense, and again Bjorklund was unable to get off a shot that might’ve tied the game.
It’s a great feeling to be back on top of the SEC. A program that was in dire straits last spring has new life, and they’re relevant again – as relevant as any team can be this year in the hulking shadow of UConn. National media are talking about them again. “This is Georgia’s tradition,” coach Andy Landers said. “This is why I hope these players chose to come here.”
The win over Tennessee is great by itself. but it’s more important for the possibilities it creates for the team. They’re at the top of the SEC standings at this point in the year for the first time in several seasons. They know that they can get knocked off that perch in a single game – a blowout loss at Vanderbilt last week reminded them how quickly things can turn if the defense relents just a little.
Ole Miss is next up for Georgia, and the Rebels are right there with Georgia and Tennessee as the only SEC teams with one conference loss. They’ve already scored an upset of LSU and beat a good Mississippi State team last night, and they feature Bianca Thomas – the SEC’s leading scorer who just hung 42 points on LSU.
The crowd was exceptional for the Tennessee game and was as loud as Stegeman has seen – men’s or women’s – in several years. Hopefully some of those people liked what they saw and decide to come back – Sunday’s game with Ole Miss is at 1:00.
Tennessee postscripts…
– With the win, Georgia already has as many victories this year (18) as they did all of last year.
– Jasmine James had another cold night from the floor after hitting an early shot, but she came up big again at the end. She hit a three-pointer in overtime to bail out the team against Kentucky, and she dropped in another huge three-pointer with 93 seconds left against Tennessee.
– For some reason, halftime was only 15 minutes instead of the usual 20.
– Georgia substituted sparingly. Andy Landers only used two players from the bench for a total of seven minutes.
Not much of course, but the Dawgs – a unanimous pick to finish last in the SEC East – do share one bit of ignominy with the traditional ACC powers. As of today, 2+ months into the season, neither Georgia nor Carolina nor Duke has won a true road game. Last night’s upset of Duke by N.C. State in Raleigh kept the 0-fer going.
Duke will be the first team with a chance of breaking up this unlikely trio when they visit Clemson this weekend.
Bulldog tennis great John Isner won his first career ATP title last week at the Heineken Open in Auckland, New Zealand. He’s followed that up with a strong start in the Australian Open. He’s won two matches, including winning in straight sets in the second round, and has advanced to the third round. He’s one win away from the Sweet 16 of the Australian Open, and it would be the second straight major in which he’s advanced to the fourth round (after last year’s memorable US Open run which featured an upset of Andy Roddick).
ESPN sat down with Isner after his first round win at the Aussie Open, and he was properly attired.
Quick Auburn recap
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