The latest Bulldog to join the roster of the injured is tailback Richard Samuel. Samuel had wrist surgery to repair ligament damage suffered during the Capital One Bowl. He will be in a cast for three months but should be fine by the start of preseason camp.
UGASports.com previously reported that DT Brandon Wood (shoulder/wrist) and OL Josh Davis (shoulder) will have surgery and should be unavailable for the spring.
Dawg fans have pounced on incoming freshman quarterback Zach
Mettenberger’s observation about the already-noticeable difference in this
year’s Bulldogs.
Last year I was around a lot, and the leadership wasn’t too great last year.
I’ve been here three weeks and I can already tell that the leadership and
the seniors, they want to win a championship again. They want an SEC championship.
They want a spot to play for the national title. So far, the leadership has
been outstanding in my opinion.
His comment is getting a lot of favorable play because it gives us another
plausible explanation (and scapegoat) for what went wrong last season and also
gives us hope for the coming season. The coaches remain the same and we lose
several key contributors, but maybe a little shift in leadership and attitude
will help to turn things around. It certainly
helped Florida (though a couple of new coaches didn’t hurt the Gators either).
You didn’t have to be an Elite 11 recruit to wonder about Georgia’s leadership
issues last season. We’ve been
overthat
ground several times. We’ve also heard
that things are a bit different this offseason, and the imperative is coming
as much from the coaches as it is the player leadership. It’s positive to hear
all of the right things coming from the players, but the leadership and attitude
has yet to be tested against a very difficult 2009 schedule.
But seriously – three weeks? It’s not that Mettenberger might be entirely
off-base, but is an incoming freshman who hasn’t even gone through a full practice yet really in the position and the place to
contrast team leadership? Mettenberger’s proximity to campus and
family ties to the athletic department did give him a chance to be around the
program much more often than a typical prospect. There’s still a difference
between being around the program and being in the program.
The story gets more interesting (and discouraging) with further details provided by UGASports.com. It’s no secret that Georgia coaches would prefer someone like Jackson at a friendly JUCO program like GMC, but apparently the quasi-military environment of Hargrave prep school turned Jackson off enough on the thought of another military school that he headed out to Texas.
Jackson maintains that he’ll still play for Georgia down the road if he is qualified and if the Bulldogs are still interested. Jackson, again, is someone who might have contributed as a true freshman in 2008, so it’s likely that Georgia will continue to recruit him if he stays on track. But as time and distance continue to increase between Jackson and Georgia, the odds of him ever showing up on campus decrease. Whatever negative experience he had in the structured environment at Hargrave, the path to major college football is still going to require a good bit of dedication, focus, and discipline on his part.
Long-time recruitniks will surely remember names like Cletidus Hunt, Andre and Peppi Zellner, and Corey Moon – all promising defensive linemen whose academic struggles kept them from ever enrolling at Georgia. The story doesn’t always end badly (Hunt and Peppi Zellner made it to the NFL), but Georgia’s history hasn’t been very good with prospects who don’t qualify out of prep school.
How this “100-0 win” story ends up with the winning coach getting canned for refusing to apologize for his team’s accomplishment. I doubt you’d find this outcome next fall after any lopsided Texas high school football games. The best lesson from all of this comes from the team that was held scoreless. They brushed it off and moved on – losing and losing big was nothing new to them. Too bad everyone else felt the need to manufacture outrage and go after the scalp of the guy put in the position of playing such a mismatched opponent.
What’s so wrong about Rep. Jack Kingston opposing a resolution honoring the national champion Florida Gators. Congrats to the Gators and all, but that doesn’t mean that Georgia fans have to like it. It’s a “no” vote, folks, and about as meaningful as any other rubber-stamp resolution that goes through the Congress. It’s not like significant (any) time or money was put into this thing.
For those who like to complain that the Congress should find something more important to do with their time, the representatives don’t seem to be the only people with their priorities out of whack.
Kingston spokesman Chris Crawford said the congressman got more phone calls on that vote than just about anything else he did that year — from Georgia fans congratulating him, and Florida fans chastising him.
Most areas of the 2008 Bulldog team were far from perfect, but I doubt I’d be alone in naming the pass rush as one of the top positions for improvement going into 2009. The defensive ends were hit by preseason injuries as hard as any group, and they struggled to make an impact during the season.
Prospects for upgrading the defensive end position took a big hit this morning when the recruiting services reported that Toby Jackson will not qualify out of Hargrave prep school and will instead enroll at Georgia Military College next season. Jackson was considered a likely contributor as a true freshman in 2008 before he failed to qualify out of high school, and Georgia coaches and fans had big hopes for him in 2009.
Georgia will continue to recruit Jackson, and he’ll have the option to be a JUCO transfer should he stay with it and complete enough hours at GMC. But that won’t help Georgia in 2009. The Dawgs have only one defensive end commitment in the current class – Montez Robinson. Robinson is a fine prospect, and it’s huge in hindsight that Georgia was able to get him away from Auburn after the coaching change over there. Robinson’s impact notwithstanding, Georgia is going to have to hope that improvement in the pass rush comes from a healthier group of relatively inexperienced returning players. As Anthony Dasher notes, a couple of position changes might not be out of the question.
It hasn’t been the best of seasons for Andy Landers and his team, and the reasons why are a subject for another day. Georgia got a badly-needed win and confidence boost against #18 Vanderbilt last night to move to 2-2 in the SEC and show that they still have a pulse. This was as good as quality wins get; Vanderbilt had already defeated Tennessee and LSU this season.
Georgia’s formula for success centered around post play. Vandy, already undersized, lost All-SEC candidate Christina Wirth for much of the game due to foul trouble. Georgia was able to attack inside with Angel Robinson and Portia Phillips from the opening tip, and Ashley Houts added enough punch from outside to challenge the Commodore defense. The Lady Dogs held a good-shooting Vandy team to under 40% from the floor and won both the rebounding and turnover stats.
It was far from a perfect effort. Free throw shooting was atrocious (19-35). Unnecessary turnovers continue to plague the team. The offense was stagnant for much of the second half, and production from the wing continues to be lacking. Those shortcomings which had contributed to losses earlier in the season proved not to be fatal on a night where Houts, Robinson, and Phillips all clicked. That trio is going to have to carry this team in many more games this year if Georgia stands a chance of finishing in the top half of the conference.
The Lady Dogs are in action again on Sunday at Alabama. Though Bama is 0-5 in the league, the road hasn’t been especially kind to Georgia this season. An 0-5 bottom-dweller should be easy pickings for most Georgia teams, but nothing has come easy this season.
As bad as the year has been for men’s hoops in the state, Thursday night was a bright spot for the women. Both Georgia and Georgia Tech notched significant upsets over ranked opponents.
As one Bulldog quarterback prepares to enter the NFL, another has decided that his professional football days are over. The Albany Herald is reporting that David Greene has decided to retire. Greene was offered an opportunity to try out for the New York Giants but declined. “In my own heart,” he said, “I knew it was time for me to kind of move on.”
Though his pro career never really got off the ground, Bulldog fans will remember him for these accomplishments:
At Georgia, Greene started all four years (2001-04) and is NCAA FBS’ winningest quarterback with 42 wins in 52 consecutive starts. His career statistics for the Bulldogs were school records of 11,528 passing yards and 72 touchdowns and was the SEC’s 2001 Offensive Rookie of the year and 2002 Offensive Player of the Year. He also made a conference record of 214 consecutive pass attempts without an interception.
But what really sets Greene apart among Bulldog greats can be summed up in two plays.
Greene plans to settle in Gwinnett County with his wife and young son and work in the insurance field.
The ABH reports that ESPN will be in town to televise the April 11th G-Day game. You can count on them focusing on the QB and RB position battles, but hopefully they’ll pick up on some of the more subtle story lines too.
Of course G-Day conflicts with the Masters again, so I’m going to guess that attendance shouldn’t be more than the usual 20,000 or so. We’ll see if the ESPN presence will encourage a little higher turnout or if fans stay at home and watch the broadcast. It will also be interesting to see if Coach Richt livens things up a little more with the national spotlight on the game. G-Day has become more or less a let’s-get-through-this vanilla scrimmage over the past couple of years.
A national broadcast of the spring game and the exposure that comes with it is nothing but a good thing for the program. Will Joe Cox have his own magic moment with Erin Andrews?
It’s been a tough basketball season, so allow us to bask in the meaningless glow of being a team that beat the team that knocked off #1 last night. Congrats, Hokies. That December 9th win is looking to be Georgia’s highlight of the season thus far.
Congratulations are in order for Andy Landers who became the second-fastest women’s college basketball coach to reach the 800 career win mark last night. The Lady Dogs rolled over Savannah State 74-28.
It can’t be easy for such an accomplished coach during what can kindly be called a transitional year for the program. The easy win last night was the first breather in a long time for a team that had lost three straight before last Sunday’s nailbiter of a conference win over South Carolina.
The Lady Dogs are back in action on Sunday at Florida (2 p.m., Fox Sports South). Landers is 42-7 all-time against Florida, but this weekend’s game will test that phenomenal record. For once, Florida is ranked and Georgia is not. A road win over a ranked SEC opponent would be a tremendous boost for a team that has quite honestly struggled against quality competition this year.
The NCAA has ruled that seventh graders are now considered prospects for the purposes of college basketball recruiting.
The organization voted Thursday to change the definition of a prospect from ninth grade to seventh grade — for men’s basketball only — to nip a trend in which some college coaches were working at private, elite camps and clinics for seventh- and eighth-graders. The NCAA couldn’t regulate those camps because those youngsters fell below the current cutoff.
What’s scary about the question “where does it stop” asked by the NCAA’s Joe D’Antonio isn’t the question itself. What’s scary is that he couldn’t give an answer. According to D’Antonio, the new age limit might be considered for other sports down the road, including football. Just to be safe, you might want to hold off on sending a baby gift to Candace Parker and Shelden Williams.
A quick look at how the NFL
draft and transfers will affect some teams in Georgia’s neighborhood next
season. This list is surely incomplete, and corrections / additions are welcome.
His decision leaves QB Matthew Stafford, CB Asher Allen, and RB Knowshon Moreno as the Georgia players declaring for early entry. The deadline for announcing has passed, and we’ll have a look soon at how some of our competition fared.
We struggle trying to make a connection between penalties, discipline, and
ultimate success on the field. Georgia’s high number of penalties in 2008 led
some to try to make the link to off-season disciplinary issues and create the
perception of a lack of control in the program. But do a lot of penalties automatically
hurt a team? You’d think so, but it’s not necessarily the case. Here’s where
this year’s final top 10 rank among the fewest
penalties per game:
Florida: 105
Southern Cal: 114
Texas: 77
Utah: 96
Oklahoma: 105
Alabama: 5
TCU: 119
Penn State: 3
Oregon: 99
Georgia: 116
60% of the top 10 were among the 20 most penalized teams in the nation including
TCU who were dead last. All but two teams (and the entire top 5) were in the
bottom half of the FBS.
That doesn’t mean though that those committing few penalties are bad teams.
Obviously Alabama and Penn State did well. For teams like Arizona, Iowa, Boston
College, and Vanderbilt, committing relatively few penalties was probably a
factor in their overachieving success last season.
There just seems to be little rhyme or reason in the impact penalties have
on a team, and I think that’s more to do with the fact that we measure raw penalties
and yardage rather than trying to understand the impact of individual penalties.
Take the BCS Championship. You have a meaningless celebration penalty on Tebow
after the game was in hand. Then you have a Duke Robinson hold on a first quarter
pass play that turned a long reception into a punt, ending an Oklahoma scoring
drive and starting Florida’s first scoring drive.
On the ledger the Tebow and Robinson penalties count the same. The Tebow penalty
was even more costly – 15 yards versus 10. The difference in their impact on
the game was far different. If you watched the game, you know that, but the
box score tells us that Florida was the more penalized team in the championship
game by more than a 2-to-1 margin (8-81 yards vs. 4-31 yards). The 30 or so
yards negated by Robinson’s penalty are gone from the record.
Many of Georgia’s 2008 penalties were inconsequential. Many more were not.
The facemask calls after third-down stops, the pass interference in the Florida
game – all had big impacts. Until we have some kind of a metric for the cost
of individual penalties, it’s hard to say with any authority that it’s bad to
be one of the more penalized teams even though everything you know about football
leads you to that assumption. Is there a better way?
Asher was one of the bright spots on the defense last year, and it’s arguable that replacing him will be a bigger challenge than replacing Stafford or Moreno. The heirs to the offensive stars might not be direct swappable replacements, but they were at least in line. I’m not so sure we can say the same for the cornerback position.
Will Georgia be able to field a team this spring?
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