Something that didn’t come out of the Athletic Board meeting this weekend – unless every news story passed over it in favor of the expansion of Sanford, there was no news on the longterm plans for the basketball program. What a good chance to capitalize on the success of Jim Harrick and show some foresight. But nothing except a ticket price increase. Not even a basic commitment to renovate Stegeman Coliseum. We know Harrick and all coaches meet privately with the athletic department to bring these kinds of concerns; let’s hope he had more success there than these reports from the public Athletic Board meetings.

The hot topic today is the proposed expansion of Sanford Stadium discussed by the Athletic Board this weekend. The issue of course is how to add capacity without disrupting Sanford’s open west end and the view from the bridge on Sanford Drive. Though, as Coach Dooley says, enclosing the west end “may happen at some point,” that kind of major project should only happen when a few questions are answered:

• Is the expansion driven by demand for renewable season tickets? It doesn’t sound like it. Part of Dooley’s justification for the current expansion is that “just from the visitors standpoint alone, there’s a lot of demand.” Building an expansion to satisfy single-game tickets and nonrenewable season tickets is also questionable. Though the added gate revenue will help, the brunt of the cost will likely be borne by the GEEF contribitors. Until the ranks of the GEEF members swell to the point where demand is edging out single-game ticket sales, pursuing a larger expansion will leave the funding for the project with uncertainty and will almost surely guarantee a less-than-capacity stadium for all but the biggest games where visitor and single-ticket demand makes up the difference.
• Where will all those people park? President Adams says today that the University is continuing to build parking decks to handle the job. While we’ve known for some time that the master plan includes ringing the campus with additional parking decks, that’s hardly an optimal solution for a tailgating-crazy fan base.
• What other projects will be required? A west expansion will almost surely put the capacity over 100,000. Access to the stadium and flow inside is already cramped. The ongoing work on the east access should help somewhat, but what other work to the concourses and approaches to the stadium will be required in order to handle an additional 15,000+ people?
• What of the Tate Center? Any serious expansion to the west stands will dwarf the Tate Student Center and will present some interesting engineering challenges in order to support the upper deck. Will the student center be integrated into the expansion?

And of course there is the question of the bridge. All of these factors add up to show us that this isn’t your run-of-the-mill adding of seats and will be a major commitment of resources in order to make it happen – it could be one of the larger capital projects taken on by the Athletic Association in its history.

Steak and lobster are on the line in Saturday’s G-Day game. Injuries have turned this into little more than an exhibition, but still there will be fans who use this as their measure for setting expectations for the 2002 season.

Way to go Terry College. A lot of the faces in the front of the classroom that I knew are still there and I know they are a big part of improving the national reputation of UGA’s b-school.

Wait til next year?

It’s conventional wisdom that next year’s hoops team will be preseason Top 15 and continue the improvement begun by Coach Harrick in 2001. There is no question that the talent level will be the highest in some time.

First we have to get the freshmen in. Turner and Johnson must make grades/scores and with the NCAA/academic problems we’ve had for three seasons now, I’m nervous until they get here.

I have heard great things about Wilkins coming around this year in practice, most people have. If so, that’s fantastic because he was not a difference-maker at NCSU. That team got better adding Josh Powell (one I wish we could have kept in GA). Damien must, must, must find his most productive role on the team before he becomes the catch-all answer to depth. We have heard the gushing that he can play four of the five positions – show us that he can master one first.

Arnold is supposed to be an instant impact guard. So was Dean. Coach is right that it’s unfair to judge Dean since he was added midseason, so one would expect a good bit of offseason improvement there as well.

Think about the weaknesses of this year’s team.

Inside depth. Good, Turner and Johnson if qualified will improve that situation if only through sheer numbers.

Outside shooting. That is not a forte of Wilkins unless he is a completely different player from a year ago. Ezra has become almost too much of a set shooter and more inconsistent as a result. He is one of the best post-up guards out there but we rarely get to see that element of his game anymore because of a lack of other options outside. Wright has come on somewhat, definitely better than a year ago. Jarvis becomes ordinary outside the arc. Dean we’ll see about. So it looks like the burden of a consistent outside shot for next year falls on either big improvements from Dean and Ezra or on the freshman shoulders of Arnold.

Point guard depth. How often did that rear its head down the stretch? If you are looking to Arnold for help there, fine, but I think in fairness to him only expect him to help out at either our outside shooting or at point guard. Getting both would be a bonus and I’m sure Arnold would not back down, but it’s an awful lot to ask of a freshmam in the SEC. Does Dean get more training here? Is it the right role for Wilkins who historically has looked to pass as a second option?

Should Turner and Johnson get in, we will finally have a good collection of bodies inside, and Georgia will have no shortage of wing players. Then guard play besides the known minutes at PG from Rashad is our biggest glaring weakness for next year. Where will points on the perimeter come from, and who will protect and distribute the ball off the bench? Those are significant questions that will determine how much the team improves.

Just adding players to a good mix of role players does not make the whole automatically better. The coaching change notwithstanding, adding Jumaine Jones to the 1997 team did not make them better. Roles became disrupted, it was the end of Michael Chadwick. As promising as Turner and Johnson seem to be, I like a lot of the things that Jonas Hayes brings to the table and hope his role can be preserved. That’s Harrick’s job next year – to make the whole better from more and better parts. It’s not a given.

SEC Bracketology. Just taking a stab at the SECT brackets using today’s standings – so much can and probably will change on Saturday that this is just an academic exercise, but here it is. The lack of separation is incredible – Alabama as #1 in the West is about the only seed not subject to change despite having played 15 of 16 games.

Thank God for Rashad.

For the second straight game, Rashad Wright hit THE shot when his team was facing a loss. He didn’t just hit the last shot, he hit the last two. Down 67-65, Wright drove into the lane and hit an off-balance shot to tie the game at 67. And then the three-pointer – it was everything you don’t want in a shot. It was a leaner, he wasn’t squared to the basket, it was in traffic – and he swished it.

Wright carried the team in the first half. The offense was very slow getting going, and it was only foul shots and a burst of points from Wright that kept the Dawgs in the game. When the Dawgs decided to become more active on the defensive end, the offense finally woke up. There were some great extra passes to find the open man, and the Dawgs had a 27-6 run to close the first half.

The offense in the second half was rough. Had Rashad’s prayer been off-center, we’d be focused squarely on a 23-point second half. Around the eight-minute timeout, the Dawgs led 62-57. Until Wright’s flurry of five points in the final minute, the Dawgs had managed only three points in the meantime.

In those points, we find the stories of this season: first, there are the problems of depth and inconsistency we knew about from the beginning. The quality of competition is excellent in the SEC this year, and teams from Auburn to LSU to Vandy have found ways to scare if not outright beat Georgia. The Dawgs are far from invincible. At the same time, we have seen the moments of individual and collective excellence that show the progression of this team from “gutsy” (used to patronizingly describe a 10-20 team in 2000 which played well but usually came up short) to “dangerous” (used last season when the Dawgs played any and all comers and won their share) to the verge of being called…..”champions”. Yes, if the Dawgs can follow through and beat Tennessee, they will at worst be co-champions of the SEC East.

Georgia basketball signee Wayne Arnold is used to winning championships. His Berkmar team has won consecutive state titles largely due to his contributions. That streak may or may not end this season, but Arnold has had to focus on mastering life off the court during his senior year. The death of his mother earlier in the season has far overshadowed basketball. School Sports has a nice look at Arnold’s frame of mind as his high school career comes to an end.

It’s hard to read the media sometimes. Harrick can get left off of a list for National Coach of the Year, but then some just and good recognition can follow right behind it. Jarvis Hayes has made Dick Vitale’s all-newcomer team. Vitale, to his credit, has been talking up Harrick and this Georgia team since early January.

ESPN.com: Finalists for Naismith coaches awards This is rich. Apparently there are 20 coaches out there who have done a better job than Jim Harrick this season. Apparently these other coaches have taken a preseason consensus last-place team and have their squads in good shape to win a division in the toughest conference in college basketball. Apparently all of those coaches also only returned four players with mostly reserve experience and turned them into the core of a Top 25 team.

For safe choices like Tubby Smith and Pete Gillen to make this list over guys who are producing better results with much less like Jim Harrick and Herb Sendek is a travesty. Gillen has only driven a top 10 team into the ground with a 6-6 ACC record.

Harrick doesn’t need other people letting him know how good of a coach he is – after all, he has already won the National Coach of the Year award in 1995. It would have been nice though to see him and the University get a little more attention for the job Harrick has done this season.

(ABH) Jacobs keeps taking strides in recovery
Loran Smith takes a walk with David Jacobs.

A great feature on Jarvis Hayes in the Augusta Chronicle.

Georgia’s basketball team got its first commitment among the current crop of HS juniors from PG Jordan Howell of Madison, AL. The timing will be great as Howell will come in as a freshman during Rashad Wright’s senior year – the perfect setup for a changing of the point guard.

The Banner-Herald has news on that and other basketball tidbits this morning including an update on Larry Turner.

A first, as far as I’m aware…. the father of Michael Turner posts to the Vent about his son’s commitment to UGA. You’d have to be braindead to miss the pride and emotion in this man’s words. As often as news on recruiting pours in and how commitments are chalked up like an order on Wall Street, it’s sometimes easy to miss the significance of these decisions on a family and foremost on the life course of the kid himself. There are a few times in life when your road can fork drastically depending on the choice you make, and college is one of them for a lot of people.

A huge weekend in Athens – basketball team gets past the Vols, Gymdogs roll over #1 UCLA, marquee recruits on campus…it was a fun scene to be around.

The football team got four commitments out of the weekend: TE Martrez Milner, DT Randall Swoopes, TE Leonard Pope, and TE Michael Turner. Don’t worry about the number of guys committing that are listed as TEs…some are intended to be developed for other positions.