Welcome to the Bulldog Illustrated Hoops Report. It’s like an old, rocking good tune because the Hoops Dawgs are Back in Black on Sunday versus an uncommon opponent in Marquette. In 2003, Georgia and Marquette had two of the best players in the country. Of course you know I mean Jarvis Hayes and Dwayne Wade. By the way, Wade was the Conference USA Player of the Year in 2003. If memory serves, Kyle Korver of Creighton finished second in the voting in case anyone asked you. And we all know Jarvis was All-SEC. However, it’s 2016 and that’s all that matters. But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s recap the last couple of weeks in case you aren’t up to speed.

When UGA played Kansas two weeks ago, we learned Yante Maten can play with anyone in the country. He had 30 points vs the #5 team in the country. The rest of the team? Not so much. JJ Frazier was corralled and scored two points. As a matter of fact, William Turtle Jackson was our second leading scorer with seven points. There’s no question we were outclassed. However, that’s ok. Kansas is a powerhouse. We’re a wannabe. Hopefully, we learned a lot and can get better. What’s even more important, hopefully we can learn to beat a team like that. You don’t have to be better than a team to beat them. You just need to be better that day. That’s how teams shock the world in March. The Dawgs have the talent to pull off some major upsets. However, they’ve got to learn how to do it.

Luckily, after Kansas, the Dawgs played Garner-Webb and Morehouse. The Dawgs won both games by double digits. Maten was steady in both games. JJ was a little erratic. We need him to get his game back as we need around 15 a game to stay competitive at the moment. There is some good news. Mike Edwards is stepping up and is trying to prove he’s a reliable contributor. Also, Jordan Harris and Tyree Crump both had a double-digit scoring night again Morehouse. These kids are fantastic ball players and will only get better. The sky is the limit for both.

So now Marquette comes to town. Both teams are 5-2 and have similar schedule results in the sense that they’ve lost when they were underdogs and won when they were favorites for the most part. So no real surprises so far. By the way, the Dawgs are a three-point favorite tomorrow in case you know a guy.

Anyway, I don’t know much more about Marquette and that’s fine because I know enough about the Dawgs. We have a stud in Maten. We need JJ to be on his game. And then we need a third guy to step up. Whether it’s Crump, Harris, Turtle, Edwards or someone else doesn’t matter. But we’ve got to have that third guy. We also must limit the turnovers. Keep the TO number under 10 and we should have a chance against anyone. Lastly, play defense for 40 minutes. We’re not as good offensively as I thought we’d be at this point. That’s strange because Maten is better than expected. To make up for that, we’ve got to make it difficult for teams to score in order to win games like this. That may be subject to change, but it’s the way it is right now.

So we’re Back in Black on Sunday. I’ve got one question. What’s Sweater Guy going to do? Does he stick with old faithful? Get a new one? Who knows. I do know he’ll be fired up and I hope you will be too. Remember the process on Sunday: brunch, beer, bloody, repeat. Then head to the Stegasaurus! See you there. Go Dawgs!!