[break] Welcome to the Bulldawg Illustrated Hoops Reports. It’s like a Rorschach test. I mean you can have twenty people look at this UGA Hoops team and you’ll get 20 different answers as to what they are. After two maddening losses at home, the Dawgs then went on the road and won games in Tuscaloosa and Oxford. While the Bama game was ugly and neither team played particularly well, Ole Miss was a thing of beauty. The odds to make the tourney have now gone from 40% last Friday to 78% today per TeamRankings.com. We are actually one game ahead of the pace I predicted in November. I had us finishing the SEC season at 10-8 by winning two of their final three. If we can somehow find two more regular season wins, we’ll end up at 11-7 and anywhere from 3rd to 6th in the SEC standings. At this point two weeks ago, I talked about playing for position on the SEC tourney and considered the Big Dance a done deal. That was a bit premature based on the way these guys can lose to a bad team. So I’m not going to talk that way anymore. I’m going to keep things simple in this edition. But first, let’s talk about the best game the Dawgs played all year.
[break] [break] Wednesday night we headed to Ole Miss to play a really good basketball team. Luckily, someone told our Big Four this was a must win game to recapture legitimacy. Kenny Gaines led the arena with 22 points and hit big shot after big shot. Marcus Thornton played the best game of his career going for 18 points and 13 rebounds in just 24 minutes due to early foul trouble. He was also a solid 7-9 from the FT line. That was the first time he’s scored in double digits since January and was huge for the Dawgs. Nemi Djurisic and Charles Mann added 17 and 10 respectively to round out 67 of our 76 points. Honestly, this is how I was hoping we’d play all year. These four leading the way and everyone else chipping in. However, concussions, mono, and car wrecks have given us issues. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that we’re healthy now and this was a sign of things to come. The weird thing about the game is we shot 37% from the floor. That’s the fourth straight game we shot 38% or lower. We also had 14 turnovers which is also too many. But we still beat Ole Miss much more soundly than the score showed. All and all, it was a great win!
[break] [break] Up next, a really bad Missouri team. I’ve not seen them play this year. While they’re only 2-13 in the SEC this year, they are on a modest one game win streak coming off a 12 point dismantling of the lowly Gators. So while I had this inked this in as a win at the beginning of the year, I know it’s well possible that we could blow it. Right now we account for 38% of AU and USCe’s combined win total. So it’s very easy to imagine us accounting for 33% of Mizzu’s. While they stink, we still have to play the game. Ok, now time for the Rorschach test.
[break] [break] When a NCAA Tourney selection committee member looks at this team nationally, I would think the first thing they’d see right now is two back to back home losses to two bad teams. However, you could also say this is a team that could’ve won those two games as well as beat Arkansas and LSU. Don’t forget UGA is only 14 points away from being 13-2 in conference. One can also look at this team and say they weren’t deep to begin year and have just been ravaged by injuries. Yet, they’re still 5-3 on the road in the SEC which is amazing. Hopefully some that offsets the two poor home performances. But you could also say we turn the ball over way to much and don’t shoot well from the FT line. But, Coach Fox still finds a way to get it done. Again, one can see a lot of shapes when they look at this team.
[break] [break] As stated above, the Dawgs will be anywhere from third to sixth in the SEC. If we finish 11-7, we’re in the tournament unless there’s a PE class I don’t we don’t know something about. If we’re 10-8, we shouldn’t need a SEC Tourney win to get in. However, the bad losses have now piled up and they’ll be a number of people arguing against us because of that. So we’d then need at least one Tourney win for this to be a sure thing. So let’s talk worse case scenario. The good thing is if UGA doesn’t get two regular season wins, we’ll be sixth in the SEC most likely. Based on how things stand now, that means we’d get the winner of Miss St and Mizzu on Thursday night with the winner facing Ole Miss on Friday, a rematch of last year’s Friday night game that the Dawgs won 75-73 in a thriller. So that’s just one scenario showing where we are based on the Dawgs going 1-2 in their last three. Hopefully we’re not even worried about this in two weeks. I’m not going to discuss going 0-3 to close the year because I may be ill due to the fact it is possible. Put it on the record that I’m hoping for at least 2-1.
[break] [break] So 9-6 with three to go. Let’s find a way to somehow beat Missou on Saturday. Can’t look past them. They just derailed the Gators. Probably knocked UF out of the NIT at the way things stand currently. A win on Saturday may not punch our dance card, but we’re definitely sitting pretty. They’re have to be five or six major upsets in conference tournament games at that point to knock us out. However, that’s always possible as well. They only way to handle things in late February and March is take care of your own business. If you do that, good things will happen. Coach Fox has found a way to steal several road games while simultaneously running a MASH ward. He’ll have the guys focused on Satuday. If we make our layups and take care of the basketball, the rest should take care of itself. That win in Bama was ugly Saturday night, but it may have been just what the doctor ordered. We’re a lot better than we’ve played most of the SEC season. We got a little spark on the road and now we’re coming home. We need a big crowd and a loud arena. Then you look at the team and tell me what you see. I hope it’s a major celebration. Go Dawgs!