The Red and Black

December 4th, 2007

UGA basketball gets wake-up call

Wow. That’s all I can say. Wow.

Without Mike Mercer and Takais Brown, this Georgia basketball team is going to have a very tough season. Winning by onle seven points against Division II Augusta State is proof of that.

The Bulldogs beat Augusta State 81-74 Monday.

There are going to be a lot of growing pains without its two best players this season and hopefully this game isn’t indicative of how well the Bulldogs will be able to compete in the SEC.

“Whenever you’re a top Division II team, it’s because you have a lot of Division I players,” coach Dennis Felton said. “I wouldn’t trade any of my guys for their guys, but I certainly would take some of their guys if I had a chance.”

Translation:

“Please wake me up, I must be dreaming, right?”

OK, that might be a little unfair to Felton but he has to be upset at the sequence of events in the last month. Felton is a great coach. I haven’t seen more unfortunate circumstances happen around a coach at one school. He’s got a young class that came in this year, and like I wrote above, he is without his two best players from last year - one that can dominate on the boards inside in Brown.

Sundiata Gaines led the Bulldogs with 24 points against Augusta State, and it is evident, with his heart, he will have to carry this team.

“At the last media time-out, I just told my guys in the huddle, ‘We can’t lose to Augusta State. This’ll hurt our resume when it comes down to March,’” Gaines said.

Georgia dodged a bullet, that’s for sure.

If this were an exhibition, that would be one thing. Ohio State lost to Findlay, Michigan State lost to Grand Valley State in exhibition games and with big wins people have already forgotten them.

Kentucky lost to Gardner-Webb and that was in the regular season. However, the argument (and I don’t buy it because Gardner-Webb will not make it to the Dance) is made that there is a lot more parity in Division I these days.

Augusta State is Division II. There would have been no excuses if the Bulldogs would have lost.

This team will go as far as Gaines can take them.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 at 2:54 pm and is filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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