Georgia Basketball Wins the SEC in Stunning Fashion, Draw Xavier In NCAA Tournament First Round

by Christopher McIntosh
03/17/2008

Yesterday afternoon around 5:30 EST, The University of Georgia won the SEC championship.

In basketball.

Our football team had an outside (deserved) shot at the national title game, finished the year ranked number 2, and will probably be either one or two in the all-important pre-season polls that set the pecking order of the season to come.

They did not win the SEC football crown.

Our basketball team came into the SEC tournament ranked DFL (dead [redacted] last) in the conference.

Going 4-12 in conference play will do that to you.

You know how people make the joke, we need a [insert natural disaster here] in order to win this? Well, Georgia did. And they did.

A tornado hits the Georgia Dome (last time I checked tor-na-ders were not city dwellers but apparently I'm mistaken) and makes the whole tournament go haywire.

Towit: UGA had to play in front of crowds that numbered in the low thousands because of an inability to figure out what to do with all the ticket holders for the much larger Georgia Dome.

The games were played at a coliseum that turns UGA fans' stomachs - Georgia Tech - on Cremins Court (I think dyeing the floor the color of the shock of white hair he sported year in and year out would have been better than the puke yellow they actually chose). So for UGA fans scoring at home, good bye modern facility, hello old, ugly facility run by your fiercest in-state rival, a facility known primarily by how much it resembles a very large woman's breast. Oh, and it honors Bobby Cremins. Sorry, forgot.

The Georgia Dome was so damaged by the winds that at no point during the tournament was it declared safe for usage. So they did what made obvious sense given the absolute deadline of having a winner by the selection show Sunday afternoon.

They made UGA play two games on the same day. And, of course, we won. Because when you get a chance to win half as many SEC games as you did all year in a mere twelve hours you take advantage of that opportunity.

Especially if you're the team that lost 11 of its last 13 games. To put this in perspective, this losing streak stretches all the way back beyond the Superbowl, pre-dates Super Tuesday and the South Carolina democratic primary, and includes a time when there were still about 38 designers left on Project Runway. Since January 26th, UGA had won precisely 2 games. Dos. Zwei. Nur zwei.

Our record was so bad the only time we showed up on the national news radar was in discussions about whether Coach Dennis Felton was going to get fired and whether it was fair considering we had 8 scholarship players and he'd led with an iron fist when it came to graduating players and disciplining off-court infractions. In other words, he did exactly what he'd been hired to do. Or at least, that's what his supporters would argue

Our record was so bad that the only way we could even make the NIT was to make it to the finals which would require us winning nearly as many SEC contests (3) in a weekend as we'd won all year (4). In other words, we were 13-16.

That's a bad record, I don't care how you slice it. We won four in a row the hard way - with the help of a freak natural disaster and a rules change that eliminated fan support which benefited bigger schools. Both these events continually take away the pressure at every turn. If you go 13-16 and flame out in the first round, eh, who cares, really? If you win a game and get to play UK, you're the underdog again, they're the ones with the basketball blueblood. And besides, even if you do "get lucky" and "win" you get to play again around six hours later, so would it really be a "win" to play against a team that didn't play a game already? Win that and far from being in vomiting prior to tipoff land, you're so tired and adrenalized and frankly, mentally fatigued, that it paradoxically works to your advantage. You see it happen in tennis all the time. Guy gets injured, tired, etc., and decides to just go back to basics, move the other guy around a little and see what opportunities come up. That's what happened with UGA. They call them basics for a reason.

And now they're in the tournament. The big dance. Quite literally, the last team in. Made it in with about 30 minutes left until the clock struck midnight and the brackets were handed down on stone tablets from the temple mount.

So what should we expect? Do you believe in miracles?

Uh... I think we've reached our miracle quotient already. I realize yesterday was encouraging, but I don't remember Dennis Felton calling a single, solitary timeout in the second half. Nearly cost us the game, too. If you've got a team playing their third game in two days for all the marbles, you'd think you'd make a few changes to how you use timeouts, like maybe to, I don't know, give your players a rest?!??! Apparently, Mr. 4-12 disagreed. And got lucky. And I know we were tired, but we were throwing the ball away at inappropriate times, missing free throws, and generally doing all the things that indicate "bet-against" in the NCAA tournament.

One thing we did do was hustle at critical points and hustle well. This is a good thing, but short of a tornado breaking out, it's going to be hard to dial up that same kind of motivation against Xavier in the first round.

We do have one thing in our favor. Xavier-Georgia isn't exactly going to be the hottest ticket in town.

Maybe looking up at a relatively empty stadium will make UGA feel right at home.

Technorati Tags

Uga March Madness College Basketball Bulldogs Sec Tournament Championship Kentucky Ncaa

Comments [post a comment]

more sports

more from christopher mcintosh