ADVERTISEMENT

Georgia holds Alabama to 115

I’ve got a lot of thoughts about all of this. I’ll only dive into if anyone actually wants to hear it lol.
 
  • Like
Reactions: gojvc
Holy Cow or Cal, I remember when UK would score over 100 points. Seems like ancient history. I wonder how many times Calipari has had a team at UK score over 100 points. Can I count them on one hand?
 
Please do. Always like your posts.
In any ‘argument’ or line of thought, it’s important to have context. The context here is that we’re Georgia basketball and outside of a few very select years, we have never been anything in basketball.

Having said that, I thought at the time that the Crean hire was exactly what we needed. I was never under the impression he was an elite coach. Elite coaches don’t get fired. But I did hope that the expectations at IU may have been a little too high for what that program is now and that the season he was fired was in part due to an injury to his best player for a good part of that season (Anunoby). Crean has always been an energetic guy, a far cry from Mark Fox’s demeanor, so I felt like it would be a good thing as far as promoting a program at a football school.

It seemed to be working. When fans were allowed in the building in mass, we were mainly selling out Stegeman. Hadn’t seen that since Harrick. Crean’s offensive style of play was a breath of fresh air compared to the stall ball/slug it out style we had under Fox. Felt like we were actually watching modern basketball despite the high amount of turnovers. At the time, I just naively attributed that to our general lack of talent and time in the system. Defense was lacking, but again, I attributed that to playing an uptempo style and the other teams having more fast break opportunities off our misses. I decided I could live with it.

I think Crean’s first really big miss though was not being able to keep Nic Claxton for Crean’s second year. Nic was definitely an NBA prospect, but late first, early second AT BEST the year he came out. I felt had he come back with Ant, that probably ends up being a tournament team (had we ended up having a tournament).

Crean’s second miss was not being able to hold onto Rayshaun Hammonds for this season. We already major lacked front court length, but Hammonds stupidly decides to go pro despite not being projected by anyone to do anything more than MAYBE second round. He goes un-drafted. We sign two JUCO prospects nobody had heard of IN THE EARLY SIGNING PERIOD. The folks that truly follow hoops around our program were scratching their heads.

I’m starting to believe, and I’ve heard things to back this up from those that would know, that Crean is... oh, I’ll call it unpleasant to be around and hasn’t made a lot of friends in Athens. Probably why it has been hard to hold onto our better players and why he’s had so much roster turnover in his first few years. We expect it again after this year.

We had all heard about his oddities. We had all heard about his trouble recruiting the state of Indiana (he’s also showing a real inability to recruit Georgia), but I guess we were just hoping beyond hope, ya know? He’ll probably get a 4th year since we just hired a new AD and still has a relatively expensive buyout if we tried to make a move after only year 3, but I don’t see him making it past year 4 if he doesn’t somehow start showing marked signs of improvement. When I look at our roster, it reeks of bottom level SEC talent. Very few guys capable of shooting it at a nice clip. General lack of length and skill. Several guys shouldn’t even be playing P5 hoops. I think that’ll be Crean’s ultimate downfall.

I know, long winded, but sometimes it just feels good to vent.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Cawood86
In any ‘argument’ or line of thought, it’s important to have context. The context here is that we’re Georgia basketball and outside of a few very select years, we have never been anything in basketball.

Having said that, I thought at the time that the Crean hire was exactly what we needed. I was never under the impression he was an elite coach. Elite coaches don’t get fired. But I did hope that the expectations at IU may have been a little too high for what that program is now and that the season he was fired was in part due to an injury to his best player for a good part of that season (Anunoby). Crean has always been an energetic guy, a far cry from Mark Fox’s demeanor, so I felt like it would be a good thing as far as promoting a program at a football school.

It seemed to be working. When fans were allowed in the building in mass, we were mainly selling out Stegeman. Hadn’t seen that since Harrick. Crean’s offensive style of play was a breath of fresh air compared to the stall ball/slug it out style we had under Fox. Felt like we were actually watching modern basketball despite the high amount of turnovers. At the time, I just naively attributed that to our general lack of talent and time in the system. Defense was lacking, but again, I attributed that to playing an uptempo style and the other teams having more fast break opportunities off our misses. I decided I could live with it.

I think Crean’s first really big miss though was not being able to keep Nic Claxton for Crean’s second year. Nic was definitely an NBA prospect, but late first, early second AT BEST the year he came out. I felt had he come back with Ant, that probably ends up being a tournament team (had we ended up having a tournament).

Crean’s second miss was not being able to hold onto Rayshaun Hammonds for this season. We already major lacked front court length, but Hammonds stupidly decides to go pro despite not being projected by anyone to do anything more than MAYBE second round. He goes un-drafted. We sign two JUCO prospects nobody had heard of IN THE EARLY SIGNING PERIOD. The folks that truly follow hoops around our program were scratching their heads.

I’m starting to believe, and I’ve heard things to back this up from those that would know, that Crean is... oh, I’ll call it unpleasant to be around and hasn’t made a lot of friends in Athens. Probably why it has been hard to hold onto our better players and why he’s had so much roster turnover in his first few years. We expect it again after this year.

We had all heard about his oddities. We had all heard about his trouble recruiting the state of Indiana (he’s also showing a real inability to recruit Georgia), but I guess we were just hoping beyond hope, ya know? He’ll probably get a 4th year since we just hired a new AD and still has a relatively expensive buyout if we tried to make a move after only year 3, but I don’t see him making it past year 4 if he doesn’t somehow start showing marked signs of improvement. When I look at our roster, it reeks of bottom level SEC talent. Very few guys capable of shooting it at a nice clip. General lack of length and skill. Several guys shouldn’t even be playing P5 hoops. I think that’ll be Crean’s ultimate downfall.

I know, long winded, but sometimes it just feels good to vent.
I think Crean is an average coach who has milked a run at Marquette with Dwayne Wade for the rest of his career since then. Probably better than Fox, but not a program changing type coach imo.
I don't doubt that he has a grating personality. Very believable that that is the case with him.
UGA should, imo, be a dominant basketball school, but they just don't seem to care all that much about it. The state of Georgia is loaded with top talent and is a recruiting gold mine. If UGA ever decided to really get serious about basketball, and truly go after a good coach, they could a monster.
If I were them, I would go after a guy like Wes Miller or Travis Steele. Young up and comers that would have the fire and hunger and would be more than glad to be in a conference like the SEC. Just my 2 cents.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sawnee Cat
To get big time UGa needs to put some big money into the program and build a new state of the art arena — that rodeo barn they play in doesn’t work with top recruits
 
  • Like
Reactions: ArtLaibsGhost
To get big time UGa needs to put some big money into the program and build a new state of the art arena — that rodeo barn they play in doesn’t work with top recruits
When is the last time you’ve been to Stegeman? There have been a ton of renovations done to it over the past 5 years and it’s actually a solid, nice arena. I don’t think that’s why we’re unable to make strides.
 
ADVERTISEMENT

Latest posts

ADVERTISEMENT