Georgia Bulldogs: Do You Hear the Pitter-Patter of Dawgs Paws?
By W. M. Lawson
The Men’s Basketball team for the Georgia Bulldogs has won 4 of their last 5 games, and are quietly making a case for post-season play.
Two weeks is a long time in the basketball season for the Georgia Bulldogs. Much can change. On Saturday, February 11, the University of Georgia Men’s Basketball team was coming off of another home loss to a “Tournament Team” in Florida, had lost 6 of their last seven games, and had Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, and Arkansas left on the schedule.
Things looked bleak. That Saturday, though, was the beginning of something that was necessary if UGA were to play in the post-season: A serious winning streak.
It hasn’t been easy. Another close, and last minute, home loss to Kentucky, along with the injury to the team’s most prolific player in Yante Maten, seemed to point to a quiet and disappointing end to the 2016-2017 Georgia basketball season.
Murmurs of “What to do with Coach Fox?” started percolating. The tssk-tssking, nay-saying, and chin rubbing was ubiquitous. But, then, Saturday, 11, 2017 happened. UGA went on the road and beat a good Tennessee team, probably dashing their own NCAA Tournament hopes in the process.
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After the aforementioned Kentucky loss, Georgia went on the road again and bested a good Alabama team, probably dashing their own NCAA Tournament hopes in the process (see a theme developing?). Coupled with home wins over pedestrian programs like Mississippi State and LSU, all of sudden, Georgia, and its “little guard that could,” J.J. Frazier, are quietly stringing together the kind of story that grabs a certain selection committee’s attention.
This is not to say that UGA should be, or is, in any qualified NCAA Tournament conversation at this juncture.
Much work is left to be done. A home game against a very young, but athletic, Auburn team, and a road trip to Fayetteville to play NCAA Tournament hopeful Arkansas, still awaits the Dawgs, and neither game will be easy. In fact, these Dawgs are probably underdogs from here on out.
Reality is, though, that Georgia, without it’s best player, has done the very thing that this writer, and others, said had to be done. There was no way around it. They had to win 6 of their last 7 to even sniff a chance to play in the “Big Dance”. They’ve won 4 of their last 5, and have two games left.
If these Dawgs can win the last two games on their regular season schedule, and then do some damage in the conference tournament, they will have won 7 (or 8) of their last 10 games, and against quality competition, and at the very time when folks are paying attention.
There is a very good chance that they can’t. But there is a chance that they could. And at this point in February, isn’t that what they play for? Isn’t that why we watch?
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That pitter-patter you hear is the improbable step of Dawg paws trying to sneak in the door to the big dance. The crazy thing is they just might do it.