DaugMan's Chronicles

South Carolina defeats Florida, 77 to 70, and makes it to its first Final Four.

Kentucky loses to North Carolina and does not advance.

Great news for Georgia.  Here's why:

1)  The SEC is a pretty good league.

We got five teams in, and three advanced to the Elite Eight.  If Georgia is competitive next year, we might get an invite, just because the SEC arguably over-achieved with results in March 2017.

2)  Kentucky Loses

I would have loved for there to be two SEC teams in the Final Four--  as long as one of them wasn't Kentucky.  Yeah, okay.  Call it sour grapes if you want.  At the same time, I really do have issues with their one and done strategy.  It's legal, but at some point, churning guys through your squad and encouraging just about all your freshmen, some of whom aren't quite ready, to declare for the NBA, is bad for the kids, and bad for college basketball.

3)  Hard-Nosed Defense Works

South Carolina got it done with defense.  Don't know whether they will win the championship, but they are two games away, and they have made it thus far by being who they are.

The Florida game was an excellent example.  Florida was hot in the first half, ripping three-pointers.  For the game, South Carolina shot 10 three-pointers and only made 2.  But they kept going to the hole, getting fouled and going to the line.

In the second half, the fool's gold corroded.  Believe I saw that Florida went 0 for 15 from three-point range.  Meanwhile, South Carolina marched again and again to the free throw line.  Florida shot 30 three-pointers, and the Gamecocks shot 30 free throws.  Frank Martin's strategy won.

4)  Recruit the best you can

The Gamecocks don't have a bunch of five-stars.  Sindarius Thornwell was a four-star recruit.  Chris Silva was a three-star.  Maik Kotsar, the guy from Estonia, was a three-star.  Same for Duane Notice.

They don't have a bunch of seven-footers, either.  But they recruit to their system, and have enough guys in that 6' 4" to 6' 10" range who are wired in to giving it their all on the court.

Now, Frank Martin churns players, too.  I don't know if he intentionally pushes guys off the team, but he had a ton of players leave the program after a year or two.  I think the truth is that not everyone thrives under Frank Martin's in-your-face coaching style, and guys sometimes would rather go elsewhere.

In any case, my point is that Frank Martin has not been getting top-ranked recruiting classes.  He gets enough talented guys so that by the time they are juniors and seniors, they are very competitive.


So, there is hope for Georgia.  Frank Martin is the same coach that UGA beat three times in a row last year.  We knocked them out of the NCAA Tournament, it is widely believed.
 
This year, we lost by two at their place, and by six at ours.

If Maten stays and we get production from Mike Edwards, Derrick Ogbeide, and Rayshaun Hammonds, that front-court rotation, supported by Wilridge and Claxton, should be stout enough to make the NCAA's.

On the perimeter, we will have Turtle Jackson, Tyree Crump, and Jordan Harris, likely supported by Juwan Parker, Pape Diatta, and Teshaun Hightower.

Hopefully, we will bring in another contributor, a guy like Avery Wilson to play minutes at point guard, or Isaiah Miller (or even Isaiah Banks) on the perimeter.

We may actually be close to having the kind of team that we all want, one that can make it to the NCAA's, and even, advance.

over the poor substitution patterns was this fact:

The Dawgs starters and key reserves had a pretty good outing against Oakland.  I was particularly pleased that Juwan Parker seems to have his springs back.  He shot 5 for 11 from the field, and 5 of 5 from the line, for 15 points, which was by far his best performance of the year.

J.J. had 18 points in the first half, if memory serves me.  He was on target until Fox pulled him.  When Oakland took the lead in the second half, he went iso-J.J., and started missing from long distance.  The point is that J.J. found his touch, at least for a half.

Yante Maten didn't score much, and fouled out without hitting double figures, but Dawgs fans already know what he can do.

Derek Ogbeide is on a bit of a roll.  Had a double-double for the game, 13 points on 6 of 8 shooting, and 12 rebounds.  Will be a bit harder as he is matched with bigger players during the conference portion of the season, but Ogbeide is a force in the paint.

Turtle Jackson did a good job at the point.  He looked fantastic, in fact, except for that air-ball three-pointer he shot when the Dawgs were trying to catch up late in the game.  Still think he needs to work on his mechanics and focus on locking his elbow in tight and going straight up with his shot.  Firing across his body will lead to bad misses to the left or the right.

In any case, Jackson had 10 points on 4 of 6 shooting.  He was 2 of 4 from behind the arc, and had zero turnovers.  That's great work for a back-up point guard.

Jordan Harris scored 9 points.  Still turns the ball over too much.  He needs to focus on scoring when he drives the ball.  He is still getting used to added muscle, so as the season goes on, he will get better and better.

Mike Edwards had 4 points and 6 boards.  Tyree Crump was only given one minute of PT.

Diatta, KPG, Kessler, and Wilridge did not play well.  Thirty minutes between them, and zero points.

Bottom line:  If J.J. follows the Oakland game with regained scoring ability, Yante has his normal outing, and Jordan, Derek, Juwan, Mike and Turtle keep giving solid contributions, Georgia may overcome the Fox crazy substitutions and still win its share of SEC games.    

 

Boy, did we have our chances.  Missed free throws, errant passes, bad shots.

Well, our guards won't always play that poorly.  By the way, clarification from my last post.  Jordan Harris did not dribble the ball off his foot.  Diatta gave him a bounce pass at his feet.

All the same, to go into their home state and knock off a top-five team, we really needed clutch play from our perimeter guys.  We didn't get it.  Our guards shot 6 for 31 from the field, 16 percent from behind the arc, and had 9 turnovers against 5 assists.

Another scoring option off the bench sure would have been great to have.

That's one of the reasons why I felt we should have brought in Tookie Brown, the point guard from the Athens area, in 2015.  Sure, he's a sub-six-footer, and we already had J.J. Frazier.  However, when Mississippi State fired Rick Ray and Tookie Brown re-opened his recruitment, I thought sure Fox was going to jump on him right away.  Brown led his team to the state championship, was a 3,000 point scorer, and was available again.  However, Brown's major suitors at the time were Tennessee and Georgia State.

Brown ended up at Georgia Southern, where he has shown that he can create and score the basketball.  Although he didn't have his best shooting day, this week he put up 26 points, 10 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals, with 0 turnovers against Dennis Smith and the rest of the vaunted N.C. State backcourt.

Likewise, for the 2016 class, I wanted us to go hard after Athens area player, Kamar Baldwin.  Happy with Crump, especially if getting him brought us Jordan Harris, too.  However, if we passed on Baldwin, shame on us.

Butler is very happy with Baldwin.  Besides being an elite defender, Baldwin is shooting 65 percent from the floor on the year, and 55 percent from three.  Against Vanderbilt, he was 5 of 7 from the floor, and 2 of 3 from behind the arc.  Production like that would have won us the game against Kansas.

Hope we can pick up another guard in this recruiting class.  In the meantime, let's go out and beat Gardner Webb.