Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Tech Beats Georgia

At home, no less. Hard to admit it, but we're worse than I thought we would be. We can still improve, obviously. The problem is that we have so far to go.

We lost 68 to 56. Nobody shot particularly well, with the exception of Gerald Robinson. The most telling stat was the lack of production from our big men. Four points from our post players on 2 of 11 shooting. A total of 77 minutes between five players. Just 14 boards between them.

Daniel Miller was the difference in this game. Guy shot 5 of 5 from the floor. Had 10 points, 9 rebounds and 4 blocks. Would be nice to have him in a Georgia uniform. If Fox came in three years ago and as one of his first official acts sort of showed Miller the door, he surely regrets it now. It was a mistake then, in my opinion, because Miller was a 6' 11" guy with a big frame and good fundamentals. Coordinated. High academics and a good team player. All he needed was strength and conditioning and enough time to get used to the competition. Besides Miller's stature and upside potential, my opinion on the Miller scholarship was that it was an institutional integrity issue. In other words, UGA should have honored its commitment to Miller and his family, despite the fact that Coach Felton was let go.

Enough on that topic.

I don't think we game-planned well for tonight's contest. Have no idea why we didn't start the game with the press. They only had one legitimate point guard available. The one time that we did go to a press we got a turnover and a bucket.

I also disagree with Fox on his substitution patterns. He seems to pull guys just when they're getting in a rhythm. Guys are used to playing a lot of basketball. They have enough stamina. Let'em play until it's obvious they need a blow or until they're not shooting well any longer.

Another suggestion is that we need to get some other plays. We run the triangle exclusively. Instead of playing to drive the ball to the basket, we run players off of screens to shoot threes. We don't have good catch and shoot guys, though. There is no Ricky McPhee this year. We need to emphasize a couple of isolation plays so that Robinson and Caldwell-Pope can take their guys off the dribble.

Once again right at 50 percent of our shots were three-pointers. That is not a winning strategy. Certainly not when we're making only one of four from behind the arc. They attempted 12 three-pointers to our 23. They adjusted at half-time and once again we did not.

We're 4 and 5 on the year and I'm not sure we have the horses to be competitive in the SEC. Trying to stay upbeat but to lose by double figures at home to Tech is hard to swallow.

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