The Bulldogs are 9-8 on the year and 0-3 in the SEC, with a home game against Mississippi State coming up on today. Judging by the team’s performance so far, those SEC championship rings from last season might as well be made of fool’s gold. Georgia’s improbable postseason run did nothing but put a band-aid on the gaping wound that is Bulldog basketball.
The University of Georgia has a proud tradition of athletic excellence. The Bulldogs attain almost yearly success in sports ranging from football and baseball to gymnastics and tennis. But for almost six years, the basketball team has been in a state of disarray.
If you want to point to the Jim Harrick scandal as a culprit for the state of Georgia hoops, I don’t want to hear it. While Georgia had a mess to clean up after Harrick made 
the school a national laughing stock, Baylor University has found basketball success after facing much harsher sanctions.
the school a national laughing stock, Baylor University has found basketball success after facing much harsher sanctions. In fact, the Bears overcame the tragic murder of one of their players by a teammate, alleged drug use and recruiting violations in 2003—the year Dennis Felton took over for Harrick at Georgia. Baylor is currently 14-3 and in the hunt for a Big-12 championship.
So if it’s not the ever-lingering stench of Harrick’s transgressions, what is that dark cloud looming over Stegeman Coliseum?
Unfortunately for Georgia basketball fans, it’s apathy. Damon Evans and the rest of the athletic department brass seem content with a coach whose record over five-and-a-half seasons is under .500. Can you imagine what would happen if Mark Richt had a losing record during one season? Felton has had just two winning seasons in half a decade.
Felton seems content with watching the state of Georgia, a fertile recruiting ground in the world of college basketball, get plundered by coaches from around the country. Stars like Kentucky’s Jodie Meeks and Wake Forest’s Farouq Al-Aminu just march out of the Peach State without so much as gracing Athens for a recruiting visit.
As if that wasn’t enough, Felton hasn’t even been able to hold on to the players that he actually gets to play for him. Before last season, Felton dismissed Takais Brown and Mike Mercer, his two leading scorers from the year before. During the season, Rashaad Singleton quit. At one point, the Bulldogs were down to six scholarship players.
This offseason, Felton dismissed Billy Humphrey, who would have been the team’s leading returning scorer. Another player, Jeremy Jacob, transferred. I’m not saying the players that Felton dismissed didn’t commit offenses deserving of dismissal. I’m saying he needs to stop recruiting knuckleheads.
The players that left to suit up for Felton this season undoubtedly play their hearts out, and for that they should be commended. But “hustle points” don’t usually win basketball games in the SEC.
It seems to me that for every step the Bulldogs take forward in Felton’s “rebuilding process,” they take two steps back. The result is an SEC opener at Stegeman Coliseum with legions of orange-clad Tennessee fans inhabiting the upper deck. An even larger percentage of Kentucky fans packed Stegeman for Sunday’s humiliating loss to the Wildcats.
Many fans are left believing that Georgia is not and never will be a basketball school. But I just don’t see a reason why that has to be true.
In recent years, the football team and baseball teams have finished second in the country. The gymnastics team has won four consecutive national titles. Numerous other teams on campus have won SEC and national championships.
What does the basketball team have? A fluke SEC tournament win after a tornado hit the Georgia Dome and transported us to college basketball’s version of Oz.
Well, click your heels together, because we’re back in Kansas now. On second of thought, Kansas actually wins titles. And it seems like unless Felton either rents the first U-Haul out of Athens or changes the way he does things significantly, that miraculous SEC tournament championship will be the last positive event in Georgia basketball for quite some time.
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