Georgia hopes to put it all together in SEC tourney

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Mark Fox’s first season at the helm of Georgia’s basketball program has been all about small steps.

The work ethic in practice needed to improve, and it has. The visibility of the program needed to expand, and in turn, Stegeman Coliseum featured more filled seats than it has in years. The Bulldogs needed to prove they could be competitive, and in that respect, they exceeded most expectations. The standards were never set particularly high, but they were nevertheless crucial to reach.

But those were the goals of the regular season. Starting today, things are different.

Georgia opens its SEC tournament run tonight in Nashville against Arkansas (14-17, 7-9 SEC), and if the Bulldogs’ season is to continue, the small steps need to turn to huge leaps forward.

“The real advantage we get is that everyone is 0-0,” point guard Dustin Ware said. “It’s a brand new season from the second you step out on the floor, so that gives us new life to know we’re playing for something big.”

Two years ago the Bulldogs pulled off a remarkable run through the SEC tournament and secured a spot in the NCAA tournament, but center Albert Jackson is the only player remaining who saw significant minutes during that run. Instead, this year’s chances for a miracle are built upon the solid foundation set in place with all those small steps forward Georgia made throughout the season.

“We’ve been a feisty, resilient group, and we’ve had to be,” Fox said. “I think they recognized early that there might be a lot of nights when we’re out-talented, but we can overcome that if we play hard enough. In a tournament setting, if we can maintain that level of intensity and play mistake-free basketball, we’ve got just as good a chance as a lot of teams.”

Resiliency has been a strong suit for Georgia this season, but it hasn’t always led to wins.

The Bulldogs finished the regular season with a 13-16 record — just one more win than last year’s team had — but the competition was always tighter than the final results might indicate. Georgia lost 10 games by 10 points or fewer, including its regular-season finale against LSU — a game that saw the Bulldogs suffer through one of their worst shooting nights of the year.

In most cases, however, the close losses served as valuable lessons — a statement about how close Georgia was to victory rather than how far it was from the ultimate prize. But moral victories don’t mean anything in a single-elimination tournament, and forward Trey Thompkins, the team’s leading scorer and All-SEC performer, said it’s time for the Bulldogs to turn the lessons they’ve learned this year into real success in the conference tournament.

“We feel like we gave a couple games away. We feel like we could have fought a lot harder than we did in some games. We feel like we could have pulled out some other games we came up short in,” Thompkins said. “There were experiences we hadn’t gone through. Now that we’re going into the tournament, they’re experiences we have gotten. We feel like we’re prepared for whatever is thrown at us.”

Ware said this week’s practices have been high tempo, and the hangover from Saturday’s loss at LSU hasn’t hindered the team’s preparation. It has, however, helped illuminate the problems that have plagued Georgia all season and underscored the mentality the Bulldogs need to take with them into the tournament.

“It’s just consistency, being a consistent team, especially on the defensive end,” Ware said. “Coming down from the second we get on the plane to the second the ball goes up in the air, we need to be ready to go and then play hard.”

Whether the mind-set comes through against Arkansas — a team Georgia lost one of those close games to Feb. 3 — will be a marker of how much of an education this season has been for the Bulldogs.

The small lessons all had meaning, and tonight’s game will be the first part of the team’s final exam.

“Our focus has been on trying to improve and learn lessons from the previous week and use those to get better,” Fox said. “I think we’ll be a better team this week than last week. This team has played well on numerous occasions, but our battle has been being a consistent group. Hopefully we can find that this weekend.”