Jason Butt: Tough day for Georgia basketball team
Saturday marked a dismal day for Georgia basketball.
You could read it in head coach Mark Fox's body language after enduring an embarrassing 79-45 loss to No. 15 Texas A&M. You could hear it with each answer Georgia starters J.J. Frazier, Yante Maten and Kenny Gaines gave while meeting with reporters.
This is a team looking to establish itself as more than a flash in the pan following last season's NCAA tournament showing. The Bulldogs returned the key figures of their backcourt and brought back a rising sophomore in Maten. For the most part, all the returning parts have performed well to date.
But Georgia is 9-6 and is about to sink its teeth into the meat of the conference schedule. Following a road trip to Missouri on Wednesday, Georgia has games against Arkansas, LSU, South Carolina (twice), Auburn (twice), Kentucky, Florida, Vanderbilt and Mississippi to look forward to.
In two weeks, Georgia also has a road game against No. 22 Baylor in this year's Big 12/SEC Challenge.
To be quite honest, what Georgia has done -- at least when it comes to game-by-game consistency -- hasn't inspired enough confidence that it will soon hit its stride and reach its second consecutive NCAA tournament for the first time since the 2001 and 2002 seasons.
Given its resume, is Georgia an NCAA Tournament team at the moment? No.
Can it get there? Yes.
Just look at last season. Through 15 games, Georgia was 10-5, which is only one game better than the record the Bulldogs have posted thus far. Georgia had a bad loss against Georgia Tech to open the 2014-15 season. This year, there hasn't been a bad loss to date. Georgia would be on pace with last year if it defeated Mississippi, but those are the breaks of the game sometimes.
The team's loss Saturday was about as deflating as it could be. Here's a head coach in Fox, who, since 2009, has been tasked with turning around a basketball program void of a deep history to a respected and competitive program in the SEC. He also has had to do it despite the Georgia's fan base being overwhelmingly into football year-round. This is evidenced, once again, by the spattering in empty seats spotted inside Stegeman Coliseum on Saturday, even though the Bulldogs were facing the 15th-ranked team in the nation.
Basketball always will play second fiddle to football at Georgia, but the basketball team has enough resources to become a program that doesn't have to worry about its NCAA tournament standing in March. It shouldn't be at a point where it becomes a concern in January either.
But that's where the Bulldogs are at the moment. It's OK to worry, and it's OK to be concerned, especially if you're on the outside looking in. At the same time, Georgia has 14 games remaining, giving it plenty of opportunities -- like last season -- to get its act together and position itself for another tourney appearance.
For Georgia to do so, it can't afford to have any more games like it had against Texas A&M. Georgia won't win the rest of its games. But it can't get run off the court, especially at home. Players need to come ready and prepared for each challenge. If an opponent starts hot and establishes an early lead, Georgia needs to respond accordingly instead of folding. It's talented enough to do so.
If this involves Fox shaking things up to send a message to his team, it appears he'll do it. After all, building back-to-back NCAA tournament appearances for the first time in 14 years would be a huge step for this program.
"There's obviously changes in their play that need to be made," Fox said. "There's obviously lessons to learn when you get your tail whooped like this. I'm not going to panic because we got our brains beat in."
Contact Jason Butt at jbutt@macon.com
This story was originally published January 17, 2016 at 3:23 PM with the headline "Jason Butt: Tough day for Georgia basketball team ."