Coach Fox is on the Right Track

When Damon Evans hired Mark Fox last spring, most reactions were along the lines of "Huh, Who? What? We hired a search firm to find this guy?" Almost a year later, he has all UGA fans starting to wonder if he can do what Tubby did in the mid 90's. We have an opportunity to have a great basketball program to go along with all the other great programs in Athens. He won me over with all of his quotes upon taking the job last April 3rd - it all started with a workman-like, take-no-excuses attitude. From Day 1, he has talked about how the team had to win the fans back by going out and playing hard. We still have not heard one word out of him about needing a new arena. In fact, he has gone so far as to say that Stegeman already offers everything that we do need. And, when you get down to it, he's exactly right - It doesn't matter how state-of-the-art or pretty or fancy our place is - we just need to have a team being cheered by 10,000-plus fans going absolutely bonkers every night. And, it has been proven in the past - the crowds will fill Stegeman up if the product is on the court.

Don't forget that basketball is different than football too - all we need is to pluck 1 or 2 of the kids from the fertile recruiting grounds of Georgia and we will be a legit top 25 team as soon as next year. Considering that Fox sent 4 kids from Nevada (friggin Nevada, people) to the NBA in 5 years, I would bet he can convince a kid or 2 to take their chances playing for the state's flagship University.

Obviously, we aren't there yet - but we are on the right track to getting back to where Tubby had us going before he took his dream job in Lexington. The question now becomes this - "What will Damon Evans do to be sure we don't lose Coach Fox?" Given the $$$ that Evans was throwing around looking for a defensive coordinator, I think we are going to be able to hold on to Fox and finally see what will happen when a real coach stays in Athens for more than 2 years.