Florida at Georgia
WHEN: Saturday, Noon
WHERE: Stegeman Coliseum
RECORDS: Georgia (6-22, 11-4); Florida (17-11; 7-8)
TV/RADIO: ESPN2 (Tom Hart, Carolyn Peck); Georgia Bulldog Radio Network (Scott Howard, Chuck Dowdle, Adam Gillespie)
Whatever ultimately happens at it pertains to the Georgia basketball program, head coach Tom Crean is not changing his approach.
That includes doing whatever he can to keep his Bulldogs (6-22, 1-14) engaged and believing, even in a season in which a lone victory over Alabama stands as the team’s only conference win.
Georgia hosts Florida (17-11, 7-8) Saturday at noon in the next-to-last home game of the year.
“They’re a resilient group, and they work really hard,” Crean said Thursday. “We have our bouts of lack of confidence, and we have our bouts of lack of scoring or turnovers. We have some bouts in games that sometimes are hard for us to get out of.”
That part is certainly true.
“When it comes to practice, it comes to energy, it’s tremendous. I think what you want to go along with the energy is the belief and not lose belief in games no matter what that score is that they can come back and win it,” Crean said. “We’ve got some experiences where we’ve come back and done that all the way. We did that with Alabama, we trailed in that game. But to come all the way back against Auburn, to come all the way back against Florida.”
Players are human. When you lose as many games as the Bulldogs have dropped, it’s easy for self-pity to set in. That’s especially true when you’ve just got three regular-season games to play.
Combined with the recent off-court news and rumors of Crean’s future, there’s certainly a lot to occupy a player’s mind.
However, Crean’s attempting to keep the focus on the court the best he can.
“Where I get upset and I get disappointment is when we lose that belief that we can win a game, because their spirit gets zapped,” Crean said. “That’s when I try to snap them out of it the best that I can, because I always think we can win.
I see how hard they work every day in practice, and I see the commitment they have. It doesn’t mean every day is great. I promise if you saw them, people that look at them in practice don’t look at them, they don’t see the record when they see them practice. That’s what you want. You want a group of guys that believe in work, that give it everything they’ve got that day. I see that in this group. That’s why we’re continuing to move forward every step of the way.”
No comment on Mason
Crean was asked for the second time about the status of assistant coach Wade Mason, who UGASports has confirmed left the program last week.
“I really can’t (comment),” he said. “There’s nothing really that I can add to personnel matters.”
Crean did respond to a question asking how Mason’s absence has affected the rest of his staff and how they prepare.
“I think we’ve been pretty good in that area. The biggest thing is, it creates more preparation responsibilities for the staff right now, especially Steve McClain. But that would be the biggest area right now. We just make adjustments as we go,” Crean said. “The way the rules are now, this year when people would be out recruiting or something like that, you’d always be able to move up two different coaches, so really in that sense it’s not like it’s foreign when somebody new is on the floor. We just deal with it the best we can.”
