Georgia basketball coach Mark Fox was asked point blank during Monday’s SEC Teleconference – do all the rumors swirling around his future place any added pressure on his Bulldogs heading into this week’s SEC Tournament in St. Louis?
He certainly hopes not.
“Really, all we’re doing, in fairness to our players, is let’s just look at trying to win the next game,” Fox said. “This is about their season and anything more than that will be undo pressure for them and unfair pressure for them. So, we’re going to do our best to try and get Georgia a win on Wednesday and, if we can do that, we’ll try to do the same thing on Thursday. That’s really the only way we’re approaching it.”
The Bulldogs (16-14) take on Vanderbilt (12-19) Wednesday at 7 p.m. ET with the winner advancing to play Missouri in the tournament’s second round on Thursday.
It’s been a tough road for the Bulldogs, who dropped back-to-back difficult decisions to Texas A&M and Tennessee, fueling speculation that Fox’s nine-year tenure as Georgia’s head coach is about to come to an end.
Making matters worse, there is a little bit concern over the condition of Yante Maten, who took a hard blow to the jaw against Tennessee.
Although Fox believes he will play, his condition is just another item to keep your eye on.
“I’ve not yet seen him today but he obviously took a significant shot. I think he’ll be obviously ready to play on Wednesday,” Fox said. “That doesn’t mean he won't have a couple of days to recover which he probably needed.”
Fox believes his team will be ready to play.
“I think our group has been fairly resilient and able to regroup and saddle back up,” he said. “Our hope and expectation is they’ll do the same thing again.”
Fox added he’s not looking ahead to anything past Wednesday night’s game.
“The depth in the conference has been incredibly visible to everybody, at least from the coaches’ standpoint. There’s not a lot of easy games, anybody can beat anybody on any given night. From that standpoint I think the tournament is wide open,” he said. “But our stance is to just try and win the first one. We’re not talking about anything more than that. We’re just trying to win the next game and that’s really all we’ll talk about with our team.”
