Georgia Basketball Coaching Search

Being someone that follows Georgia sports news way too closely and reads the blogs and message boards and occasionally writes a blog or two about it myself, I readily admit that it is very easy to get caught up in the 24 hour news cycle and when the slightest thing goes wrong jump on the doom and gloom bandwagon. And that bandwagon has currently been getting pretty full in the wake of Georgia getting burned (sort of) by Mike Anderson. Reports seem to indicate that an official deal was never offered, but there were clearly discussions and Anderson seems to have been our top candidate for the job, and he has seemingly turned down an extra $700,000 per year to remain at Missouri. And frankly I cant blame him since he has a far better chance of winning a national championship in the next 3 years or so at Missouri than he does at Georgia. 

The fact of the matter is that the Georgia program is in about as bad a shape as a program can be in without being on probation, and whomever comes in will probably be looking at a minimum of two years before they can get back to the NCAA Tournament. Of course given the talent pool in the state of Georgia the potential upside to the Georgia job is almost limitless. But as others have pointed out, the 14 million over 7 years that we were rumored to be ready to offer Anderson would have equalled what we have paid our basketball coaches over the past 30+ years combined. Basketball has always, and frankly will always, be secondary to football at the University of Georgia. But that does not mean that we cannot be successful in both sports. What is clear now is that after years of neglect the athletic department has started to make a major commitment to improving the basketball program at Georgia. The facilities have been upgraded and Damon Evans has made it clear that improving the basketball program is a priority. Of course the current search does not seem to be going well.

It is of course hard to judge a coaching search before it is over, and I caution everyone to take a moment to step back, take a breath and be a little more patient. Would I have liked to have seen us get Anderson, absolutely. Does it appear that Georgia despite hiring a search firm and having two months to put together a game plan for a top candidate things are not coming together as we would have liked them too. That being said I think the program has another week to get something together before it really starts to look bad. 

At least at this point Damon deserves the benefit of the doubt and for us to trust their process.