Full Circle

The first Georgia basketball game I ever attended was Mark Fox's third game as Nevada's head coach. Nevada beat Georgia 58-47, but was clearly on a whole other level against one of the worst major conference men's basketball teams ever "assembled." Five years later, he's the guy set to lead Georgia out of the wilderness.

Great job by Damon Evans and the search firm. Dude went 123-43 at Nevada, recruited a first-round pick and Nick Fazekas, coached under Trent Johnson and has a way better resume than Anthony Grant despite being like five years younger. He also was born in Kansas, so he's got that Midwest feel.

It's late, and he's getting introduced tomorrow morning, so I hope to have more cogent thoughts on this later.

Update:

Mark Bradley is usually my boy, but he's way off base with this.

Bradley has it bad for Anthony Grant, saying he "was the obvious choice."

Then he says Fox "won in the WAC, which is a nice mid-tier league. But the Western Athletic Conference isn’t the SEC East, where he’ll be working against Billy Donovan (two NCAA titles) and John Calipari (two Final Fours), plus the showman Bruce Pearl and the erudite Kevin Stallings and the rising star Darrin Horn."

But the WAC is a nicer league than the Colonial, and Fox's resume is much more impressive than the "rising star's" was last year.

And apparently if you aren't from the South, you can't recruit in arguably the most fertile area in the country just to the west of Athens. I mean, Bruce Pearl is just having a terrible time with that.

Here's another good one: "The most accomplished Nevada player in Fox’s five seasons as head coach was Nick Fazekas, who’s playing with Lyon-Villeurbanne, which is based in France. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Nick Fazekas is no Derrick Favors."

Except Fazekas was awesome in college, and that's all Georgia cares about. Though having sure-fire lottery picks is definitely the only way to win big in the tournament.

Look, I obviously have no idea whether this guy will pan out, but just because the hiring is surprising doesn't mean it wasn't a good move. Look at the merits of the hire instead of assuming it's terrible because it's not a huge name. I think if you took Fox's resume and lined it up with a bunch of other candidates without knowing whose was whose, most people would be on board with this.