Mark Bradley

"So why aren't we better than this? You're asking ME? " (AJC photo by Hyosub Shin)

Hoops Hysterics

1. Georgia is tied for last in the SEC. Georgia Tech is dead last in the ACC. Which team is more disappointing? Georgia, and not just because the Bulldogs managed to lose to Tech in Athens. (The Jackets are 3-9 since.) A team in Year 3 under its coach, as Georgia is, should be much further along than a team in Year 1, as is the case with Tech. If the Bulldogs don’t win a big game or two the second half of the league season, the advances of last season will be canceled out.

2. How many NCAA tournament bids will the ACC command? How many for the SEC? The ACC could get stuck on four — North Carolina, Duke, Florida State and Virginia — if North Carolina State continues to slide and Miami doesn’t make a big push. The SEC has four almost-certains — Kentucky, Florida, Vanderbilt and Mississippi State — but Alabama lost four in a row and, its RPI of 33 notwithstanding, could be overtaken …

Continue reading Hoops insider: So which is the bigger dud – Tech or UGA? »

Peyton Manning, shown here not playing. (AP photo)

The Super Bowl dwarfs all else in North American sports, but the Super Bowl will be only the second-biggest story in this year’s host city. Of greater interest in Indianapolis is what’s happening with Peyton Manning, the only NFL player who’s a team unto himself.

Everybody knew Peyton Manning was a great player, but just how great was revealed only when, for the first time since he was drafted out of Tennessee in 1998, he wasn’t able to play. For 13 seasons and through 227 consecutive starts, Manning made the Colts a viable concern. Then he had offseason neck surgery and was so slow to heal that he missed not just a start but a season.

With Manning, the Colts had made the playoffs 11 times in 12 seasons. Without him, they did well to win two games. They were the NFL equivalent of the Cleveland Cavaliers after LeBron James took his talents elsewhere, and here we thought that in football no one man could mean half that much. For …

Continue reading Peyton Manning: A weird and ugly ending is at hand in Indy »

Which Tech will fly higher? (AJC photo by Johnny Crawford)

Georgia Tech hasn’t confirmed that it will move its game against Virginia Tech in Blacksburg to Labor Day evening, but an announcement should be forthcoming. (The holdup is because the Jackets are shuffling some other games.) So if Tech-Tech, which has become a midseason ACC marquee game, becomes a high-profile opener instead, who benefits?

Tech, I say. (Heh, heh.)

Virginia Tech benefits in that it gets the only other team to win the ACC Coastal since the league moved to divisional play at its place so early. As we know, Paul Johnson’s offense is unlike most others, and teams that have extra time to prepare tend to fare a bit better than those that don’t. (Johnson argues that this bit of conventional wisdom is overblown, but here we note that, of Georgia Tech’s five losses in 2011, three — against Virginia, Virginia Tech and Utah — came against opponents who had more than one week to ready themselves.) That said …

Continue reading Georgia Tech vs. Virginia Tech on Labor Day: Who benefits? »

Will Isaiah Crowell and Georgia leave South Carolina in the dust? (AJC photo by Brant Sanderlin)

For the first 10 years of the SEC East’s existence, Florida usually won. When it didn’t, Tennessee did. Then Mark Richt arrived at Georgia — and, not incidentally, Ron Zook took over in Gainesville — and the Bulldogs won the division three times in four seasons. Then the Gators, under new and better management, won three times in four years. And then, in 2010, something strange happened: The East was taken by none of the above.

South Carolina finally broke through, and two weeks into the 2011 season the Gamecocks were poised to consolidate that gain. They’d beaten Georgia in Athens. The Gamecocks had four of the more talented players — Marcus Lattimore, Alshon Jeffery, Melvin Ingram and Jadeveon Clowney — in the nation’s most talented league. But Carolina lost at home to Auburn and booted wayfaring quarterback Stephen Garcia from the squad for good and lost Lattimore to a knee …

Continue reading Who’ll grab hold of the SEC East – UGA or South Carolina? »

A stressful night for Coach Cal at the Stegasaurus? (AP photo)

(Yet again, let me note that this feature is part — but only a small part — of our weekly college basketball package, which runs every Tuesday in the print AJC. I offer my contribution for your digital perusal.)

Hoops Hysterics

1. Does Georgia have a prayer against No. 1 Kentucky on Tuesday? Sure. As good as the Wildcats can be, they trailed in the second halves of both SEC road games, and neither of those — at Auburn, at Tennessee — was against top-shelf competition. At 1-4 in league play, the Bulldogs aren’t top-shelf, either. But they’re at home, which means something.

2. If you had to pick one team against the field to win the national championship, would it be Kentucky? North Carolina? Missouri? Syracuse? None of the above. I’d pick the same team I picked — incorrectly — last March. I’d pick Ohio State because I think Jared Sullinger, whose numbers are almost the same as a sophomore as they were as a …

Continue reading Hoops insider: Does UGA have a shot versus No. 1 Wildcats? »

"Extra, extra! Read all about it! The team that beat the Falcons wins NFC!" (AP photo)

Three times in four seasons, the Falcons of Mike Smith and Matt Ryan have been eliminated by the eventual NFC champ. This isn’t, however, to suggest they keep being undone by an unlucky draw. In each case, the Falcons entered with the better regular-season record. When it happens once or even twice, we can shrug and say, “Them’s the breaks.” When it happens three times since 2008, we pluck at common threads. And we find …

• In each case, the Falcons held a lead. They’d rallied from a 14-3 deficit to lead 17-14 at the half in Phoenix on Jan. 3, 2009, but the Arizona Cardinals — who’d lost four of their final six regular-season games to finish 9-7 — scored the next 16 points. The game turned on the second play of the second half, when Darnell Dockett thwarted Ryan’s handoff to Michael Turner. Antrell Rolle grabbed the ball and returned it for a touchdown.

Against Green Bay in the Georgia …

Continue reading So why haven’t these Falcons gotten closer to a Super Bowl? »

Statues come in bronze. People are more complicated. (AP photo)

In death as in life, timing matters. Had Joe Paterno died Jan. 22, 2011, he’d have been hailed as the one coach who’d negotiated the murky waters of contemporary college football and left, both his sport and this world, with dignity shining. Every obituary would have included, no further down than the second paragraph, the line: “He did it the right way.”

But Joe Paterno died Jan. 22, 2012, and today every first paragraph is duty-bound to mention of his forced departure from Penn State 2 1/2 months before his death, a departure triggered not because some recruit was given a new car but because a longtime assistant coach was indicted for child sex abuse.

Joe Paterno took two national championships, won more games at the major-college level than any other football coach and never saw his program penalized by the NCAA. Had he died at age 84, as opposed to 85, we would have mourned his passing while celebrating a life …

Continue reading Joe Paterno is gone, but our struggle with his legacy endures »

Frank Wren likes what the guy he hired to replace Bobby Cox did in Year 1. (AP photo)

For your listening enjoyment, here’s a bit more from this week’s conversation with Braves general manager Frank Wren. (Other snippets of the Wren Zen can be found here.)

On the the epic collapse of 2011: “We have to learn from it and grow from it.”

On starting pitchers Tommy Hanson and Jair Jurrjens, whose injuries helped undo the 2011 season: “[Tommy] feels great. We feel very good about where he is. Jair was ready to pitch a week after the season was over. And Tim Hudson [who underwent offseason back surgery] should be ready or close to ready by the end of spring training. He says he feels better than he has in two or three years.”

On whether or not a major personnel move will be warranted: “I think we’ll have more answers at the end of spring training. If everyone bounces back, then we’ve got a good ballclub that doesn’t have a major need. I’d rather be in that position [than having to …

Continue reading More from Wren the GM: On Fredi, the bullpen and the Phillies »

BG of GT, shown in demanding mode. (AJC photo by Johnny Crawford)

If the record doesn’t indicate that Georgia Tech is under new management, two bits of data did. Entering Thursday’s game against Virginia, the Jackets ranked 21st among 338 Division I teams in field-goal percentage defense and 29th in rebounding margin. And that told us … what?

That Georgia Tech, without benefit of top-shelf talent, is paying attention to the grunt work — namely, defense and rebounding — and also that Brian Gregory, in his first season as coach, has gotten his players’ attention. He arrived insisting his teams would guard and rebound, and sure enough …

Here we note the difference from, say, last season. The 2010-2011 Jackets ranked 222nd nationally in field-goal percentage defense, 145th in rebounding margin. Which is why Tech needed a man like Gregory to right a program gone egregiously wrong.

Which isn’t, let’s emphasize, to say that Tech is fully righted.

The Jackets managed 17 points …

Continue reading For Georgia Tech, it was the worst night of a difficult season »

"And the award for most patient general manager goes to … " (AJC photo by Jason Getz)

On Aug. 24, 2011, the Atlanta Braves awoke having won 78 games. Only one major-league team (Philadelphia) had won more. They led the wild-card race by 9 1/2 games with 32 remaining, and the in-house question wasn’t, “Are we going to blow this?” Instead, it was, “Can we win it all?”

Thirty-five days later, the Braves lost Game No. 162 in 13 innings and failed to qualify for the playoffs. They finished with 89 victories, having dropped 21 of those final 32. The collapse was so comprehensive that it took Frank Wren, the general manager, a few weeks just to be able to view baseball again, and his wasn’t a solitary response. Speaking with fellow Braves employees, uniformed staffers among them, he found they couldn’t watch, either.

But then it changed. By the end, Wren was watching — watching as the St. Louis Cardinals, the team that chased down the Braves, celebrated a World Series title.

“We …

Continue reading Give Wren a hand for not overreacting to the Braves’ collapse »