Archive for the ‘Multiple sports’ Category

ST. SIMONS ISLAND – Georgia’s Athletic Board receives reports not just about the Bulldogs’ on-field and financial performances, but also about their academic performance.

Contained in the information provided to board members at this week’s meetings here was the spring semester grade point average of every UGA sports team.

The men’s and women’s teams with the highest GPAs? Swimming, in both cases.

The men’s and women’s teams with the lowest GPAs? Basketball, in both cases.

Overall, Georgia athletes had a 2.98 GPA for spring semester (2.82 for the men and 3.14 for the women). Football came in at 2.76.

Here’s the team-by-team breakdown for spring semester 2010, with teams listed in order of GPA:

MEN’S SPORTS

Sport                    # of students      Semester GPA

Swimming                     24                     3.21

Cross-country              15                      …

Continue reading Take a look at UGA athletes’ spring semester grades, team by team »

It won’t surprise anyone that Florida was the most successful sports program in the SEC during the 2009-10 school year, but it might surprise some that Georgia was the second most successful.

Florida is the runaway winner of the SEC All-Sports Trophy, while Georgia — despite  disappointing seasons in football and several other sports — is the runner-up, solidly ahead of third-place Tennessee.

The annual award is based on a points system tied to each school’s SEC finish in each sport, men’s and women’s. Schools get 12 points for a first-place finish, 11 for a second-place finish, etc. A school’s cumulative point total is divided by the number of teams it fields. The award is coordinated and presented by the New York Times Regional Media Group, which includes 14 newspapers in the Southeast.

Florida had a total of 163 points, or an average of 10.19 per team, for this school year . Georgia had 133 points, or 8.31 per team. Here are the full standings:

2009-2010 SEC ALL-SPORTS …

Continue reading UGA No. 2 in SEC all-sports standings. Surprised? »

ATHENS –- By Georgia’s lofty tennis standards, this was something of an off season –  a 17-7 regular-season record and a No. 11 seed in the NCAA tournament. But look at the Bulldogs now, right back where they so often are at this time of year.

Georgia dominated Oklahoma 4-0 Sunday in an NCAA men’s quarterfinal match at the Dan Magill Tennis Complex to reach the national semifinals for the fourth time in the past five seasons.

“I’d been telling these guys — and they were probably a little bit tired of me saying it — that we hadn’t played our best yet,” Georgia coach Manuel Diaz said.  “I knew our best tennis was still ahead of us. And they’re proving me right.”

The Bulldogs (21-7) will play Tennessee (30-1) at 5 p.m. Monday for a berth in Tuesday’s national championship match. Tennessee defeated Baylor 4-0 in a Sunday quarterfinal.

In Monday’s other men’s semifinal, No. 1 seed Virginia (30-1) will play defending champion USC (23-3) at 4 p.m. Virginia defeated UCLA 4-2 and USC …

Continue reading Georgia dominates Oklahoma to reach tennis Final Four (UPDATED) »

For the third year in a row, Georgia’s softball team has reached the NCAA Super Regionals.

The Bulldogs (46-11) advanced by beating Radford 8-1 on Sunday afternoon in the championship game of the NCAA’s Athens regional at the UGA Softball Stadium.

Georgia will play California — winner of the Columbus (Ohio) regional –  in a best-of-three Super Regional series in Athens next weekend.  Game 1 will be played Friday at 2 p.m., Game 2 Saturday at noon and Game 3, if necessary, Saturday at 2:30 p.m.

California beat Ohio State 7-0 on Sunday to win the Columbus regional.

Sixteen teams advanced to the Super Regionals, with series being played at eight sites around the country. The eight winners will move on to the Women’s College World Series in Oklahoma City.

Georgia is the No. 6 national seed and California the No. 11 seed.

Georgia swept through this past weekend’s regional play, beating Elton 10-4 on Friday, Florida State 5-2 on Saturday and Radford 8-1 on Sunday. Similarly, …

Continue reading Georgia wins NCAA softball regional, will host Super Regional (UPDATED) »

Lots of news came in from Athens late Friday night –- all of it good if you’re a Georgia fan:

——————-

A few minutes before midnight, Georgia’s men’s tennis team upset rival Florida 4-2 in the NCAA tournament at the Dan Magill Tennis Complex.

The rain-delayed victory avenged two Georgia losses to the Gators earlier this season and put the Bulldogs in the NCAA quarterfinals. Florida was the tournament’s No. 6 seed and Georgia the No. 11 seed.

Georgia’s victory marked the second time in four years the Dogs have knocked the Gators out of the NCAA men’s tennis tournament. Georgia is now 51-18 all-time against Florida in men’s tennis.

The Dogs got off to a good start in Friday’s match by winning the doubles point, but had to rally in singles after the Gators took the first set on four of the six courts.  The clinching victory came when Georgia’s 22nd-ranked Javier Garrapiz beat Florida’s 7th-ranked Alex Lacroix 6-4, 7-6(5) at No. 1 singles.

Georgia also  got victories from Nate …

Continue reading Late-night news from Athens is all good for Dogs, including upset of Gators »

Cleaning out the notebook:

• With all the turmoil at Georgia’s quarterback position of late, Mark Richt has been fielding a lot of questions on the speaking circuit about incoming freshman Hutson Mason. “I’m sure he’s very excited about what’s going on,” Richt told a group last week. “He’s been moving up the depth chart rapidly because of what happened with Mr. Mettenberger and Logan Gray probably spending most of his time at wide receiver now.”

Asked the followup question of whether he sees Mason playing or redshirting this year, Richt said:  “I don’t know.  I want to see what he can do. If we don’t think he’s ready, I’d be more apt to have Logan continue to be our No. 2 and just go from there. I don’t want to say because I have no idea how he’s going to perform until he shows up.”

• Another hot topic, of course, is conference expansion. Richt is on record against it for the SEC, mainly because “I think if you get into what would be a super-conference, you’re just not going …

Continue reading Hutson Mason ‘moving up the depth chart rapidly,’ and other notes »

Georgia lost three baseball games to Florida over the weekend, which got me to wondering: What is the Bulldogs’ record against the Gators in all sports in head-to-head competition this school year?

It’s not good, as you know. It’s awful, as a matter of fact. It’s 3-14, to be precise.

Here’s Georgia’s record by sport against the Gators in 2009-10 (includes only dual competitions):

• Football: 0-1

• Men’s basketball: 1-1

• Women’s basketball: 1-1

• Baseball: 0-3

• Gymnastics: 0-1

• Soccer: 0-1

• Women’s swimming and diving: 1-0

• Men’s swimming and diving: 0-1

• Men’s tennis: 0-2

• Women’s tennis: 0-1

• Volleyball: 0-2.

• Total: 3-14

(Note: The two scheduled Georgia-Florida softball games were rained out.)

In multi-team competitions (not included above), there were at least a couple of notable occasions when Georgia finished ahead of Florida this school year: Georgia won the SEC men’s golf tournament, where Florida tied for second place, and the SEC women’s swimming and diving …

Continue reading Dogs are 3-14 vs. Gators this school year »

More than seven months after the decision was made to keep the Georgia-Florida football game in Jacksonville through 2016, a new contract still isn’t signed.

But it will get done, probably this summer, according to Georgia executive associate athletics director Frank Crumley.

“We’re moving along very nicely,” he said. “We’ve got every hurdle worked out and are coming up with a [contract] draft to distribute to all parties.”

He said the delay was caused by making the three-way contract more comprehensive than in the past and dealing with “some very small issues … in the scheme of things.”

There’s been no big hurry since this year’s Georgia-Florida game is covered by the previous contract. The major components of the new deal -– length (six years) and economics –- are unchanged from what was reported last fall, Crumley said. As previously reported, Jacksonville will pay for the Georgia team to fly directly from Athens, and back.

———

This is the time of year that the NCAA …

Continue reading Georgia-Florida contract still in works »

Seventy-one Georgia athletes will be among the approximately 4,000 undergraduate students receiving their bachelor’s degrees at UGA’s spring commencement ceremonies Saturday evening in Sanford Stadium.

Among them: nine-time NCAA individual champion gymnast Courtney Kupets; women’s basketball star Ashley Houts; and football player Geno Atkins, a recent Cincinnati Bengals draft pick.

Twelve football players will get their degrees Saturday, including two who will play one more season for the Bulldogs in the fall while taking graduate courses: fullback Shaun Chapas and wide receiver Kris Durham.

Here, from UGA’s sports communications department, is the full list of athletes graduating Saturday (with their majors and hometowns):

Football: Geno Atkins, Housing, Pembroke Pines, Fla.; Marquise Brown, Finance, Lanham, Md.; Shaun Chapas, Marketing, St. Augustine, Fla.; Kris Durham, Middle School Education, Calhoun; Justin Fields, Risk Management & Insurance, Savannah; Devin Hollander, …

Continue reading Commencement roster: UGA athletes who will graduate Saturday »

For the past year, a University of Georgia committee has been conducting a “self-study” of the school’s athletics program — a review required every 10 years by the NCAA from Division I schools. The resulting report is 148 pages long, and you can read it all here if you like.

Here are a few things that jumped out at me:

• The report compares the standardized-test scores of UGA student-athletes to the general student population.

All male students who entered UGA in 2007 -– the most recent year covered by the report -– had an average standardized-test (SAT and converted ACT) score of 1250. By comparison, male student-athletes who initially enrolled in 2007 had an average score of 998. Football players had an average of 916 and men’s basketball players 906.

All female students who entered UGA in 2007 had an average standardized-test score of 1201, compared to 1058 for female student-athletes. Women’s basketball players averaged 955.

The report also provides comparisons of …

Continue reading What do Georgia football players make on the SAT? New study reveals answer »

Thought you might like to know . . .

Manuel Diaz, Georgia’s esteemed men’s tennis coach, got his 500th career coaching victory Sunday when the Bulldogs beat Vanderbilt 4-3 in Athens.

“It means I’m getting old, that’s about it,” Diaz was quoted in a UGA release.

UGA pointed out that Diaz became the sixth Georgia coach in any sport to reach 500 career victories. Can you name all six? Answer is a few paragraphs below.

In his 22nd season as the Bulldogs’ head coach, Diaz has a career record of 500-102 with four NCAA team championships, 13 NCAA “Final Four” appearances, 12 SEC regular-season championships and seven SEC tournament titles. His team is 12-2 this season (4-0 SEC).

Sunday’s victory, by the way, extended Georgia’s home-court winning streak in men’s tennis to 71 matches, dating to 2005. The streak –- five wins short of the school-record 76-match home winning streak that ended in 1972 –- will get a big test Friday, when defending national champion Southern Cal visits the …

Continue reading Sixth UGA coach reaches 500 career wins. Can you name the six? »

It’s been an interesting month in Bulldog Nation, I’d say.  So before moving on to February, let’s revisit January.

THE MONTH’S TOP FIVE UGA SPORTS STORIES:

1. The defensive coordinator search: For some reason –- maybe the Internet/information age in which we live, or maybe the widespread exasperation with two years of declining defense -– Mark Richt’s search for a defensive coordinator drew more attention than any assistant-coach hiring I can recall.  Kirby Smart’s rejection of the job roiled Bulldog Nation, which was calmed four days later by the hiring of Todd Grantham.

2. Big basketball upsets: Entering the month, the Bulldogs had not beaten a ranked opponent in men’s basketball in almost three years. But they beat two this month, first Georgia Tech and then Tennessee. The second came in front of a   sellout crowd, of all things, in Stegeman Coliseum.

3. Lady Dogs over Lady Vols: Georgia’s women’s basketball team upset No. 3-ranked Tennessee in Stegeman Coliseum, the Lady …

Continue reading A big month in Bulldog Nation »

– Add to the long list of Super Bowl XLIV connections to Georgia: Former UGA player Travis Jones, roundly rumored recently as a candidate for a spot on the Bulldogs’  coaching staff, is New Orleans’ assistant defensive line coach. Jones is in his second season with the Saints  after previously coaching under Nick Saban with LSU and the Miami Dolphins.  Jones’  coaching career began in 1997 as a graduate assistant at UGA, where he played on the defensive line (1990-94).  A lot of Bulldogs fans would love to see him fill the UGA staff’s remaining opening for a linebackers coach (he worked with the outside linebackers in Miami for a couple of years, by the way.)

– Happy to hear that ex-Dog Sundiata Gaines, after working under a couple of 10-day contracts, has been signed for the rest of the season by the Utah Jazz.

– His nickname preceded him to Athens: “The Hit Man.”  Safety Jakar Hamilton enrolled at UGA this month from Georgia Military College and joined off-season workouts …

Continue reading Emptying the UGA notebook, from Travis Jones to ‘The Hit Man’ to Travis Leslie »

(UPDATED 11:55 A.M. and 6:30 P.M.)

A few quick notes:

– So it has been a pretty good five weeks or so for UGA sports fans -– wins over Georgia Tech in football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball, and a bowl blowout of  Texas A&M.

– The enduring sounds of rivalry: the “Just Like Football” chant late in Georgia’s basketball victory over Tech last night and the “I Run This State” play-on-words from the football victory.

– OK, here’s the latest word from Kirby Smart.  Reporting from Newport Beach, Calif., where Alabama is preparing for tomorrow night’s BCS national-title game, ESPN’s Chris Low says Smart didn’t completely shut the door on the UGA defensive-coordinator job Tuesday. Here’s what Smart, Alabama’s DC and a former Georgia player, said at a BCS media session:

“I haven’t really talked to Mark [Richt]  much. To say I said ‘no’ to Mark … he’s not offered me anything. So that’s not really accurate. To be honest, with this game coming up, I haven’t even thought about …

Continue reading News and notes, with Smart and Grantham updates »

UGA President Michael Adams resigned this week as chairman of the NCAA Executive Committee, the powerful group that ultimately will choose a successor to the late Myles Brand as NCAA president.

Although the move probably will further fuel speculation about Adams as a candidate for the president’s position himself, he said on a teleconference that he stepped down with six months left on his term to ensure that those who choose the next president will be the ones still in place to work with him or her.

“It is time for new leadership at the executive committee level,” Adams said. “I feel very strongly that the group of the executive committee who will work with the next NCAA president needs to be the ones in charge of the search and in charge of that process.

“I feel like, frankly, that I have done what I came to do, and I have done what I promised Myles I would do. . . . And after almost three years of this, and particularly the amount of time it has required of me the last nine …

Continue reading Adams resigns key NCAA post »

    University of Georgia athletes in all men’s and women’s sports had a cumulative grade point average of 3.01 for spring semester, the highest ever by the school’s athletes, the UGA Athletic Association announced Thursday.

   Of 508 student-athletes, 258 had GPA’s of 3.0 or higher for the semester.

   Thursday’s news release didn’t include a sport-by-sport breakdown, but that information was provided recently to the Athletic Association board of directors. Here, if you’re interested, are those details:

MEN’S SPORTS

Sport         No. of students     Spring semester 2009 GPA

Golf                       11                   3.28

Swimming              25                   3.13

Cross country        11                   3.05

Track                     52                   2.92

Football                122                   2.876

Baseball                 43                    2.873

Tennis                      8                    2.69

Basketball               15                 …

Continue reading Team-by-team GPA’s »

   Georgia’s softball team played two games on national television Sunday and put on a good show.  Hope you saw some of it.

   The youngest team in major-college softball -– 10 freshmen, eight sophomores, no juniors, two seniors –- was one of the last three teams standing in the Women’s College World Series.

   After beating Washington (and national Player of the Year Danielle Lawrie) 9-8 in a compelling, extra-inning marathon Sunday afternoon, the Bulldogs found themselves one victory from the WCWS finals.  Alas, they lost a Sunday night rematch to Washington and Lawrie, 9-3.

   So now it’s Washington vs. Florida in a best-of-three series for the championship.

   But the Bulldogs did their school proud in their first trip to the Women’s College World Series,  playing with tenacity and enthusiasm.

   A couple of other things from the weekend:

  – Georgia’s baseball team, clearly over-hyped when it climbed to No. 1 in the polls a while back, had its season end ingloriously in …

Continue reading On softball’s show and Knox’s transfer . . . »

  – Can UGA’s baseball team make another NCAA postseason run, perhaps to the College World Series?  You might not think so, based on recent results. But it’s a funny game, as you know, and first baseman Rich Poythress made the point Thursday that the Dogs weren’t exactly swinging the bats great entering the postseason last year, either.  And then they broke out and went on a tear in which they scored 9, 14, 8, 18, 11, 6 and 17 runs in consecutive games to reach Omaha. So we’ll see. (Here’s a story on Georgia’s bid for an encore.)

  –  More of what Poythress had to say: “Our goal is to play our game and put it all together. . . . We’ve got to get the middle of the order going again. We need to step up and swing the bats a little better. We can rely on our postseason experience, the postseason at-bats we have had. . . . We’ve talked about our young guys a lot, but the middle of the order and the heart of the pitching staff have been there before.  . . . Our main goal was to …

Continue reading Geno Atkins among Dogs in action »

   Greensboro — Good morning from Lake Oconee, where the UGA Athletics Association board of directors convenes today for its spring meeting.

   Among the expected items of business: the 2009-10 athletics budget and the long-discussed major expansion of the football facilities at the Butts-Mehre building.

    The Butts-Mehre project has been been on the drawing board for more than a year, with plans calling for expansion of the training facilities and weight room and construction of new offices and a large multi-purpose area.

   “That is something that will be contemplated at the board meeting,” athletics director Damon Evans said.

   The spring meeting also is the point at which the next fiscal year’s budget is submitted for board approval. While many college athletics programs are making significant cuts amid the recession, Evans said Georgia has held up relatively well.

   “I would say this: If people want to use that term ‘profit,’ we’re not going to have as much ‘profit’ …

Continue reading Talking budgets and Butts-Mehre expansion . . . »

    Hope everyone had a great weekend.

    Well, once again, the Georgia baseball team didn’t, getting swept at South Carolina to continue a late-season collapse that has reached 11 losses in 13 games.

    And the men’s tennis team didn’t have a great weekend, either, losing to Texas in the rain-interrupted quarterfinals of the NCAA Championships to end the Bulldogs’ quest of a third consecutive national title.

   But elsewhere, the weekend was good to UGA:

   Men’s basketball: Tennessee State’s top scorer announced plans to transfer to Georgia. Guard Gerald Robinson Jr., who averaged 17.8 points per game as a sophomore last season and 15.2 as a freshman, will have to sit out the 2009-10 season under NCAA transfer rules. The 6-foot-1 Robinson, from Nashville, then will have two years of eligibility remaining. ”I sat down and evaluated everything, put together a checklist, and Georgia offered all the things I was looking for,” Robinson told The Tennessean. “. . . I’m going …

Continue reading A busy, mostly good, weekend for the Dogs »

   Columbus -– Caught up with Mark Richt’s speaking tour Thursday night.  His visit with the Columbus Bulldog Club was interesting and lively.

   He expressed some serious reservations about long road trips, such as Georgia’s to Arizona State last fall.  He scoffed at the notion that Jacksonville is a neutral site for the Georgia-Florida game. And he quantified the extent to which the Georgia players see Joe Cox as the team’s leader.

    Here’s Richt, responding to questions from the gathering:

   On Cox’s leadership:  “We had exit meetings where one of the things we asked the players on their exit-meeting sheet, I guess, was: Who do you think are the leaders of this football team? I think it was 110 guys who wrote down different names. And 107 times, Joe got his name mentioned. . . . So here’s a guy voted the No. 1 leader on the team who really hasn’t started a game in three years and only started one in his whole career.”

   On how the team is recovering from last year’s …

Continue reading Richt on travel, Jax, Cox, and more »

  About  Matthew Stafford’s contract:   As you might have heard, it calls for more guaranteed money ($41.7 million) than any contract in NFL history — more than any contract signed by Peyton Manning or Tom Brady, among others. If you find that incredulous, no argument here.  In the next round of collective bargaining, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and some owners plan to push for economic reform that would redirect money from unproven draft picks to proven veterans and establish some form of rookie wage scale.  Stafford’s contract will become the league’s Exhibit A in that battle, supplanting Matt Ryan’s deal ($34.75 million guaranteed) with the Falcons last year.  Of course, it  must be noted that the owners — the same folks demanding new restraints — are the ones giving the runaway rookie contracts.

  About Mark Richt’s mention to the Augusta Bulldog Club of a remotely possible 2010 UGA non-conference game in the Georgia Dome:  That stirred a lot of fun speculation on …

Continue reading On Stafford’s dollars, Dogs in the Dome and other stuff »

  Athens – OK, before we start another week, let’s clean out an overfull notebook from last week. . . .

  – UGA President Michael Adams sat in on interviews with five candidates for the basketball coaching job and said he was extremely impressed with Mark Fox.  But Adams stressed that the hiring decision was purely athletics director Damon Evans’. “What I did was sit back and listen,” Adams said. “Damon conducted the interviews. I don’t think I asked any candidate more than two or three questions.” Adams said he was there to show the importance the institution places on the job.  ”I felt it was my role in this process to demonstrate the university’s commitment to basketball,” Adams said. “It’s why we built the [practice] facility we built, why we were willing to pay what it took to hire the right coach.”

  – There was no quibbling over salary when Evans made his offer to Fox.  “Six years at $1.3 million is not bad, is it?” Evans said. “I thought about hiring myself as the …

Continue reading Football! Basketball! Baseball! A Monday sampler … »

Let’s get caught up on all things Dog.

• There’s a monumental matchup going down between Georgia and Arkansas in Fayetteville on Sunday. OK, maybe “monumental” is stretching just a tad. But it certainly is intriguing from the standpoint that the two proud programs will be battling to stay out of last place in the entire league just a year removed from battling for the SEC Tournament championship in Atlanta.

Eleven months after that incredible accomplishment Georgia is 11-17 overall and 2-11 in SEC play. The Razorbacks are 13-13 and 1-12 in the league. The Bulldogs have to go to Kentucky before finishing up at home against South Carolina. The Hogs are at home against Ole Miss then at Vanderbilt.

“It’s really hard to compare those teams,” Georgia interim coach Pete Herrmann said. “Arkansas had a lot of seniors and a strong, strong inside game. We were rolling in the SEC Tournament at that point and started out that game great. Arkansas came back in the second half but we were …

Continue reading A year later, Dogs, Hogs battle for last place »

It’s late February and things are about to really crank up on the Georgia athletics scene.

• The basketball regular season is almost over and postseason play is right around the corner. Lost in all the drama and drudgery surrounding the Bulldogs’ men’s basketball team this season is the fact they will be defending their SEC tournament title down in Tampa. Who knows, a hurricane could strike, right? If so I’ll be there to chronicle it. And I imagine they’ll have to hire a coach sooner or later. We’ll cover that, too. Anyone else wondering if the Lady Dogs will get left out The Dance?
• Baseball season has already cranked up and the Diamond Dawgs are having to rebuild their lineup after last season’s national runner-up finish. They have some arms, though, and some good young talent from what I’ve been able to see. Methinks they may be pretty good again.
• Of course, spring football practice begins in mid-March and we’ll be all over that as always.
• Georgia’s loaded for bear as usual …

Continue reading Taking the UGA blog ‘to the people’ »