Georgia basketball coach Tom Crean is set for his second season in Athens, and the expectation is that it’ll go a bit better than the first.
The Bulldogs struggled to an 11-21 record while capturing just two wins in SEC play, but Crean and company have revamped the roster with a versatile group of young talent.
Will that result in Georgia earning its first NCAA Tournament bid since 2015?
Here are five storylines to watch for the Bulldogs entering the 2019-20 college basketball season.
5. Turnovers
Crean’s squad had two glaring weaknesses last season, and one of them was turning the ball over. Georgia finished 333rd nationally with 15.8 turnovers per game, which didn’t allow the offense to find any sort of consistent rhythm.
“We turned it over at an alarming rate last year,” Crean said last week at SEC Media Day in Birmingham. “Our turnover margin was horrendous. It was one of the worst in the country. It’s gotta get much better.”
With a blend of senior guards and talented newcomers, the Bulldogs will need to fix that problem if they want to contend in the top half of the league.
4. Perimeter shooting
The other big problem was outside shooting. Simply put, Georgia did not shoot the ball well last season, ranking 289th nationally in shooting 32.2 percent from beyond the arc.
“I’m concerned about that,” Crean said. “We’re definitely addressing it, and we’re addressing it in recruiting all the time. We missed a lot of open shots. Our players worked extremely hard. It wasn’t like there was wasted effort, we just didn’t make shots. We’ve gotta do it. With some of the speed we have, we should become a better downhill team which should create more help situations, which should give us even more open shots. Now we have to make them.”
Jordan Harris, Rayshaun Hammonds, and Tyree Crump led the way in that category a season ago, but the addition of Northeastern grad transfer Donnell Gresham Jr. should help since he averaged 41.3 percent from 3-point range in his four seasons with the Huskies. Some of the freshmen will also give the Bulldogs more of a perimeter threat as well.
3. Young Bulldogs
Even with a more versatile roster, Crean is still going to have a young team on his hands. There are just four upperclassmen on the roster, with two sophomores and a whopping nine freshmen making up the rest of the group. That’s a lot of youth.
“When it comes to chemistry, young guys are used to playing a lot,” Crean said. “What we’re going through right now in practice, and I think this leads into the chemistry part, is you can’t just play to play. When you’re scrimmaging, when you’re in a time and score situation, it’s not a time to work on your game. It’s a time to win the game. We have to understand that. You’re never just playing to play when you get to college basketball and beyond. You have to play to win. That will have a lot to do with chemistry.”
So, it wouldn’t be surprising if the Bulldogs are inconsistent at times this season, as it building chemistry with a lot of new faces is never an easy task for a coaching staff. That will place an enormous amount of responsibility on the older players to try to get everyone on the same page before SEC play gets started.
2. One week in January
Georgia’s non-conference schedule sets up nicely as a whole, and it’ll certainly face quality competition at the Maui Invitational in late November. However, there’s one week, in particular, that could tell us a lot about this team’s potential.
The Bulldogs will hit the road to take on Memphis on Jan. 4, return to Stegeman Coliseum to play Kentucky in the SEC opener on Jan. 7, and then travel to Auburn on Jan. 11.
Penny Hardaway secured the nation’s top recruiting class, and Memphis has one of the most dynamic rosters in the country. Kentucky is loaded once again, and John Calipari has the luxury of having four impact sophomores back in the mix to go along with the No. 2 recruiting class in the country. Auburn is coming off its first-ever Final Four appearance, and while the roster looks a little different, Bruce Pearl still has a team capable of competing for an SEC title.
How the Bulldogs fare during that stretch could be huge when it comes to building a quality tournament resume.
1. The game-changer
Anthony Edwards is projected by many as the No. 1 pick in the 2020 NBA Draft, and that tells you all you need to know about the expectations for him heading into this season.
The 6-5, 225-pound shooting guard is a phenomenal talent who boasts a unique combination of size and strength, and there’s no doubt that everything Georgia does this season is going to run through him. Having a player like that on the floor gives you an opportunity to compete with anyone due to his playmaking ability, and even Crean himself admits that Edwards has no clue just how much of a game-changer he can be.
“I think he’s gonna have a huge impact,” Crean said. “He’s got the athletic ability and overall ability that he doesn’t even really have an idea of how fast and good he can be. It’s our job to get that out of him.”
If Edwards is the type of player most expect him to be, he'll be one of the most impactful players in college basketball this season.
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Blake Lovell is a national college basketball writer for ClutchPoints. He’s also a contributor for the Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook and Athlon Sports College Basketball Preview magazine. He hosts two podcasts: Marching to Madness (CBB) and Establish the Pass (NFL).
You can follow him on Twitter @theblakelovell. Also, be sure to follow the ClutchPoints NCAA Facebook page for more great CBB discussion.
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