With an 0-2 start in Southeastern Conference men's basketball play, Georgia is on pace to match the 4-12 or 3-13 league marks of the past two seasons.
Yet the appearance on paper under first-year coach Mark Fox has not reflected the performance on the court. The two losses have come against No. 2 Kentucky and No. 21 Ole Miss, and the Bulldogs were close in each with under a minute to play.
"I don't know if there is a more improved team in the country," Kentucky coach John Calipari said after defeating Georgia 76-68 last Saturday at Rupp Arena. "Mark is probably my vote as midseason coach of the year to get his team doing the things they're doing."
Only three times last decade did an SEC team endure a 20-loss season, and Georgia had all three. The Bulldogs went 10-20 in Jim Harrick's first season (2000), 8-20 in Dennis Felton's second season ('05) and 12-20 last year, when Felton was fired after 20 games and replaced by assistant Pete Herrmann.
Fox was hired last April after a five-year run at Nevada that produced a 123-43 record and three NCAA tournament trips. Georgia is just 8-7 overall entering Saturday's game at Mississippi State but has represented the league well the past month with surprising wins over Illinois and Georgia Tech.
The Bulldogs beat the No. 20 Yellow Jackets 73-66 on Jan. 5, four days before Tech topped Duke.
"There are a lot of things I don't think we do well, but one thing I do think we have done and learned how to do is we're starting to play together and play pretty unselfishly," Fox said. "We are a little inconsistent defensively and in certain areas offensively, but we've had moments in all areas where we've been pretty good."
Georgia's signature win was its triumph over Tech, and its signature player is 6-foot-10, 247-pound sophomore forward Trey Thompkins. After averaging 10.6 points per game last summer for the U.S. team during its undefeated run through the Under-19 World Championships in New Zealand, Thompkins leads the Bulldogs with 16.6 points and 8.3 rebounds per game.
Fellow sophomore Travis Leslie, a 6-4, 202-pounder, is next with 13.6 points and 5.7 rebounds a game. Leslie provided Georgia's signature play last week with a dunk over 6-11 Kentucky freshman DeMarcus Cousins.
Leslie's dunk already has surpassed 100,000 views on YouTube.
"We are a confident team," Thompkins said. "We feel like we can play with anyone in the country if we execute, play poised and keep the game at our tempo."
The Bulldogs have finished last in the SEC in scoring three straight years. They averaged 64.9 points per game last season and have improved to 66.5, but Fox mainly wants to enhance the overall dynamic of the program. Being praised for playing well at Kentucky doesn't count.
"We didn't go up there to get close," Fox said. "That's one thing I talked to our team about before we left. I said, 'Don't be happy that you got close. That is not what this is about.' I was proud of them for competing hard, but we're not going to be into moral victories.
"That's a dangerous way of thinking, in my opinion."