This week's Southeastern Conference men's basketball tournament will be the first held in St. Louis and could be the last for Mark Fox as Georgia's coach.
Georgia wrapped up its ninth regular season under Fox with last Saturday night's 66-61 loss at Tennessee, the Volunteers closing that contest on a 9-0 run. The Bulldogs are 16-14 overall after going 7-11 in league play, and they have been relegated to Wednesday's opening night for the first time since the SEC started conducting a 14-team tournament over five days in 2013.
Fox, who has a 161-132 overall record and a 77-79 SEC mark with the Bulldogs, is downplaying any speculation about his future with the program.
"In fairness to our players, we're just trying to get them to win the next game," Fox said Monday on a teleconference. "This is about their season, and I think anything more than that would be undue pressure for them and unfair pressure for them. We're going to do our best to try and get Georgia a win on Wednesday, and if we can do that we'll try to do the same thing on Thursday.
"That's really the honest way we're approaching it."
The Bulldogs are seeded 12th and will open the SEC tournament against 13th-seeded Vanderbilt. The Commodores (12-19, 6-12) won the regular-season meeting between the two, 81-66, on Feb. 7.
Wednesday night's winner will face fifth-seeded Missouri (20-11, 10-8) on Thursday.
"Georgia basically had its last two games won, and at the very end of the game the other team made plays," Kentucky coach John Calipari said. "I would not be surprised to see Georgia march through this tournament."
Since the SEC went to its five-day tournament, Auburn is the only team to advance from Wednesday night to the weekend. In 2015, Bruce Pearl led his 13th-seeded Tigers to upsets of 12th-seeded Mississippi State, fifth-seeded Texas A&M and fourth-seeded LSU before they were thumped by top-seeded and undefeated Kentucky in Saturday's semifinals.
Georgia senior forward Yante Maten has averaged 19.4 points and 8.8 rebounds a game and has a chance to be named the league's player of the year today. Georgia's last SEC player of the year was guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope in 2013.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.