Georgia head coach Mark Fox urges his team on during their game against Kentucky, on Feb. 3, 2015, in Lexington, Ky. ATHENS, Ga. — His team’s 15th victory of the season complete with Saturday’s 56-53 defeat of Tennessee, Georgia basketball coach Mark Fox bristled at a question regarding the closeness of the triumph.
“It’s not about whether you have a girlfriend who’s pretty or a girlfriend who’s ugly,” he said. “It’s whether you have one. It’s whether or not you won. You coach to have joy. It’s the joy of victory, and we won.”
The National Organization of Women may shudder over Fox’s analogy, but basketball coaches everywhere understand his point. Especially in February.
If you want to be one of the 68 schools called by name during CBS’s NCAA tournament Selection Sunday show, you need plenty of wins. Good, bad or ugly, they’re each and and all more beautiful than any loss.
“You just want wins,” said Georgia freshman forward Yante Maten, who scored six points, pulled down five rebounds and blocked three Big Orange shots. “It’s like I was telling my teammates all week: This was a must win.”