Most Division I college basketball teams play a minimum of 30 games, with their coaches preaching marathons and not sprints and wanting their players to be at their best in March.
Yet some contests along the way seem to pack more of a perceptual punch than others.
Such was the case Saturday night inside Stegeman Coliseum, when youthful Georgia was looking to dismiss an Ole Miss team that was winless in Southeastern Conference play. The Rebels instead won 70-60, punctuating just how mammoth is the challenge for the Bulldogs in moving up the league ladder during Tom Crean's second season as coach.
Georgia went 11-21 overall and 2-16 in conference play last year and is 11-8 and 1-5 heading into Tuesday night's game at Missouri.
"We've got to regroup in a hurry and not let a bunch of young guys lose confidence," Crean said Saturday night in a news conference. "I'm certainly not. We've just got to continue to get better. We're not sharing the ball that well at all, and it gets compounded when we're not moving and cutting well."
The Bulldogs last reached the NCAA tournament in 2015, marking the longest active drought among SEC programs. Their last recognized NCAA tournament victory was in Tubby Smith's Sweet 16 run in 1996 (a 2002 win over Murray State was vacated due to NCAA sanctions from the Jim Harrick era).
Before Saturday's stumble, Georgia's 1-4 league mark was accompanied by the glass-half-full realization that the early league schedule consisted of two games against Kentucky and a trip to Auburn. The loss to Ole Miss, however, was the second within the league in Athens and dropped the Bulldogs from 76th to 86th in the NET rankings.
What's worse, freshman phenom Anthony Edwards already may be 60% through his one expected season in Athens.
"That's a little bit of the risk you take, but it's not like you can pass on taking a kid like Anthony Edwards if you have the ability to get him to your school," SEC Network analyst and former Tennessee guard/forward Dane Bradshaw said. "If it doesn't work out and you don't make the NCAA tournament, the other aspect is, 'Did we build anything this year?'
"I think Georgia is still building something. (Junior forward) Rayshaun Hammonds is a nice player, as is (freshman guard) Sahvir Wheeler in the backcourt, so I think Crean is doing a nice job in that they're not going all in on this one kid."
Georgia was briefly in the NCAA tournament picture after capping its nonconference schedule with a 10-3 record following its 65-62 victory at No. 9 Memphis on Jan. 4. That conquest has lessened in impact given that the Tigers were 12-1 going into that game but are 2-4 since.
Edwards was among five top-100 players Georgia signed in 2019, but the Bulldogs are staring down at only Vanderbilt a third of the way into the league race. Georgia's one SEC victory was very impressive - an 80-63 thrashing of visiting Tennessee on Jan. 15 - but the three league losses away from Stegeman so far have occurred by an average of 21.3 points.
"I think they are what they are, which is a team fighting to get to the middle of the pack and stay there," Bradshaw said. "From what I've seen from them so far, I just don't know if they have the confidence to compete night in and night out. I can't overstate this enough: You've got to beat the teams you're supposed to beat."
Said Crean: "The last guy who can get frustrated is me. You go through these things, but we've got to get better in so many areas."
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.