ATHENS — Everybody has got a story, no matter the sport or the person it seems.
Georgia basketball coach Tom Crean hopes the next chapter for the Bulldogs’ three graduate transfers ends with an NCAA tournament appearance.
That said, there’s a long way to go, as players are just now settling into the concept of the NCAA Division I Council allowing for a July 20 summer access period.
Crean realizes he will need this new UGA team to grow up in a hurr,y having had complete roster turnover in two seasons.
But basketball is a team game that requires great on-court chemistry and choreography, so piecing together another talented class must involve more than just gathering talent.
Particularly when Crean determined he needed to seek out experienced graduate transfers like Andrew Garcia (Stony Brook), Justin Kier (George Mason), and P.J. Horne (Virginia Tech) to provide senior leadership this season.
“We started it with zero, and we’ve got three right now, we’ve got three seniors, which I’m excited about,” Crean said during a recent Georgia Game Day production.
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“This whole thing comes down to two things, there are two things mainly that have to happen right now,” the Bulldogs’ third-year head coach said. “We have to build compatibility in players. You may be the same size, but you could be a completely different player.”
DawgNation had a chance to interview the three newcomers recently.
It was apparent that while the three players were indeed different, they all shared the same goal of self-improvement and team accomplishment in the form of an NCAA tournament berth.
As Crean noted, it was by design.
“What we did’t want to do was duplicate guys, what we didn’t want to do is stockpile guys,” Crean said. “What we wanted to do was get guys that were compatible with one another.”
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