ATHENS, Ga. -- The Georgia men’s basketball team’s 2-4 start to 2021 has certainly been less than desirable, but coach Tom Crean believes there is more to his squad’s potential than what meets the eye.

The Bulldogs are currently riding a three-game skid following their Legends Classic loss to Northwestern Tuesday. However Crean believes his team’s performance when creating offensive and defensive opportunities is improving despite its apparent struggles.

Now, it’s just a matter of bringing those opportunities to fruition.

“We’ve got so many things to improve upon, but I think we are improving and even though it didn’t show up as much on Tuesday, we missed thirteen open driving kick threes,” he said. “That’s the bad news and the good news. The good news is we got the kicks, we made the next pass. The bad news is we didn’t make the shots.

“The biggest thing we can do in lieu of everything is continue to build our confidence and we’ve got to get our execution right.”

Crean also expressed Georgia’s need for increased execution on defense, particularly in regards to deflections.

“We’ve actually been deflecting the ball because we’re getting some charges,” he said. “We are getting better activity, it’s just not creating as many easy baskets but I think we showed at times, even in that Northwestern game what happens when we really, really get up and pressure the ball.”

The Bulldogs will look to capitalize better Sunday afternoon against Wofford, a team that Crean continually conveyed his respect for.

“Wofford, to me, they almost combine what we’ve seen from Virginia and Northwestern. They combine their offense at an incredibly fast pace, they are very physical, they give great help side defense. They’re an NCAA tournament team,” he said.

After a long stretch of action with very little rest, the Bulldogs would like to enter Sunday’s game with improved health and energy as well. Five games in 12 days is tough enough on a college basketball team, but the interruption of illness also hindering Georgia has made the last couple of weeks very taxing.

“The travel, the whole thing, I do think it caught up with us on Tuesday even though we made a heck of a comeback and showed that it’s not a conditioning thing, it’s a little bit more of a mental conditioning thing that we’ve got to make sure we just overcome the fatigue mentally as much as physically,” said Crean. “We were off Wednesday, we practiced sharp yesterday, had a team dinner, we’ll go here in a little bit and it’s just continuing to get better at the things along with getting ready for really good basketball teams.”

The rested and refreshed Bulldogs will aim to get back in the win column Sunday before No. 9-ranked Memphis visits Athens Wednesday.

“One of the things we tried to get across to them yesterday which I think is so different for a lot of them for where they’ve come from is when we’re in the season, we’re still very much about improvement.

“We’re still very much about development and I think a lot of these guys come from environments where it’s really about what the team needs at that point in time in the team’s system, but at the same time, you’re not getting better if you’re not improving individually.”