Georgia coaches Mark Richt, Mark Fox stop in Albany

ALBANY — UGA Day came to Albany Tuesday evening as Georgia faithful got to interact with head football coach Mark Richt and head men’s basketball coach Mark Fox. Fans decked out in red and black lined up in the Civic Center had the opportunity to meet the ball coaches, take pictures and even get paraphernalia and memorabilia signed.

Before the meet and greet, both coaches met with the media and shared their thoughts on the current state of their respective teams as well as the direction they feel they’re heading.

For Fox, he feels his team accomplished a great deal last season as they finished 21-12 and earned a No. 10 seed in the NCAA Tournament. It was just the 13^th time in 110 years that the the Bulldogs posted a 20-win season and they were able to post more road wins than any UGA team in 25 years. Fox said they must use all that they learned last season to make it even farther in the future.

“It’s so hard to get there first of all. The fact that we were able to earn our way in and that we return a large portion of our team, this year they understand what it takes,” he said. “Our mindset from the end of the tournament to now has been we understand what it takes to climb the mountain, lets regroup and get ready to do it again.”

In terms of how they stack up against the rest of the SEC, Fox said it’s not certain yet, but he still feels pretty good about where they stand heading into next season.

“There’s still been some roster movement,” he said. “I think that the dust hasn’t settled yet, but we probably will return maybe a few players than some other people will. Hopefully what we have back will put us in the upper half of the league again.”

For Richt, his squad is coming off a 10-3 season and he’s optimistic about the team’s future thanks in part to new additions like Westover standout Trent Thompson.

“We expect Trenton to help us,” he said. “He’s very talented, obviously big, strong, fast, agile. We’re excited to see what he can do. We don’t have any doubt he’ll get in there and create some great depth for us and maybe win a starting position.”

Richt added that as excited as they are to have the top recruit in the state of Georgia donning red and black, everyone on staff understands it’ll be a learning process for Thompson.

“We don’t want to put too much pressure on Trent, obviously,” he said. “He’s just gonna be a freshman, he’s gonna be learning and all that kind of thing. But we do feel like he’s gonna give us a boost.”

After the annual spring scrimmage, Richt said he liked what he saw overall.

“It’s a little bit of an opposite of what it was a year ago as far as defense was learning from scratch with the new defensive staff coming in,” he said. “All the coaches have returned on defense, so there’s a lot more stability in what was going on there. And then with coach [Brian] Schottenheimer coming in, a lot of new ideas, a lot of new things to learn for everybody, but it was good, but it was a little bit less continuity because of the changes but it was healthy.”

He went on to add that for the most part his team made it out of the spring injury free. He noted that those nursing injuries should be good to go by June.

The Bulldogs kick of their season at home Sept. 5 against Louisiana-Monroe.