Tom Crean brings the memes to the SEC.

How Did We Get Here?

Mark Fox found a cruising altitude, but suddenly, that altitude wasn’t good enough.

Over the last five years, Georgia finished 78th, 35th, 71st, 61st, and 65th in KenPom. Outside of a good year in 2014-15, resulting in one of just two NCAA Tournament bids in Fox’s nine years at Georgia, that’s pretty remarkable consistency. Georgia’s SEC records in those years: 12-6, 11-7, 10-8, 9-9, 7-11. As the Bulldogs remained a team that was consistently on the margins of NCAA Tournament consideration, the rest of the SEC got better. Much like Kevin Stallings at Vanderbilt, Fox built his program in a very old-school manner, relying on bringing in relatively unheralded freshmen,…