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Rising sophomores Marcus Thornton and Donte’ Williams were hard at work earlier this week while Thompkins and Leslie contemplated their professional futures.
The workout reports came as good news for head coach Mark Fox and his staff, which will likely need the two young forwards to take on much bigger roles next season.
“There’s not a program in America that is immune to having some challenges after guys go early. But I think the one thing it does give is it gives a lot of excitement to the new faces and the opportunities they have in front of them,” Fox said. “It makes us certainly a little younger up front, but that’s part of it and we’ll work to make sure those guys develop as quickly as they can.”
Thompkins, along with graduating seniors Chris Barnes and Jeremy Price, was one of the few Bulldog post players to receive significant playing time last season.
Thornton and Williams, on the other hand, both played under 10 minutes a game last season.
But both players could be the start of an “evolution” in Georgia basketball’s style of play.
“The advantage that they have this year is they didn’t play as much as they wanted, no player does. But they were able to see winning and see how that happens,” Fox said. “I think they can both be productive frontline players for us.”
Fox was effectively forced to coach a slow-paced system with heftier frontline players like Barnes and Price, both of whom weighed in at more than 240 pounds this past season.
But with both seniors graduating, the Bulldogs will likely play more smaller, faster lineups in 2011-12 — which better suits Fox’s philosophy.
“One thing that we haven’t been able to do since I came is we really haven’t been able to play the style of defense that I wanna play because we just haven’t been fast enough, quick enough, interchangeable enough to do that,” said Fox, who also said his triangle offense could function with a smaller lineup.
Georgia has four incoming recruits set for the roster next season, with guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and post players John Florveus, Tim Dixon and Nemanja Djurisic. The Bulldogs are also in the running for athletic wing Kevin Ware out of Conyers, Ga., and 6-foot-10 big man John Cannon out of Burnsville, N.C.
It is difficult to see another 6-foot-8, 275-pound center like Jeremy Price playing at Georgia any time soon, as each player Fox has recruited fits the leaner, more athletic mold that he is pushing for in the program.
Georgia basketball is slowly being shaped into the type of team Mark Fox wants — moving away from the more deliberate style of play under former head coach Dennis Felton. The departure of the talented Thompkins, a Felton recruit, will likely leave a void in talent and experience on next year’s team, but the main objective for Georgia’s coaching staff is to keep pushing the program in the right direction.
“The thing that we always talked about [at Nevada] and that I talk about with my staff here is that if we build it the right way, and we do it right, that we will get to a level of success,” Fox said. “If you build it the right way you can build a level of success.”
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