It was time for change to the Georgia basketball program and that is exactly what has happened.

No, not for the men’s basketball program and new head coach Mark Fox, but for the women’s basketball program, under the direction of Andy Landers – entering his 31st season on the bench for the Lady Dogs.

“I kind of feel like in the past four or five years the feeding of the monster hasn’t been taking place,” Landers said. “This is a basketball program that was built on passion, hard work, a great pride in our work ethic, and aggressiveness . There’s a need to reestablish our roots and what we believe in and what’s made Georgia basketball special all of these years. And that, first and foremost will be what we address and what we go after when we start practice on Friday.”

Another thing addressed to the team by Landers was where the program was after last season. He met with his returning seniors, Ashley Houts and Angel Robinson during the off-season to discuss getting the program to the point at which it can be successful once again.

“I just felt like it was time to visit, particularly with our veteran players in a very candid way, an honest way, and a way that they could understand where we’ve been lately as a basketball team, from a competitive standpoint, from a success standpoint isn’t where we want to be,” Landers said.

The Lady Dogs have not made it past the NCAA’s sweet-16 in six season’s and lost in the first round of the tournament last year to Arizona State. Landers believes that his teams may have become complacent the past few seasons.

“I think that there may have been a sense creep in that ‘we’re Georgia and we’re going to win 25 games, or that we’re Georgia and we’re going to go to the tournament,’ so we’ve talked about that a lot and this season is different in that regard,” Landers said.

To make the changes necessary, the Lady Dogs brought in plenty of new faces. Seven to be exact, six of those being true freshmen, which outnumbers the six players returning from last years team. The Georgia recruiting class for this season was ranked in the top-5 by national experts and Landers knows that most, if not all, of them will see significant playing time early in the season. One thing that having seven new players allows is competition in practice, which Georgia has lacked for a couple years now.

“We’ve struggled with depth the last two or three years and it’s so different walking out on the practice floor now for workouts and having 13 people out there,” Landers said. “The gym feels like it’s crowded compared to the way it has been and to know that you have options, but most importantly to know that there’s going to be competition, that there’s enough people out there to actually compete for positions and that positions will be earned, rather than awarded. I feel that the past couple seasons we have been awarding positions, and players didn’t necessarily earn those positions in practice … If [the freshmen] can just continue to build upon the things that they’ve done so far, they’re all going to be able to contribute their thing, and I think that they all can bring something different to the table.”