In only his first season, head coach Mark Fox may have done the previously unthinkable Saturday night: gotten Georgia fans excited about men’s basketball.

He did it at a school where the only time the basketball arena sells out is when the gymnastics team takes the floor. He did it at a place where the only prevailing thought during basketball season is typically “when does spring football practice start?”

Guard Travis Leslie threw down a windmill dunk in Georgia’s thrashing of No. 8 Tennessee. Photo by Ashley Strickland

But Fox saw the potential — the potential to convert fair-weather fans into believers of the Georgia basketball program. He knew that he and his team would have to “earn their respect back.”

Saturday night went a long way toward earning that respect back, as Fox’s Bulldogs demolished No. 8 Tennessee 78-63 in front of a sellout Stegeman Coliseum crowd of 10,523 — the first time that has happened in two years.

“You know this is one of the reasons I came to Georgia is because we have great fans. We just had a great college game in Stegeman. It was sold out. We had a great homecourt advantage, and that is what college basketball is all about,” Fox said. “Our fans were terrific, our students were great, and I thank our fans for coming because they were a big part of the game.”

So what changed? Why did fans all the sudden feel the need to come out and support a team that was again 0-3 in the SEC?

“Coach told us if you play hard — win lose or draw — you’ll fill the stands. If you do things the right way, you’ll fill the stands. And it came to fruition tonight,” senior Albert Jackson said. “We played hard, we played tough and all the fans came out.”

The crowd was electric and tuned into the game from the opening tip. When Georgia rattled off a 12-0 run at the start of the game, the crowd went into a frenzy, and it became abundantly clear that Stegeman Coliseum was — for a change — no longer a homecourt advantage for just the Gym Dogs.

“We’ve been waiting for it for a while and we finally got it,” said sophomore Travis Leslie, who dazzled the crowd with a windmill dunk in the first half.

Georgia has been good at home all season — 8-2 inside Stegeman — but Saturday night seemed like a different gym from those first nine home games, where Georgia struggled to fill two-thirds of the arena.

“Hopefully, we can get it a little bit more, because as you can see, we play off our crowd,” sophomore Trey Thompkins said. “The crowd brings energy and that brings energy to us because we know that they care.”

Stegeman Coliseum has often been criticized as a relic, incapable of hosting a top-flight basketball team. All that was put to rest Saturday night.

Georgia proved that it’s not about the building, but the product on display on the floor.

“I wish the fans could understand how much it helps us when they come out. When you’re tired, when you miss a shot, when you’re not playing good, when you have the fans there, it boosts you,” Jackson said. “It pushes you through that moment, and it’s just amazing to see them come out because it hasn’t happened too many times since I’ve been here.”