Team still working on offensive ‘fundamentals’

One of the key moves that Auburn head coach Tony Barbee employed against Georgia in its 59-51 defeat of the Bulldogs on Wednesday was a move to a zone defense, a change that Fox believes his team did not handle well.

“We didn’t do some real fundamental things that we’ve always done,” Fox said about the Auburn zone. “We’ve been such an efficient offense team the last couple of years. I think in the last two years we have been first or second in field goal percentage [in the SEC]. We’ve been very efficient against any kind of defense.

MARK FOX

For a team that already has its issues scoring points, being as efficient as possible on offense has been key in their limited success this season.

But on Wednesday, the Bulldogs did not handle the change in Auburn’s defensive set well, especially when the game got close.

Another problem that could be attributed to the team’s youth.

“There’s some fundamental things we didn’t do right that are correctable, but we got to recognize those things in the middle of possessions,” Fox said. “We just can’t spend all our timeouts trying to address those things. We’ve got to do some things in the middle of possessions and recognize things so we can be more efficient.”

Bulldogs remaining optimistic about season

Despite another close loss on Wednesday, some Bulldogs believe that even with all of their struggles they are just on the cusp on turning it around this season.

“I still feel like we’re progressing,” junior Sherrard Brantley said. “As we look at film and breakdown all of our bad plays, we definitely feel like we could have played better. [We just] made too many little mistakes to win that game [against Auburn].”

Brantley believes that a couple of key turnovers in unlucky situations or a bad play here and there was the difference Wednesday’s game.

Against Auburn, the Bulldogs committed 12 turnovers.

“[Things like] turnovers, and then sometimes were not making the proper reads,” Brantley said. “And then we had some defensive errors too that kind of got us in the end. As time goes by, we’re getting a little bit better. We just got to take it one practice and one game at a time and eventually we’ll get there.”