CARVING A NEW LEGACY: Fox newest addition to monumental coaching staff

By: TYLER ESTEP

Posted: 4/8/09

Georgia athletics has long been successful in almost every sport.

It's maintained a tradition of excellence with established national powerhouse programs like gymnastics, tennis and women's basketball, and has had great success in recent years with baseball, football and women's soccer.

But men's basketball has been the missing link.

Enter Mark Fox, Georgia's newest coach charged with rescuing Bulldog basketball from irrelevancy.

Fox fled the University of Nevada for Athens last week, and joined an athletic department and fraternity of coaches that he called "outstanding."

And if there's anybody in that group that knows how to build a successful program at Georgia, and anyone that Fox should look to for an example, it's Jack Bauerle, Manuel Diaz, Andy Landers and Suzanne Yoculan.

Between the four of them, coaches of Georgia's swimming, men's tennis, women's basketball and gymnastics teams, respectively, they have 117 years of coaching experience in Athens. And they are even more familiar with winning.

Their cumulative resume boasts 17 national championships, 35 SEC titles and 17 national coach of the year honors. Their athletes have churned out 549 All-American titles. And they've all built their programs from humble beginnings.

"We shared an area not much bigger than this office, separated by little three-inch cubicle walls, makeshift walls," said Landers, one of five women's basketball coaches with 800 wins. "You competed to see who could get on the phone, because there were only x-number of phone lines available. If they were all lit up, you're out of luck. Maybe that's where [the desire to be the best] started."

"We were all in an office together, Jack Bauerle, myself, Andy," said Yoculan, who will have her 10th national championship in her sights next week. "It was funny, and we had little cubicles, we could hear each other recruiting. We'd play jokes on each other, and it was just a lot of fun. As coaches we grew up together, Andy, Manny, myself, Jack."

"None of us knew what we were doing, but we were together and we shared ideas."

Fox will be well-served to learn from his new colleagues as well, and not only on the hardwood. In the last two years alone, Yoculan's teams have boasted 10 Academic All-Americans and Bauerle has had 61 swimmers make the SEC Honor Roll, among a myriad of other honors for Bulldogs from different sports.

Fox seems to be on board.

"Young people should understand that their dreams can come true at this institution," he said. "Every young kid wants to play in the NBA. Every young kid should realize that they're going to have to work and live three or four decades after that basketball career is over with. They can reach those goals by attending this school."

The overwhelming success isn't limited to these four faces of Georgia coaching - women's tennis coach Jeff Wallace has just as much to brag about as his counterpart on the men's side (not to mention the No. 2 team in the country), and golf coach Chris Haack puts out national championship-caliber teams every year. Patrick Baker and Joel McCartney have engineered huge turnarounds with Georgia's soccer and volleyball teams in their few years here.

Add to that mix Mark Richt (82-22 in eight seasons with football) and David Perno (three trips to the College World Series in seven years at the helm with baseball), and you've got a pretty darn good coaching staff, in every sport.

"There's just too much experience," Perno said. "It starts with Suzanne, coach Landers, coach Bauerle, coach Haack, Manny Diaz, these people are national champions. Coach Richt sets such a great example for everyone, and the people I just mentioned are in leagues of their own."

Fox is ready, and the people are waiting.

Yoculan has built Georgia gymnastics from a program that had 200 spectators at her first meet in 1984, to one that sold out every home meet this season. If gymnastics, a "peripheral" sport, can do that, she said, there's no reason why Fox and men's basketball shouldn't be able to build bigger support.

"We have a huge student following for basketball that's just salivating, they're just waiting on the edge of their seat for a program that they can get behind," Yoculan said.

Georgia's coaching staff is one of the country's best, and Fox will look to make it even better. But he's got his work cut out for him.

"These jobs aren't easy, and make no mistake about it, the men's basketball job isn't easy," Landers said. "You could hire John Wooden, but if all the pieces aren't in place, it's not going to work."