Listen to The Brunswick News Sports Lounge
January 27, 2010
By BUDDY HUGHES
The Brunswick News
Mariners begin critical four- game conference homestand January 27, 2010.
The Mariners found their sea legs in the nick of time. College of College Georgia has turned its season around since starting their Georgia Junior College Athletic Association schedule.
Before conference play began, the Mariners were mired in a three-game losing streak and had to vacate three wins from earlier in the season when the National Junior College Athletic Association discovered in a random audit that a CCGA player had not completed a short semester course in time to qualify for the first semester.
The Mariners are now 10-11 overall and 4-1 in the GJCAA after starting conference play with a 5-10 record. Longtime CCGA head coach Gerald Cox said his team¹s success has been a product of ³experience, learning and growing up.²
³In the next month, we ought to be better than we are right now,² Cox said.
³This is a huge, huge difference from high school basketball in every aspect of the game. The mental part of it (and) the physical part of it are both dramatically different from high school.²
The only team to beat CCGA in conference play this season is to- night¹s opponent, Middle Georgia College. The Warriors (16-2, 4-0) defeated the Mariners 86-69 in Cochran earlier this month .
³They¹re the most consistent team in the league,² Cox said. ³They¹re consistent in everything they do. Most people¹s weakness is a lack of consistency.²
Consistency for 40 minutes is something Cox has been wanting to see from his Mariners. CCGA trailed at the intermission Saturday at South Georgia Tech, before outscoring the Jets by 14 points in the second half to earn the 88-79 win.
³The game Saturday was a prime example,² Cox said. ³We were down five at halftime and weren¹t doing everything the way it needed to be done. In the second half, we did. If we can do that for 40 minutes, we¹ll be pretty good.²
The Mariners got a good game from Brunswick High graduate Ernest Fuller on Saturday. The former Pirate bombed in six 3-pointers for CCGA. Fuller was rewarded by being named the GJCAA¹s Player of the Week after finishing the week with 30 points ‹ all from behind the arc ‹ in two Mariner wins.
³He¹s shooting it, and I want him to keep shooting it,² Cox said of Fuller, a freshman guard. ³He and (freshman guard) Jaren Harris are both doing well.
They both need to keep shooting it.²
Fuller is third in the conference in 3-point percentage at 37.4 per- cent while Harris is second at 40 percent.
Helping out Fuller, Harris and the other wing scorers has been the inside play of forward/center Jonathan Brooks. The 6-foot-7 sophomore leads the team with 15.4 points per game and 8.3 re- bounds per game.
³He¹s a tremendous scorer,² Cox said. ³He can do it inside and from about 15 or 16 feet. He can score over anybody. He¹s got several weapons. He doesn¹t use the same shot all the time. If we get him the basketball, he¹s going to make good things happen.²
Tonight¹s game against Middle Georgia is slated for a 7:30 p.m. tip-off and is the first of a four- game homestand against conference foes.
The Mariners host Gordon College (13-7, 2-3) on Feb. 3, Georgia Perimeter (9-12, 3-3) on Feb. 6 and Atlanta Metro (8-14, 2-4) on Feb. 13.