Welcome to your one-stop shop for Georgia football news and takes every Monday through Friday. According to one set of rankings, the Bulldogs can’t use lack of talent as an excuse for another lackluster season.

Georgia football’s roster is stacked with talent

Add another reason for some optimism — as well as another reason for heightened expectation — for Georgia heading into the 2017 football season.

Athlon Sports used 247Sports composite recruiting rankings to figure out the most talented rosters in college football. It’s a fairly simplistic approach that ignores things such as player development and attrition, but based on this approach, though, Georgia has the fifth-most talent in the nation, trailing national championship hopefuls Alabama, Ohio State and Florida State, as well as the ever-talent-laden LSU Tigers. Here’s the top 10:

Ranking College Football’s Rosters for 2017 via Athlon Sports./Dawgnation)

The main quibble Georgia fans will have with the Bulldogs’ ranking is that the infamous 2013 recruiting class was scattered to the wind only a few years after arriving on campus. Because of that, Georgia likely skews a little higher than it should. But I also believe that the Class of 2013, for all schools, is of little importance. While there are certainly players on each team with redshirt seniors contributing — Davin Bellamy for one — the most talented of the bunch never redshirted and/or left for the NFL early.

But the important question here is the one Senator Blutarsky asked in his post on the rankings over at Get The Picture: “When is it reasonable for us to quit making excuses for Georgia’s talent base?”

I say that time is now. The first season excuse can’t be used for coach Kirby Smart anymore, not with the talent he has playing for him all over the field. He may not have the kind of skill on defense that he had at Alabama, but it’s not far off. And the offense — despite continued doubts about the line — is also loaded with the most highly rated recruits in the country from Jacob Eason to Nick Chubb to Sony Michel to Terry Godwin to Isaac Nauta. There’s no doubt that the talent to win the SEC — or at the very least, the East — is on this roster. It’s just a matter of the coaches giving them the tools they need to succeed.

Georgia tennis rolls on in NCAA singles competition

Georgia’s men’s and women’s tennis teams fell short in the NCAA Championships last week, but a few Bulldogs are still competing for national championships in the singles and doubles tournaments.

On the men’s side, sophomore Emil Reinberg and freshman Nathan Ponwith won their opening matches to advance to the second round of the tournament. Junior Wayne Montgomery lost his opening-round match. Reinberg and Ponwith will return to Dan Magill Tennis Complex for their round-of-32 matches on Thursday.

The only member of the Georgia women’s team to advance to the next round was Ellen Perez. Elena Christofi and Kennedy Shaffer lost their first-round matches on Wednesday morning.

Doubles action also begins on Thursday. The pairing of Robert Loeb and Jan Zielinski take the court for the men, while the pairings of Perez and Carolina Brinson and Christofi and Shaffer will compete for the women.

Georgia baseball season ends

Georgia baseball lost 3-0 to Mississippi State in the SEC Tournament on Wednesday to bring its season to a close. The Diamond Dogs finished the season 25-32 overall, 11-19 in the SEC. It was another poor season in what has been a long run of them for UGA baseball, but there is some reason for optimism heading into next season.

The first is that the team played much better down the stretch than it did at any other point in the season, going 8-4 in the month of May, including series wins against two ranked opponents. The second is that this is an incredibly young team. More than half of the roster is made up of underclassmen. Brighter days are probably on the horizon. But will they be as bright as UGA baseball fans want and expect them to be?

ICYMI

Good dog

Why won’t you just let Butters chill, my dude?