BUFFALO, N.Y. — Mike White didn’t need to get to the podium to sum up Georgia’s performance against Saint Louis. As he exited the Georgia locker room, the frustrated Georgia basketball coach said it.
“That was embarrassing,” White said following his team’s 102-77 loss to Saint Louis on Thursday.
It marks the second consecutive season White and Georgia have been run out of the gym in their first game of the NCAA tournament. Despite a record-setting regular season for the Bulldogs, the end result is all the same.
White expounded on the effort in greater detail to reporters. It was a hard pill to swallow for the Georgia basketball coach and program.
Below are White’s full remarks following the season-ending defeat. Georgia ends the season with a 22-11 record.
‘It was sickening,’ Mike White, Georgia players embarrassed in NCAA tournament loss to Saint Louis
Opening statement...
“Yeah, really disappointed in our effort, starting with myself, that obviously we weren’t very prepared to compete at the level that I thought we would. Did not see this coming. Tough way to end the season. Didn’t give Saint Louis much of a game.
“Again, this is being honest with you, I did not see that coming. Expected to win the game. These guys have practiced really hard all week, been locked in in our preparation, and played as disconnected as we played all season. Really proud of our regular season. We broke records. We did things that have never happened, obviously, in the history of George basketball, but our plan was to come here and play well and compete in advance. Just a tough way to end it.
“That said, I thought Saint Louis was terrific. Obviously we knew they were really good on film, but in person, the way that they executed it, and their tempo and their flow offensively and their offensive connection — the way they shared it, the way they spaced it, their split-second passing decisions 1 through 5 to one another — you didn’t know who was going to get the shot. They just took their shot. It’s something I’ve talked to you guys about all year, and we’ve done that at times. Even though we’re not the best defensive team. Unfortunately, we’re sitting here in the 80s as this season ends, which is something that we don’t want to stand for at Georgia. We’ve got to be better defensively, but at times we’ve been a really good offense. Fun to watch and sharing it and flowing. That was not us tonight.
“The ball stuck early. We took a lot of shots over Saint Louis defenders while our guys were open. Again, Saint Louis, just credit their entire program, starting with Coach Schertz. They moved us, they executed their concepts, they found the open guy and he made shots. They made the game look simple. Again, unfortunate. Great regular season. We come here and did not play well.
“I’m disappointed for our couple of seniors that are done. Justin Abson, Justin Bailey, Uncle Skill and Uncle Motor. Great kids, great young men. I hate that their college careers are over. I wish we could have finished it on a better note, but I am as ready to get back to work as I’ve ever been.”
On Georgia playing with a lack of effort...
I can’t dodge that. We played with less effort than we played any game this season. And it’s not even close, not even close. That last group or two in the final, what, five or six minutes. Mustered up some turnovers and stops and shared it a little bit. Fell in the smoke and threes, made some, missed some. Got a couple offensive rebounds, but they were quicker to the basketball for 40 minutes. I’ll have to go back and re-evaluate everything we did. Did we go too hard in practice? Did we go too long? We went twice today, we went twice yesterday. They played more fresh, for sure. So I always will look in the mirror first with our preparation. But our guys were juiced before the game, I can tell you that, with their body language and with what they were vocalizing to us and to each other. I think that these things happen more often in the NCAA tournament than they do in a regular season, they just do. Heck, we were more resilient and played harder through negative plays on the road in the SEC in front of 23,000 booing us. But I agree with some of the things Jeremiah said.
“We didn’t play very hard when we got off to a really tough start and not making shots and getting beat down the court and missed...We had some effort plays early, which we’ve seen all year. Our defensive rebounding numbers are atrocious, they’re atrocious. They have been all year. We’ve been able to overcome it by better offense at times and turning you over. But they got second possessions early off, just simple missed blockouts. And credit these guys, their wings, their attention to detail, with blocking out, with screening for one, all those little things that we’re just trying to get better at every day. You wish we would have done it better down the stretch in this one, in the SEC tournament. But when you find yourselves down six, eight , double figure points early, and the stage is big and emotionally you are really ramped up before the game and it’s not going well for you, emotions can get the best of you. And then all of a sudden it’s like, and I’ve been there before as a player, and you try to help these guys just stay in the moment, be where your feet are. Next play mentality, just think, I know we’re down eight and I know I just missed a shot, what is my next play? Turn around and sprint back, who am I matched up with? Jump to the ball, contest a shot. We looked, when we got down 10, 12 points, our body language was, oh my gosh, what just happened? Which is unlike this team, this team has been, you guys know it, this team has been so resilient. We went in to watch some plays at halftime that I’ve never seen this team do, that I’ve never seen us do, not them, us, with point blank layups at the rim, with guys looking and not even jumping and trying to contest the shot. It just, the lack of effort was really disappointing. I haven’t, yeah, I haven’t experienced something like that in a long, long time. I don’t remember the last time, and I certainly haven’t seen this team play like that, with that lack of effort, defensively and on the glass. But at times we play really hard with the ball in our hands, and that’s not the right recipe, as we know. They were way more connected than us, we practiced better yesterday than we played today, but credit Saint Louis, they’re terrific. I told Josh (Schertz), Dusty would probably call me and try to get some tips, but he may not, because I’m not sure what we did really well to help Michigan. But we wish St. Louis the best, and we would have liked to advance the course, but just obviously didn’t play anywhere near where we needed to.”
On the importance of winning an NCAA tournament team...
“Yes, it’s huge, it’s the next step. We, the regular season we had was, it speaks for itself. We’ll finish with the highest this, the highest that, break this record, and all that record, and so on and so forth. But you do that for postseason opportunities like this, and it’s just, again, I expected to win this game. I thought last year, we’ll have to do these three or four things really, really well to have a chance against a team that, I shouldn’t compare them, but I thought that they were under-seeded last year, right, it’s a different story. We anticipated coming into this one against a team that, really, Saint Louis hasn’t been playing great at the end of the season, earlier on in the year, they put a lot of it together today. They put a lot together today and played really well. And again, wish them the best, and I thought they were terrific.But we anticipated having success in this one. I think we’re a better team than a year ago, and I thought this was more of a better matchup for us, at least offensively. I knew it was gonna be a tough matchup defensively for us. It was even tougher than I thought, but yeah, I mean, just from a positivity, optimism standpoint, from a building culture standpoint, we expect to get back again, and then get back again. But the next step is we gotta break through, and to have to wait. My gosh, I’m sick of my stomach that we gotta wait, potentially, for another year, to have this opportunity again. Because if you lose 90 to 86, and you had a chance down, and you did a lot of good things, and they just hit some hard shots, we were really connected, we were in character, you can live with it. But this one’s gonna be hard to, for me at least, to think about for a while. And that’s why I’m ready to get back at it, I’m ready for spring workouts to start tomorrow morning when we’re in Athens.”On the impact another blowout loss in the NCAA tournament has on the future of the program...
“It’ll be a factor. We already addressed it in the locker room with our guys, that’s not our standard, that’s not what we’re trying to build. It’s not acceptable, the effort, it’s just, we’re in the NCAA tournament. These kids have been preparing for this, some more than others, excited about this their entire lives. I remember watching the NCAA tournament when I was five, six, seven years old. And I’m blessed enough to coach a team in it, and to jog back on transition defense is unacceptable. It is sickening, whether we’re up ten, down ten, and I’m gonna cut myself off. But we want to prepare for next year, not for the outcome of this opportunity, but if it provides itself to us next year, if we earn it, but to play harder and with more pride, and to play with more excitement about being in the tournament. Saint Louis played excited. We wrote down on the whiteboard before we came out, the last message to our guys was let’s play with joy, we’ve earned it. Let’s play with joy, let’s play really, really hard. We’ve got nothing to lose, we had a great regular season. Maybe we overthought it a little bit, the conference tournament, we’d already lost to Ole Miss. All these details, all these things you can get caught up with, man, let’s just play really, really hard. And man, man, they just shot a lot of layups against the flat-footed defense. And when they missed shots, they got their own rebounds at way too high of a rate.”
On swallowing the pill of this loss and moving forward into the offseason...
“Communication with staff, with student-athletes. We’ll have 1-on-1 meetings. We’ll have group meetings. What’s so unique in today’s day and age — don’t let me ramble for a while. It’s so late. I know you guys are ready to get out of here. It’s 1 a.m. But so many of these student-athletes playing in this tournament mentally might have a couple toes in the portal. They might have a foot in the portal. They might have a foot-and-a-half in the portal. They’ve got communication with relatives, with former coaches and now with agents, right? So, first and foremost, where are we at with our roster? Let’s try to figure that out as soon as possible. Fortunately, we’ve got to wait for the portal to open, and then we’ve got to go through that process.
“We will hold workouts, but who wants to be worked out? How locked in are we going to be? Who are going to be your teammates next year? And the guys that we’re working out, we might not even be coaching them. It’s just different, and that’s not all negative. It’s just that we’re all adapting to a new landscape. It’s our world now. So you wish you knew right now, so there’s a holding pattern, right, and there’s re-evaluation of everything we’re doing. And hopefully as soon as possible we know who our roster is. Really, those summer workouts — June 1-ish — we’ll get back to work from a practice standpoint."
