ATHENS — March Madness has arrived for Georgia basketball, with the Bulldogs squarely, and in earnest, on the proverbial “Bubble” of making the 68-team NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament field.
It’s time for Bulldogs’ fans to get acquainted with ESPN “bracketology,” and for the more serious-minded, take a deep drive into the wondrous KenPom.com ratings and “NET” rankings.
Conventional wisdom is that Georgia basketball (16-7 overall, 4-6 SEC) just needs to win games like it did on Wednesday night against LSU and continue to improve.
That’s the realistic and healthy approach for the Bulldogs players to take as they look forward to what will be a key showdown with No. 22 Mississippi State at 6 p.m. on Saturday night.
“Trust the process, and the rest will take care of itself,” coaches like Kirby Smart and Mike White often say, spitting Fortune Cookie philosophy.
That just doesn’t cut it if you’re here for the drama and fluid nature that makes up March Madness.
Putting the realistic cap back on, it’s a lot easier to trust the process of a two-time national championship coach like Kirby Smart than White, whose Boy Scout looks and verbiage belie the baller he once was at Ole Miss.
It’s not that White hasn’t done it before — he has, four times, at Florida. And, did you know White was once the Kirby Smart of Louisiana Tech basketball, posting the highest winning percentage through 100 games of any head coach in that program’s history?
Georgia basketball, however, was a massive rebuild and coaches’ graveyard when athletic director Josh Brooks hired White for the monumental task.
It has been as much about changing the culture as the results. The basketball program in Athens has just one SEC regular season title (1990) and two SEC tourney titles (1983 and 2008) since entering the SEC in 1932.
The only current SEC teams Georgia basketball, has an all-time series lead against are Ole Miss (78-48), and Texas (8-5).
Thus, UGA basketball fans are a bit jaded, even as the team looks to break its all-time series tie (59-59) with Mississippi State amid what promises to be an electric Stegeman Coliseum on Saturday night.
Georgia marketing has done everything short of a Carson Beck dunking booth to draw-in fans with side-court seating for students and quality giveaways for early-arriving fans.
The good news is this Bulldogs basketball team is determined to be the group that changes the narrative, and with the talent and resiliency they’ve shown, they are on the verge of doing just that.
White, understandably, doesn’t want his team thinking about making the NCAA tournament — the Bulldogs are going to have to eat the elephant one bite at a time against an SEC league that ranks as the best in NCAA history.
It’s important to note that if the SEC gets 12 teams in the NCAA tournament, that will set a new record, eclipsing the current mark of 11 teams that was set by the Big East in 2011.
This SEC, with four teams ranked in the top 6 and nine in the top 25, currently has 13 teams projected to make the 68-team NCAA tourney field, as projected by ESPN “bracketology” expert Joe Lunardi.
Indeed, the league is currently projected to have three of the four No. 1 seeds in the NCAA tourney (below) — a feat accomplished by the ACC in 2019, when eventual champ Virginia, North Carolina and Duke turned the trick.
Georgia entered the Wednesday night home game with LSU as the SEC’s 13th team — hanging on to a Big Dance invite by its fingernails, last among the 64 non-play-in teams.
The LSU 81-62 win at home — while the most decisive SEC victory of White’s three-year UGA tenure, was merely holding serve in the metrics.
The Bulldogs need to beat Mississippi State on Saturday night — which would represent a Quad 1 win — in Stegeman Coliseum to jump up in the pecking order.
It’s ok if Georgia fans don’t know what’s a Quad 1 win is, considering the team hasn’t made the NCAA tournament in 10 years.
It’s a home win over a team ranked 1-30, a neutral court win over a team in the Top 50 or a road win against a Top 75 team.
Georgia — ranked No. 32 in the “NET” rankings — already has notable Quad 1 victories under its belt over No. 23 Kentucky and No. 24 St. John’s.
RELATED: Current NCAA NET rankings
Just as importantly, all seven of UGA’s losses were of the Quad 1 variety, thus not as detrimental as a first-glance look at Georgia’s record might suggest.
That’s why taking care of business against LSU (No. 78 Net ranking) was so important, because that would have been a bad loss.
There will be more and other opportunities for such wins, but time is running out, March Madness is heating up, and it’s up to White and his Bulldogs to prove they can handle the pressure.
More losses are sure to come in this vicious 2024-25 version of SEC basketball. The next five games are against Top 25 teams:
• Vs. No. 22 Mississippi State, 6 p.m., Saturday
• At No. 10 Texas A&M, 9 p.m., Tuesday
• Vs. No. 15 Missouri, 3:30 p.m., Feb. 15
• At No. 1 Auburn, 4 p.m., Feb. 22
• Vs. No. 6 Florida, 7 p.m. Feb. 25
The Bulldogs need to find two or three wins out of that stretch to stay on track.
The final three regular-season games are against dangerous, but currently unranked SEC teams:
• At Texas, 8 p.m. March 1
• At South Carolina, 6 p.m., March 4
• Vs. Vanderbilt, Noon, March 8
Georgia is good enough to win all three of those games, but taking two is likely more realistic.
And then it’s off to the SEC tournament in Nashville, from March 12 through March 16, where White and the Bulldogs would prefer to be playing for the details of a final seed and location, rather than fighting for their postseason lives.
Here’s a look at where each SEC team was projected in the most recent ESPN bracketology, entering into Wednesday night’s games, with most recent result:
No. 1 seed Auburn
No. 1 seed Tennessee
Beat Missouri at home 85-81 on Wednesday
No. 1 seed Alabama
No. 2 seed Florida
No. 3 seed Kentucky
No. 3 seed Texas A&M
No. 5 seed Ole Miss
No. 5 seed Missouri
Lost at Tennessee 85-81 on Wednesday
No. 7 seed Mississippi State
No. 9 seed Texas
No. 9 seed Oklahoma
No. 10 seed Vanderbilt
No. 11 seed Georgia
Here’s a look at the “NET” rank of each SEC team:
1. Auburn
Beat Oklahoma 98-70 at home Tuesday
4. Tennessee
Beat Missouri 85-81 at home Wednesday
5. Florida
Beat Vanderbilt 86-75 at home Tuesday
6. Alabama
Beat Georgia 90-69 at home Saturday
13. Texas A&M
Beat South Carolina 76-72 on the road Saturday
18. Missouri
Lost to Tennessee 85-81 on the road Wednesday
20. Ole Miss
Beat Kentucky 98-84 at home Tuesday
23. Kentucky
Lost to Ole Miss on the road 98-84 Tuesday
29. Texas
Lost to Arkansas 78-70 at home Wednesday
30. Mississippi State
Lost to Missouri 88-61 at home Saturday
32. Georgia
Beat LSU 81-62 at home Wednesday
38. Oklahoma
Lost to Auburn 98-70 on the road Tuesday
44. Arkansas
Beat Texas 78-70 on the road Wednesday
46. Vanderbilt
Lost to Florida 86-75 on the road Tuesday
78. LSU
Lost to Georgia 81-62 on the road Wednesday
89. South Carolina
Lost to Texas A&M 76-72 at home Saturday
