Mike White credits team's body language in win over Chattanooga

Georgia Basketball is off to a much better start this year than in some of the other recent ones. New head coach Mike White has his guys playing competitive hoops as conference play nears. At 8-3 with two straight quality wins, the Dawgs finally leaving behind the previous era. Over the weekend, Georgia picked up one of its best non-conference wins in years, handling Notre Dame by 15 on a neutral court. Then, on Wednesday, they staved off a Chattanooga team that had won six of their last seven.

According to Coach White, that win over Chattanooga would have never been possible without the confidence boost from the Notre Dame victory. The performance against the Mocs the other day was a bit of a letdown compared to the ND game, but the Bulldogs still dug deep and found a way to avoid a home loss against a feisty mid-major club.

White was pleased with the confidence his team played with and believes it was the key to taking home the win:

Mike White on key to Chattanooga win

“Yeah, I think that, early on, I’m not sure we were as confident in ourselves, as young people, that we could get it done. And I think that if we had come up on the short end against Notre Dame, I’m not sure we would have won this game. I think that gave us a boost. I think we talked about it, whether that was yesterday or the day before, it all runs together.”

White went on to admit that he was a little nervous and perhaps that rubbed off on the players just a little bit. Credit to the players, though, because they didn’t get tight when it mattered most, even if the head coach was sweating a little extra over on the sidelines.

“But that was a boost for us, and I think that as a head coach, I was probably a little bit more rattled than our guys, you know, mid-second half. Like, we’ve got to execute better, we’ve got to. That’s not the right shot, and that was a late rotation there, and our guys had a sense that they were going to figure this out, that they were going to get some stops down the stretch. And we did.”

Georgia appears to finally be turning the ship around on the basketball court, one game at a time.