Mike White details Georgia's growth in finishing games

After an uneven start, Mike White is beginning to find his footing with Georgia.

The Bulldogs are coming off two big wins over Notre Dame and Chattanooga, and White detailed how much his team has grown in finishing wins while speaking with the media after defeating the latter.

“Not all the right things, but I thought that just the intestinal fortitude down the stretch, the body language, the ‘we’re going to get a stop.’ Had some defensive swagger, which you need against a team that’s that difficult to defend,” explained White. “Really what you want every day, whether you’re playing against each other or playing against anyone period, was complete.

“Offensively, getting to the foul line late, converting at the foul line. Continuing to do that at a pretty high clip. Much better free throw shooting team than we were early on. Assist-turnover ratio, 12 to 11. You know, you want it to be 16 to 8, the better teams that’s what they are, but that said, the first, what have we played, we’ve played 12, it was ugly. The first six games, it was ugly. In the last six, it’s been a lot better. So we’re improving in that category as well.”

Mike White and Georgia have one more non-conference game against Rider remaining next week before beginning SEC play, and it’ll be huge to get a victory in that game before taking on some of the top opponents in the sport. At the moment, it doesn’t look like anybody will be betting against them.

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

Alas, 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.

“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.

On3’s Alex Weber contributed to this article.