Mike White on Georgia snapping losing streak: 'Really gratifying'

Georgia finally walked off the court as winners in this week’s game at Vanderbilt, snapping a six-game losing streak with a victory over the Commodores.

The Bulldogs were once 4-2 in SEC play but reached the tougher portion of their schedule and really struggled to find success. However, UGA was still competitive and among the six losses, only once was the margin of defeat greater than 10 with a handful of very close contests just not going their way. But against Vandy, Georgia was able to win by a dozen.

After the win, Bulldog head coach Mike White admitted what a brutal stretch it had been and was just thankful to go home victorious.

Yeah, been a tough few weeks and really gratifying. I mean, feels great to get back in that win column, really proud of our guys and happy for our guys,” he shared after the win, noting that his team has yet to throw in the towel with their effort throughout the year.

“That’s a happy locker room, because our guys, we’ve talked about this all year, our guys work consistently, they consistently bring it. Their approach to practice and work overall daily is really good as good as I’ve ever been around. Had another great practice last night, pretty sharp shoot around this morning. Just had a lot of carryover. We saw a team that played like they practiced, and we need more of that.”

Specifically, it was the mental approach of his team that impressed Mike White in the win over Vanderbilt.

“I thought we played with more maturity, a little bit less emotional, better responses to a couple live ball turnovers. We all sprinted back for the most part, did less pouting. We’ve struggled with that.”

White also explained that this UGA team is simply prone to runs — one way or the other. But the Dawgs got enough of them to go their way this time around, as White says that he thought the entire rotation played well.

“This team’s really competitive and that’s why you’ve seen this team make a lot of runs. You know, we’ve given up some big leads, but we’ve also come back from from sizable deficits, and it’s kind of the mental makeup of this team, and we’re working on continuing to be more even keel responding to adversity in-game a little bit better.

“Probably the first game all season I feel like everyone that we put in the game played well. Our starting five played well and everyone off the bench played well. Everyone had a positive plus-minus.”

As he has all season long, Mike White used the press conference to share praise for his guys rather than rant about what they did wrong. But after a win, obviously, that’s much easier to do.

“I’ve come in here after other wins or losses and said, you know, we’re going to be positive about our guys. I love our guys. Everyone that played wearing a Georgia uniform tonight played well.”