Mike White on Georgia’s transition defense: ‘This isn’t high school basketball’

The Georgia Bulldogs just dropped their sixth straight game on Saturday, losing to SEC East archrival the Florida Gators at home. And head coach Mike White was none too thrilled with his team following the 88-82 loss.

During the Bulldogs’ postgame press conference, white laid into his team about the laundry list of shortcomings they had on Saturday. But at the top of his list was transition defense and capitalizing on live ball turnovers both offensively and defensively.

“On offense and defense: turnovers; live ball turnovers continue to haunt us in some of these close games,” said White. “Live ball turnovers and a couple of their offensive rebounds… probably sitting here feeling a lot different if, [and] transition defense two. Off of makes too, at times. It’s something we’ve talked about all year…”

“We’ve got to continue at home to learn when you score; they can be as loud as they want; that’s great; you can’t jog back. This isn’t high school basketball. You can’t look up in the crowd. I mean, we’re not good enough to do that. Maybe some teams are; we’re not good enough to do that. So on Monday, we’ll continue to work on sprinting back and getting in a stance [and] getting matched up if we’re gonna be competitive on Wednesday.”

As White highlighted, Georgia was careless with the basketball throughout the night. The Bulldogs committed 14 turnovers against Florida, which led to 18 points off of turnovers for the Gators. The Gators 39-31 also outrebounded the Bulldogs, winning the offensive rebounding battle 15-8. Both of these discrepancies allowed Florida to put up 13 more shot attempts than Georgia on Saturday night.

While the Bulldogs head coach wasn’t thrilled with his team’s performance and plans on drilling and working with them to correct the errors before they take on Vanderbilt on Wednesday, he was elated with the atmosphere the Bulldogs faithful provided. Midway through his assessment of his team performance on Saturday, white took a moment to thank the Georgia faithful for stepping up and supporting the men’s basketball program with such passion and excitement.

“And I want to say before I forget… I’m really appreciative to our fans that came; they were loud and they were a big factor. It shows the commitment to men’s basketball here. Our administration has done a great job. I’m really appreciative; our fans were awesome.”

White and Georgia sit towards the bottom of the SEC conference at 14-11 and are 4-8 in conference play. However, Georgia could pick up a much-needed boost of confidence with a victory over the struggling Vanderbilt Commodores on Wednesday. Vanderbilt has not had a great 2023-24 season by any stretch of the imagination, as they are 7-18 overall and 2-10 in the conference. A win against them on Wednesday would not only end Georgia’s current losing streak but also keep them in contention for a possible spot in the field of 68.