Mike White searching for answers to second-half woes in SEC play

Georgia has led its opponents at halftime in back-to-back losses. In fact, the Bulldogs have boasted halftime leads in five of their nine losses in conference play this season. After Georgia’s 87-74 loss to Missouri on Saturday, Bulldogs head coach Mike White discussed the recurring issue.

“We talk about it every day,” White said. “We’ve tried a few different things, and we’ll try something else. We’ll have a long conversation tomorrow. We’ll talk about it on Monday. It’s something we talk about at halftime.

“At halftime, we’ve tried watching positive [film], we’ve tried watching negative, we’ve tried not watching. We’ve tried just talking. We’ve tried not talking. We’ve tried giving our guys a lot of time just on their own. We’ve tried giving them no time on their own. We’ve met in the middle. This is a mystery. I haven’t coached a team that’s struggled this much [in the] early second half.”

Georgia took a 41-38 lead into halftime against Missouri on Saturday. The Bulldogs traded blows with the Tigers early in the second half, with neither team ever gaining a lead greater than four points.

Nonetheless, around the halfway point of the second half, Georgia had a defensive collapse, allowing the Tigers to rattle off 15 unanswered points in just over three minutes. While Georgia stopped the bleeding, Missouri’s run proved to be lethal and the Bulldogs never brought the game back within single digits.

Georgia’s defense failed to force Missouri to commit a single turnover in the second half. The Bulldogs also sputtered on offense, connecting on just 33% of their field goal attempts in the second half.

While Mike White has already exhausted countless options to try and fix Georgia’s second-half problem, he isn’t ready to give up quite yet.

“I can’t put my finger on it. I’m gonna get more feedback from our guys. That’ll be next in the trial and error process,” White said. “But at halftime, it’s not about — trust me, we ain’t celebrating winning a half. We go in there and watch defensively the mistakes that we made.

“And the message is clear, we’ve got to be better in the second half defensively to beat a good SEC team. And early second half, man, we weren’t very good defensively.”

Things aren’t about to get any easier for the Bulldogs. On Saturday, Georgia will square off against No. 1 Auburn at 4 p.m. ET.