Georgia Basketball excited for fresh start at SEC Tournament

ATHENS, Ga. — The SEC Tournament brings about new life for Georgia Basketball as the Bulldogs get their postseason journey underway on Wednesday. Taking on Missouri in Game Two of the action at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Mike White and his players hope it’s the start of something special that comes about from the rejuvenating feeling of a fresh start.

“We’re 0-0, you know? It’s a new season,” Georgia’s leading scorer Noah Thomasson said on Tuesday before leaving for the Music City. “There’s three parts of your season. Missouri is going to probably be fired up to come play us. Their conference season wasn’t the best that they wanted it to be, so now they have a chance to have a clean slate. We know that they’re going to be fired up and ready to play.”

“It’s like a relief — you know, a chance to make a run still. We still have an opportunity, especially in this league,” Thomasson continued. “If we win a couple of games and it puts us in a whole different situation. It’s always huge. You know, we’ve got to take care of tomorrow first, but it’s something we’ve paid attention to the whole time.”

Georgia enters as the No. 11 seed after finishing the regular season with a 16-15 overall record and 6-12 mark in the SEC. It’s the exact same place the Bulldogs were a season ago, but the numbers show an improved squad with multiple metrics having Georgia showing an improvement of greater than 50 spots overall and several key statistics doing the same.

White can see that improvement over the course of the season. Just look back to the previous meeting between Georgia and Missouri. It was the first game of the SEC schedule for the Bulldogs, who took an eight-game win streak into Columbia. While having had success against the non-conference portion of its schedule, UGA still had plenty to figure out about itself within the SEC.

“I think our role identification has improved, has become a little bit more clear steadily throughout the year,” White said. “Going back to an earlier comment, Russ (Russel Tchewa) and Noah (Thomasson) have kind of settled in over time and have learned gradually how to be a part of something a little bit bigger, you know, as opposed to be the guy as they were at their last stops. And our freshmen have grown. You know, we’ve gotten better on the defensive glass throughout the year. We’ve gotten better overall rebounding, our attention to detail, our accountability there. Our physical toughness I think has improved gradually throughout the year. We still have some deficiencies: 2-point percentage defense, protecting the rim, blocking shots, things like that. We’ve also morphed a few times offensively as to what our attack is based on the opponent. This team’s gotten better at making some of those changes. Hopefully we can finish strong.”

Finishing strong would take quite the effort. In order to win the SEC Tournament, which Georgia has done twice before (1983, 2008), the Bulldogs would have to win five games in five days, taking down Missouri, Florida and Alabama all before the semifinals where a team like Kentucky could await.

White’s not focused on that, nor are his players. They know that if they don’t take care of business on Wednesday, there’s nothing to even think about but the offseason come Thursday.

“I mean, obviously they’ve done well in the past. Last year they didn’t do so well and lost in the first round. We obviously want to change that this year,” SEC All-Freshman team selection Silas Demary said. “But honestly, like Coach and them have been preaching, it’s a new season, clean slate. Everybody’s 0-0 at this point, so if we can make a run in the tournament, that might give us a chance for the NIT. Even if we get the chance, like, we want to win it all so we can try and get a tournament bid. So we just want to go in there, new faces, clean slate, everything and everybody just be confident. I feel like when we’re a confident team, we’re a team to be reckoned with.”

“We’ve got to do our best creatively to keep guys as fresh as possible. Everyone’s in the same boat though, you know? I know we can be fresh as heck on Thursday, but if we don’t win on Wednesday it doesn’t matter, right? If guys have got to play 35 if they’re playing well and if they’ve got to play 40, so be it,” White added. “It’s about trying to beat Missouri by one point, you know, and surviving and advancing. We’ll worry about staying fresh, you know, if you happen to be up big in a game, but that hasn’t happened to us very often this year.”

Tip time for Wednesday night against Missouri (8-24 overall, 0-18 SEC) is set for approximately 9:30 p.m. ET on the SEC Network. The Bulldogs and Tigers will tangle 25 minutes after the completion of Game One featuring the 12 and 13 seeds, Arkansas and Vanderbilt.

Georgia won the previous meeting of the two teams 75-68 in Columbia thanks to a double-double from Tchewa, a clutch 3-pointer from Demary and strong scoring from both Thomasson and Justin Hill. Last year in the SEC Tournament, the Bulldogs were bounced by LSU on Wednesday night in this same 11-14 matchup with the last win in the conference championship coming in 2020 prior to the COVID-19 cancellation of the remainder of the season.