Georgia Basketball schedule complete for 2023-24 season

A non-conference schedule for Georgia Basketball’s 2023-24 season was released a few weeks ago. Now Bulldog fans can fill out the rest of their calendar with the SEC announcing dates for Mike White and company in the conference slate.

After the 13-game non-conference contests, the final of which is on December 30th, Georgia opens its SEC schedule a week later with a road trip to Missouri on January 6th. Then it’s a pair of home games against Arkansas (Jan. 10) and Tennessee (Jan. 13) at Stegeman Coliseum. Each of the first three opponents made the NCAA Tournament last season and advanced into at least the second round.

The Bulldogs’ back-to-back home games are then following by back-to-back games on the road. It’s one of two times they do so, starting at South Carolina before heading to Kentucky on January 16th and 20th. Georgia split its two games against both of these teams last season, winning at home but falling on the road. They’ll look to change that this year.

On January 24th, LSU comes to town after ending Georgia’s season in the SEC Tournament last March. Then it’s a trip back to Gainesville for the former Florida coach White as the Bulldogs take on the Gators on the 27th.

We mentioned two back-to-back road stretches on the schedule. Well, there’s also multiple back-to-back home stretches, the second of which comes against Alabama (Jan 31) and South Carolina (Feb 3). The Crimson Tide won the league last season – both in the regular season and the tournament – and were a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, advancing to the Sweet 16 in their fourth season under Nate Oats.

Here’s where the second back-to-back road games comes on the schedule, traveling to Mississippi State (Feb 7) and Arkansas (Feb 10). After the trip to Fayetteville though, Georgia has a week to prepare for its next game against Florida, back in Athens.

A trip to Vanderbilt (Feb. 21) – one of two trips to Nashville that Georgia will take in a matter of three weeks with the SEC Tournament set to be held at Bridgestone Arena for the eighth time in the last 11 seasons – a home game against Auburn (Feb. 24) and a trip west to LSU (Feb. 27) with a short Saturday-to-Tuesday turnaround close out the month of February. March Madness then ensues with a third set of back-to-back home games – Texas A&M (March 2) and White’s alma mater Ole Miss (March 5) – before the Bulldogs close the season out at Auburn on the ninth, their second game against the Tigers in two weeks.

Highlights of the non-conference schedule include games against Oregon (Nov. 6 – Las Vegas), Wake Forest (Nov. 10 – Athens), Miami (Nov. 17 – Bahamas), Florida State (Nov. 29 – Tallahassee) and of course in-state rival Georgia Tech (Dec. 5 – Athens). In total, Georgia will play 13 games against teams that made the 2023 NCAA Tournament between its non-conference and conference schedules.

Georgia, who went 16-16 last season in its first year under the direction of Mike White, is breaking in nine new players on its roster for 2023-24. The Bulldogs signed four newcomers from the high school ranks – a group that ranks 18th nationally and fourth in the SEC – plus five more from the transfer portal, coming in at No. 10 in the country there.

The Bulldogs picked up RJ Melendez (Illinois), Jalen DeLoach (VCU), Russel Tchewa (South Florida), Noah Thomasson (Niagara) and RJ Sunahara (Nova Southeastern) out of the transfer portal. Sunahara seems to be the biggest addition from the portal as the reigning Division II Player of the Year, but don’t count out possible contributions from Melendez as a shooter, DeLoach and Tchewa as big men and Thomasson as a scorer.

Blue Cain and Silas Demary joined Georgia’s Class of 2023 this spring. Including James and Jordan three of the four rank in the top 100 according to the On3 Industry Ranking with all four having at least one of the major recruiting services ranking them within the top 100 including Cain, a consensus top-100 player. Dylan James and Mari Jordan signed with Georgia last November in the Class of 2023.

Good news for the Bulldogs and getting accustomed to playing with their new teammates, they’ve already gotten their feet wet with a trip to Italy over the summer. There they played three games against elite Italian professional teams and experienced all that the country has to offer in Florence, Rome, Pompeii and Sorrento. Statistical highlights of the trip are as follows per Georgia Basketball’s social media accounts:

Thomasson: 14 pts, 5 ast in game one
Tchewa: 14 pts, 5 reb in game one
Moncrieffe: 11 pts, 6 reb in game one
Jordan: 10 pts, 3 reb in game one / 13 pts, 5 reb, 3 stl in game three
Anselem-Ibe: 9 pts, 4 reb in game one / 10 pts, 3 reb, 2 stl in game three
James: 9 pts, 15 reb in game one
Cain: 10 pts in game two / 12 pts, 7 reb, 3 stl in game three
Melendez: 9 pts, 3 stl in game two
Abdur-Rahim: 9 pts in game two / 26 pts, 8 reb, 2 stl in game three
Hill: 6 pts in game two
DeLoach: 11 pts, 6 reb, 1 stl in game three
Demary: 10 pts, 6 ast, 4 stl in game three
Sunahara: 9 pts, 4 reb, 2 stl in game three