Georgia puts end to postseason drought, invited to 2024 NIT
ATHENS, Ga. — It’s Selection Sunday, and while Georgia won’t be playing in the Big Dance, the Bulldogs are set to make their first postseason appearance since 2017 with an invite to the NIT. Announced as a No. 4 seed, Mike White’s squad will host Xavier in the opening round of the 32-team tournament.
Wake Forest is the top seeded-squad in Georgia’s quadrant of the bracket, setting up a potential rematch of the regular season matchup. The Demon Deacons take on Appalachian State while other matchups include Virginia Tech-Richmond and Ohio State-Cornell.
Georgia enters the NIT with a 17-16 record overall and a 7-13 mark against SEC competition. UGA won in the opening round of the SEC Tournament over Missouri before falling narrowly to Florida, a third loss to the Gators by two or fewer scores this season. Meanwhile, the opening round opponent Xavier enters at 16-17 with a 9-11 mark in the Big East.
The Bulldogs got off to a strong start to the season, testing themselves with a tough non-conference schedule that featured NCAA Tournament bound Oregon and Wake Forest, one of the top bubble teams entering conference championships. Both teams were coming off of appearances in the postseason, and 1-1 mark coming out of the contests certainly felt like a win in year two of the Mike White era.
Then, it was a trip to the Bahamas where Georgia took on two more teams that made the postseason last year, Miami (Fla.) and Providence. While both those games ended in losses, the competition helped UGA on to a pair of wins over ACC opponents just a matter of weeks later, taking down Florida State on the road and rival Georgia Tech at home. Of those six power conference opponents, three (Oregon – NCAA, Wake Forest – NIT, Providence – NIT) will be playing in the postseason in some form.
Georgia wrapped up the non-conference slate with 10 wins for a second straight season, this time doing so against a noticeably more difficult schedule. The Bulldogs will get to test themselves against teams from outside the SEC once again, giving themselves an opportunity to feel much better about an 11th-place finish in one of the nation’s toughest leagues by potentially knocking off some teams that finished higher in their respective conferences.
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Having been played every year since 1938 with the exception of 2020, the NIT holds a historical place in College Basketball. Games are held on campus instead of at neutral sites leading up to the semifinals and finals at Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, a recent change from the traditional location of Madison Square Garden in New York City.
This will be Georgia’s 15th ever appearance in the NIT, combining for a 13-14 record in the previous trips. The Bulldogs have advanced out of the first round eight times, most recently in 2016, and have gone as far as the semifinals/third place game in 1998, beating Fresno State to end the season on a high note.
In his career, UGA head coach Mike White has now taken six squads to the NIT, leaving Florida for his new position at Georgia before the appearance in 2022 but coaching the Gators into position for an invite. In each of the four previous trips, White’s team has won at least one game including in 2014 at Louisiana Tech when his Bulldogs walked out of Athens as 79-71 victors over Georgia.
White holds a 7-4 all time record in the NIT, winning multiple games in three of his four times coaching in the tournament. Overall, his mark in the postseason is 13-8, advancing out of the first round of the NCAA Tournament in each appearance made at Florida with a run to the Elite Eight in 2017.
