Mike White shares on Georgia season that was, what he's looking for in future

College Basketball season comes to a close in just a matter of days with the Final Four in Phoenix this weekend. The SEC is represented with Alabama – something that’s sure to leave Georgia fans conflicted in their feelings – after what was for the most part a disappointing performance in the NCAA Tournament. One of the country’s strongest leagues throughout the season, five of the eight teams were bounced in the opening round while just two made it to the second weekend.

Georgia was not among the majority of the league that ended its season in The Big Dance. Instead, the Bulldogs got an opportunity to play in the NIT, making their way to Indianapolis with a trio of impressive wins before being falling in the semifinals to Seton Hall on Tuesday. While not the tournament anybody in Athens desired to be in at the start of the season, there definitely were promising signs shown throughout the 2023-24 campaign – especially down the stretch.

UGA opened its season against Oregon in Las Vegas. One of six games Georgia would play in the non-conference slate against power conference opponents, the Bulldogs certainly were put to the test early on. Coming out of those games with a 3-3 record (Oregon – L, Wake Forest – W, Miami – L, Providence – L, Florida State – W, Georgia Tech – W) and entering SEC play with an eight-game win streak, Mike White’s group began to find its footing some with nine newcomers starting to gel as one team.

SEC play started the way folks wanted too. Winning four of the first six while being competitive in all of them, Georgia fans started to think about what could be. Then, things fell apart with a consistent theme of struggling in the second half showing itself to do the Dawgs in several times against the league’s top competition including both Tennessee and Alabama at home. Georgia would lose six straight and nine of its 10 games between January 27th and March 2nd. Needless to say, February wasn’t all too loving.

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A bounce back came in March though, winning at home one final time against Ole Miss before advancing in the SEC Tournament and pushing Florida to the edge in Nashville. That earned an invite to the NIT – even though it looked like things might be over and UGA needed a little bit of help – and the Bulldogs made the most of the opportunity afforded to them. We all saw how that played out over the last few weeks, winning over Xavier, Wake Forest and Ohio State to earn a spot in the semifinals for just the third time in program history while also picking up this team’s 20th win, something that hadn’t been done in eight seasons in Athens.

“I mean, we’re really close. I think anyone in this tournament is very close, especially the teams who are sitting here now in Indianapolis. I mean, the way that we’ve played, again, in the past month, if we played that way all year, we would have been in the other tournament,” White said this week when asked how close he feels Georgia Basketball is to playing on the same level as the majority of the SEC that made the NCAA Tournament. “Again if you look at what Ohio State has done at home and what Wake Forest has done at home, and the team Xavier has been all season, and with the SEC wins late that we got, we are playing like an NCAA Tournament team right now. Unfortunately you’ve got to do that all year to get in the other tournament and you’ve got other factors that are involved with your quad one and quad two opportunities and how you take advantage and your computer numbers and all those things.

“We talk about growth in our program as much as anything. Growth on the court, growth off the court, playing your best basketball season late in the season, becoming your best version, maxing out. It’s all the same stuff, right, in each program phrases those type things in different ways. Those are usually the words we go to the most,” he continued. “But if it comes down to growth and that’s where your focus is, process-driven, as opposed to results-driven and getting better throughout the year, I’m proud of what this team has accomplished, really proud. Because today, we are a very good basketball team, and who knows what that means for next year. We are going to finish as strong as we can. Hopefully it gives us a little bit of momentum to be this version, you know, for longer stretches during next season and the following season and moving forward.”

So what were the consistent themes of the season that was? Well, there were some good and some bad – sort of an overarching trend you might be able to see in the season as a whole. Georgia fought hard, but the Bulldogs couldn’t finish. They were resilient, but at the same time, they did things to get them in the hole they would dig themselves out of. For every positive, there feels like there’s a negative too.

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The 2023-24 season is over, and in this day in age of College Basketball, seasons are almost entirely separate from one another with how much turnover happens in a single offseason. Georgia found three freshmen to build around – Silas Demary, Blue Cain and Dylan James – but the staff must hold onto them with the transfer portal an option and several suitors that would happily help them find a new home. At the same time, White and company must use the portal to their advantage and add to their roster for 2024-25 with the available options.

White talked throughout the season about ‘when the ball stopped bouncing for this team.’ Well, it has come to rest, and now, the focus is on picking up where things left off next season. Hoping to carry over the resiliency, White admitted the mental toughness of his team was high at times while lacking at other points.

“We’ll make sure that we’re bringing guys in here that are highly competitive, that are playing to win. You know, we certainly didn’t do that all the time and I don’t know that there’s one team in college basketball that does that 40 minutes a game,” White said postgame after the semifinals loss to Seton Hall. “For young people, you can get lost a little bit, and you can lose focus at times in terms of what’s most important. It’s a team sport with a lot of individual aspiration, obviously, and that’s what we’re all fighting.”

“These guys here that I had a chance to work with for 37 games in 10 months – what a long season, we started practice June 1st or somewhere in there – were awesome to work with because best practice team I’ve ever coached. I’m sad it’s over,” he continued. “… The resiliency, the camaraderie, the work ethic in practice, there’s a lot of positive looking back on this season. We were a much more competitive team against Power Five teams, against SEC teams than we were a year ago, and we look forward to taking more steps in the future.”