What's left for Georgia basketball and what's needed to make the NCAA tournament
Georgia basketball is still alive in its chase for an NCAA Tournament birth. The Bulldogs haven’t been to the Big Dance since 2015 and after an offseason where a significant commitment was made to building the roster, it’s a big closing stretch for Mike White and company.
Last night, when it tipped off against No. 3 Florida, Georgia was in need of three wins and it got one that most didn’t expect. UGA jumped out to a 26-point lead in the first half, carried a 16-poing lead into the half, gave it all up, and dominated the final 45 seconds of the game to win 88-83. The Dawgs now hold a NCAA NET ranking of 36.
What’s next for Georgia?
The good news is the Bulldogs are done playing the top half of the league in the regular season. After two games against Florida, two against Auburn, and playing at Tennessee, Alabama, Ole Miss, and Texas A&M, Georgia will finish the season with three straight games against teams in the bottom half of the league.
The bad news is that a couple of those teams, Texas and Vanderbilt, are also fighting for tournament lives. Georgia plays the Longhorns next and they have a NET ranking of 39. That one will tip at 8 p.m. ET on Saturday (ESPN2).
The Longhorns are hanging around the bubble because they score the basketball. They’re ranked fifth in the league in three-point percentage and sixth in field goal percentage, making 46.7 percent of shots from the floor. It all starts with 6-foot-6 freshman guard Tre Johnson, who leads the SEC in scoring at 20.2 points per game.
If Georgia is going to walk onto the 40 acres in Austin and grab a win, it’s going to need a similar effort to the one it got on Tuesday night against Florida. This one feels like the most improbable seeing as how UGA is looking for it’s first league road win of the year.
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Vanderbilt and its NET ranking of 43 will come to Athens to wrap up the regular season and the Bulldogs have been much better at home. The Commodores have played a light scheduled, comparatively, to this point. While Georgia has played 14 games against Q1 opponents, Vandy has played just 11. The Commodores have three Q1 wins but they also have a Q2 loss.
Sandwiched between the Horns and ‘Dores is a trip east to face South Carolina. The 1-14 Gamecocks rest at the bottom of the league and Georgia knocked them off in Athens earlier in the season. I’ll say it again, the Dawgs are looking for their first SEC road win of the year. It’s certainly not a “gimme.”
What has to happen…
Georgia must win two of those games to have a chance at the NCAA tournament. Finishing the SEC slate with a 7-11 record doesn’t sound very impressive until you think about the fact that the league has 13 teams inside the NET Rankings’ top 45 teams. UGA now has three quad-one wins against St. Johns, Kentucky, and Florida. It has the NET ranking and resume to get in at 19-12, especially if it can get one win in the SEC Tournament.
Reeling off four-straight wins to finish off the SEC slate would be something. In fact, it would buck a small trend set by White’s two teams at Georgia thus far. The Bulldogs lost three of four to end the 2023-2024 regular season and it lost all four the season prior. It would also put the Georgia inside the NCAA tournament without question at 20-11.
