Georgia will be the 11th seed in the upcoming SEC Tournament and will play 14th-seed Oklahoma on Wednesday night at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville.
The Bulldogs (20-11) will be the final game of the day.
Oklahoma (18-12, 5-12) played Texas (17-11, 6-11) Saturday night. Georgia beat the Sooners 72-62 in Athens on Jan. 11. Asa Newell and Dakota Leffew both led the Bulldogs that night with 15 points. Silas Demary Jr. added 10.
The Bulldogs will enter the tournament on a high note.
Georgia’s four-game winning streak is the longest of any other team in the SEC after beating Vanderbilt on Saturday 79-68, which likely clinched a spot in the NCAA Tournament.
“We’ve got momentum. A couple of our guys weren't quite as sharp as we've been on that last road trip, but other guys stepped up, so hopefully, you can put it all together right where you've got all five guards that you play all play well at one time,” head coach Mike White said. “If all of your frontcourt guys play well at one time, and that's your ceiling, that's maximizing potential. It’s hard to do but needed this time of year if we're going to make some noise the rest of this month, so that's where we'll focus as we get back to work.”
Georgia will be looking to advance past the first round of the SEC Tournament for the first time since 2020. That year, the Bulldogs defeated Ole Miss in the opening round before COVID-19 hit, canceling the rest of the tournament.
Georgia’s improvement in White’s three years in Athens has been incremental.
His first year, the Bulldogs went 16-16 after Georgia went 6-26 in Tom Crean’s final year.
Last season, Georgia finished 20-17, advancing to the semifinals of the NIT. This year, it appears that the Bulldogs will take it a step further by advancing to the NCAAs for the first time since 2015.
“We came to Georgia and thought that we'd have an opportunity to build something of our own, to rebuild the program,” White said. “We’re about the potential of what this is and what it's been at times. But we want to put our heads down, get to work, and get better. We want to recruit the high-level players, to be in the mix to potentially play post-seasons and play in NCAA tournaments because that's what this job should be.”
Georgia entered Saturday’s game with Vanderbilt ranked No. 32 in the NET rankings, an analytical system used by the NCAA selection committee to pick its at-large teams to the 68-team field.
“We’ve got double-digit losses, but we’ve played some really good teams. And we've got some high-level wins, like today. We’ve had multiple good wins,” White said. “But we're still going to be process driven. We got to be about let’s play better in Nashville. If we don't focus on that, I don't know that we will. I don't know how well we'll play, so that's where we're at with our mindset.”
