No. 1 Auburn at No. 23 Georgia

WHERE: Stegeman Coliseum

WHEN: Saturday, 1 p.m.

RECORDS: Georgia 14-3, 2-2; Auburn 16-1, 4-0

TV/RADIO: SEC Network (John Scrifffen, Daymeon Fishback); Georgia Bulldog Radio Network (Scott Howard, Chuck Dowdel and Adam Gillespie)

GAME NOTES

Georgia’s SEC gauntlet has been well-documented.

Saturday afternoon at Stegeman Coliseum, the Bulldogs face No. 1 Auburn when the Tigers come to town.

Tip-off is set for 1 p.m. and will be televised on the SEC Network. The game is already a sellout.

“Yeah, we’ll be ready. Our guys will be ready to compete, and our guys will be prepared,” said head coach Mike White, whose 23rd-ranked Bulldogs are coming off a 74-56 loss Wednesday night at Tennessee.

The Bulldogs had better be ready.

Auburn has been magnificent. The Tigers are 16-1 and coming off a dominant 88-66 victory over No. 15 Mississippi State, despite the absence of preseason SEC Player of the Year Johni Broome.

Broome suffered an ankle injury last Saturday at South Carolina and is expected to miss a second-straight game against the Bulldogs.

“The adjustments that they made without arguably the best player in the country … credit those guys,” White said. “They’re just terrific offensively and defensively. It’s going to be a battle, of course. But we’re looking forward to Stegeman rocking and giving Auburn our best shot.”

The Bulldogs enter Saturday’s play on a 13-game home winning streak.

But if Georgia wants to pull off the upset (Auburn is favored by 10), two areas of the Bulldogs’ play will have to improve – beating the press and eliminating turnovers.

Both were problems against Tennessee, and White said both will be again if corrections are not made.

“We had one just glaring possession where we’ve got three guys in press attack and two guys not in press attack, and that’s unacceptable,” White said. “That starts with me and our staff. But then we had four or five others where, again, it was just better defense than offense with (Jahmai) Mashack and (Zakai) Ziegler in the backcourt just creating some havoc. Their extended pressure not only caused those turnovers, but I also thought it had us on our heels a little bit there offensively.”

White hopes his team will be able to play more like it did in the final 10 minutes of the game. After trailing by more than 20, the Bulldogs were able to close within 12 before ultimately falling by 18.

“Probably the last 10 minutes of the game or so, I thought we played downhill in space and made good decisions,” White said. “Our bigs did a pretty good job of moving it, and we got open ones. We got really good looks there late in the game. A few of them fell. Of course, some of them didn’t, but hopefully, that’s something we can point out moving forward.”

But even with better looks, White knows the turnovers must stop.

Georgia’s 13.7 turnovers per game ties the Bulldogs with LSU for the worst mark in conference play.

“It’s a huge concern. It’s been a huge concern all year. We’ve had good wins, and we’ve got some really good defensive numbers. We’ve got a lot of good offensive numbers, but that one number has been glaring all year,” White said. “We’ve talked about it. We’ve done a lot of stuff in practice, done a lot of film work, and addressed it. I don’t know that by the end of the year, we’re going to be in the top three or four in the league in terms of valuing the basketball in assist-to-turnover ratio, but we certainly can be better and I have confidence that we’re going to continue to improve because we’ve showed moments where the ball is moving, our decisions are better, and we’re valuing it at a high level.”

• The No. 23-ranked Georgia Bulldogs host No. 1 Auburn on Saturday looking to extend their 13-game winning streak at Stegeman Coliseum, the fourth-longest stretch of home success in program history.

• The Bulldogs are ranked No. 23 in both the AP and coaches polls this week, UGA’s first AP poll appearance since Jan. 10, 2011 and the first time the Dogs are in both polls March 10, 2003.

• Mike White has led three different programs with losing records the season before he arrived to top-25 rankings in the AP poll, also doing so at Louisiana Tech and Florida

• The Bulldogs entered the week ranked 30.8 in an average of six popular metrics (NET, KenPom, Torvik, KPI, BPI, and SOR) – an increase of 188.2 spots since Mike White became UGA’s head coach.

• Auburn is Georgia’s fifth straight ranked opponent, the first time the Dogs have ever played a quintet of top-25 foes in a row. In fact, UGA had never played four ranked teams in a row before Wednesday.

• Asa Newell, who was named SEC Freshman of the Week for the third time this season on Monday, leads a quartet of Bulldogs averaging double figures at 15.3 ppg. He also paces UGA on the boards at 6.7 rpg. Among league leaders, Newell is ranked No. 18 in scoring and No. 13 in rebounding – including an SEC-best 3.6 offensive boards per game. He also is No. 3 in the SEC and No. 39 nationally in field goal percentage (.578). Rounding out the double-digit point producers in the scoring column are Dakota Leffew at 12.1 ppg, Silas Demary Jr. at 11.9 ppg, and De’Shayne Montgomery at 10.0 ppg.