No. 16 Oklahoma at Georgia

WHERE: Stegeman Coliseum

WHEN: 6 p.m.

RECORDS: Georgia 13-2, 1-1; Oklahoma 13-2, 0-2

TV/RADIO: ESPN2 (John Schriffen, Perry Clark); Georgia Bulldog Radio Network (Scott Howard, Chuck Dowdle, Adam Gillespie).

Although it’s way too early to predict Georgia’s ultimate journey through the rest of the college basketball season, Clemson transfer RJ Godfrey said there are lessons learned from last year’s run to the Elite Eight by the Tigers that the Bulldogs can apply to themselves.

So what if the Bulldogs (13-2, 1-1) play just their third conference game of the year Saturday night (6 p.m., ESPN2) when No. 16 Oklahoma pays its first visit to Stegeman Coliseum?

“I remember we lost the first conference game, similar to what we did this year,” Godfrey said. “But it was just about not giving up and being consistent every single day despite the outcome really helped us, you know, throughout the season and in the postseason when we had a really deep tournament run.”

Certainly, nobody in Georgia’s basketball facility is thinking about the postseason this year, not with 16 SEC games remaining in what’s nothing short of a gauntlet of difficult games. The Bulldogs travel to top-ranked Tennessee before hosting No. 2 Auburn next week.

However difficult the schedule will be, Bulldog head coach Mike White is repeating Godfrey's message of consistency to his players.

“I think it's more about who you're playing and the fact that the schedule ahead of us is brutal, so everyone in this league will take their lumps. It's just going to happen,” White said. “But we're going to be consistent with our work In our next practice in our next film session. It's just the way these guys are so it's a really good team to work with, which gives you a chance in the win-loss column. You can still again play really well against some of these teams like Oklahoma and come up short just based on the other team playing better than you. We’ve just got to continue to get better That's where our focus is right now.”

Godfrey likes the path the Bulldogs appear to be taking.

Thanks to their 82-69 win over No. 6 Kentucky, the Bulldogs showed what they’re capable of, even if the shots aren’t falling (41.8 percent against the Wildcats).

“I think just Coach White, you know, he's had a ton of success in this profession, and he just wants us to be the same level-minded guys every single day,” Godfrey said. “I think that's something I learned last year that he preaches to us this year. So, I just think, you know, our staff and the experience that we have in our staff is going to allow us just to be there mentally every single day.”

White doesn’t expect that to change.

“With this team, it would surprise me if we lost our level of consistency if it was negatively affected, or significantly I should say,” White said. “But Every team in the country is going to have The challenges to their to their young people will to be as consistent as possible and be detail-oriented and to be locked into the scouting report, and not on the wins, responding to losses, all those things.”

• The Bulldogs are 10-0 at home and have won 12 straight outings at Stegeman dating back to last season, which matches the fifth-longest home winning streak in program history.

• Georgia’s “Dunkyard Dawgs” rank second nationally in the percentage of made field goals that are dunks at 18.3 percent, while Asa Newell is third among individual dunk leaders with 36 slams.

• The Bulldogs enter the weekend ranked 32.8 in an average of six popular metrics (NET, KenPom, Torvik, KPI, BPI, and SOR) – an increase of 186.2 spots since Mike White became UGA’s head coach.

• Oklahoma is UGA’s third straight-ranked opponent, just the fifth time the Bulldogs have faced a trio of ranked foes in consecutive games. Georgia also in 1982-83, 1999-2000, 2016-17 and 2020-21.

After opening the season at 13-0, Oklahoma has dropped its first two league outings during its SEC membership.

The Sooners were one of the nation’s last four remaining undefeated teams before falling to No. 5/6 Alabama last Saturday in Tuscaloosa and dropping a heartbreaker to No. 10/9 Texas A&M on Wednesday.

Freshman Jeremiah Fears leads Oklahoma and ranks in the SEC’s top 10 in three major statistics – No. 5 scoring at 17.6 ppg, No. 6 in assists at 4.3 assists per game and No. 7 in steals at 2.1 spg.

Jalen Moore’s 17.4 ppg scoring average is No. 7 among league leaders, making the Sooners the only team with two of the SEC’s top-10 scorers. Duke Miles also is scoring at a double-digit pace for OU at 12.0 ppg.