NASHVILLE – With the sting of Wednesday night’s 72-67 loss to LSU in the SEC Tournament still fresh on his mind, Georgia basketball coach Mike White wasn’t ready to start looking ahead to next year.

“You know what, sometime in the near future we should all get together and I'll have more material for you. Not great material, as you know by now,” White said. “It only took a year for you to figure that out, all you guys (smiling). I will have had a chance to put more thought into it. Right now it's like, my goodness, we had that one. It's tough. I feel for our guys. I feel for our seniors. Again, I feel for our fans.”

White knows a lot of work lies ahead.

Although his team’s 16 wins were 10 more than the Bulldogs had after last year’s final season under Tom Crean, the fact Georgia dropped its last six in a row does not sit well.

“These coming weeks, I'm eager to get right back to it. I'll put a lot more thought toward the big picture, the macro, wholesale things we have to evaluate offensively, defensively, what we do in spring workouts,” White said. “We’ll have individual meetings with all these guys pretty quickly and figure out where we go next.”

The next few days could be busy ones.

With Monday—the first-day players can officially enter the NCAA Transfer Portal—White needs to find out how many of his players will be returning next year.

Three Bulldogs—Jailyn Ingram, Braelen Bridges, and Mardrez McBride—have used their final years of eligibility.

Jaxon Etter and Terry Roberts both have Covid years remaining, but Etter has already announced he does not intend to return.

Roberts has not made his plans public and could return or enter the portal for his final year of eligibility.

Junior Kario Oquendo told reporters after the game he’s not sure what his future holds. Oquendo put his name in the portal after last year, but returned to the Bulldogs after Roberts joined the team.

“I’m going to talk with my family about what I’m going to do next year,” Oquendo said. “I’ll talk to my guys about it, everybody on the team, talk to Jailyn (Ingram), talk to Jabri (Abdur-Rahim); talk about what we’re all thinking as a team.”

The Bulldogs will add freshmen Dylan James and Mari Jordan.

With the one scholarship White decided to hold over and the one made available when Kyron Lindsey left the team, the Bulldogs currently have four spots available to fill for next year.

However, if Roberts and Oquendo both leave, White will have six spots to fill, presumably through the portal. Any more transfers and that number would increase.

Either way, the Bulldogs will be busy regarding the portal. Jusaun Holt did tell UGASports he intends to return.

Abdur-Rahim believes progress was made. Considering he was part of Crean’s final year, it’s easy to see why.

“We have a lot of really good people in our locker room. We really like the coaching staff. We really like each other,” he said. “We tried to start the season just by playing hard and playing for each other and being selfless. I think we laid the foundation culturally, then it kind of translated onto the court. I'm excited to see what we have in store for the future.”

However, player accountability apparently needs to improve.

“Yeah, piggybacking off of what Jabri said, I think we’ve got to focus more on accountability and focus on the little details,” junior guard Justin Hill said. “Every play matters. We saw it (against LSU). Going forward, I think we just focus on that, focus on our culture and I think we'll be in pretty good shape.”

Abdur-Rahim said it’s going to be up to the players to make that happen.

“Like Justin said, holding each other accountable, caring for one another, emphasizing the team versus one person,” Abdur-Rahim said. “Coming together as a team and being a close-knit group is something the coaches emphasized. It starts with everybody, from the manager to the oldest senior on the team.”

White hopes the lessons learned in his first season in Athens will be beneficial to all moving forward.

"I'm proud of those guys. The overall foundation, I mean, heck, it probably just starts with the simplicity of we added some wins, something that we can sell in recruiting. The fact there's some momentum, there's some positivity. We took a step, simply, in the right direction,” White said. “But this group never got to a consistent level of defense that puts you in the top half of your league. It's something that we'll continue to preach and stress and drill. We got to get better offensively, too.”