Dive into the Heart of Mizzou Athletics

Previewing the Georgia Bulldogs Men’s Basketball team. How will Mike White get Georgia over the hump?

The 2023-24 season was another unkind one for the Georgia Bulldogs. They won 20 games, but reaching that benchmark required 37 games and an extended trip to the NIT. It was also the best season in Athens since 2018 if you’re gauging success by KenPom.com ratings. But that’s how things have been going for Georgia basketball fans since Mark Fox was fired after that 2018 season.

Tom Crean failed to get things going, and Mike White has had two unremarkable seasons. Even under Mark Fox, the Bulldogs have only had one top-60 finish in KenPom over the past nine years. And it’s been since 2003 when Georgia last finished inside the top 30.

So last season, White tried to mix youth with some experienced transfers in hopes of bridging his roster to a season where some younger and talented reinforcements could come in and get them over the hump.

Other SEC Previews:

• 15. LSU Tigers, 5-13
• 16. South Carolina Gamecocks, 5-13

Georgia Bulldogs

Last season: 20 – 17 (6-12 in conference) #84

The Masses Prediction: 10th in conference, 8 – 10

Analytics Average: 14th in conference, 63rd overall

Dale Zanine-Imagn Images

HEAD COACH: Mike White | 3rd Season, 36-33

What does Georgia basketball want to be? It’s a question nearly as perplexing as who Mike White is.

White hails from a prominent athletics family. His father was an athletic director, and he has three siblings working in athletics administration, including the AD at Tennessee and Florida Atlantic. He’s been at Georgia for three seasons, Florida for seven seasons before, and Louisiana Tech for four years. However, despite being in the public eye for as long as he has been, White’s demeanor and interactions with the press are as interesting as his name.

The pedigree alone is intriguing, but White’s foray into head coaching at the high-major level has been largely disappointing. Florida basketball’s decline under White’s stewardship wasn’t some immediate splash of cold water. Instead, it was a slow decline toward the middle. Then came White’s move to Georgia, a program largely devoid of success for the better part of 20 years, where basketball is very much second fiddle to football. So, perhaps this is where White can sustain things a bit?

A nondescript name, running a non-descript program, out of the spotlight of a more premier program. It’s a program where it seems the main goal is, Don’t embarrass us by going 6-26 like Tom Crean!

Through two seasons, UGA has somewhat resembled Fox’s tenure. Yet Fox had two seasons in which the Bulldogs snuck into the NCAA tournament as a No. 10 seed. Those trips coincided with when the SEC was a relatively weaker conference overall.

The advent of the SEC Network has forced SEC schools up and down the conference to “care” about hoops. I think you can almost draw a direct line between those events and Georgia’s slip from respectable to also-ran. Even last year’s NIT run was a gift, as better teams turned down a trip so coaches could spend more time on the transfer portal. If Georgia can find their way onto the bubble this year, it will be the first time in 10 years they’ve even been close.

LOST PRODUCTION

% Minutes: 71.35% | 11th
% Points: 73.84% | 11th
% Possessions: 72.95% | 12th

At no point was the UGA all-in on last season. White had very clearly recruited a solid freshman class with the idea he would build around the younger players while leaning on the experienced roster to keep them competitive.

It mostly worked.

Russell Tchewa ate up space in the middle. Combo guard Noah Thomasson ate up possessions while Jabri Abdur-Rahim and RJ Melendez spaced the floor. Thomasson finished his eligibility, and Abdur-Rahim and Melendez each entered the transfer portal.

The turnover has undeniably left Georgia with a challenging situation. The current roster is only ahead of Arkansas and Kentucky in career games played. For a program striving to establish a foothold and grow, losing seven of your top 10 players is a significant obstacle.

Dale Zanine-Imagn Images

The good news? The three returners from White’s rotation were all freshmen and integral building blocks for the future. That includes point guard Silas Demary, a top-100 recruit and a physical lead guard out of North Carolina. His size and strength make him a difficult matchup, as he can use his body to get into and maneuver in tight spaces around the rim. As a freshman, however, Demary didn’t find a successful niche. Half of his touches were spot-ups but only worth 0.894 points per possession. His efficiency in pick-and-rolls (0.769 PPP) wasn’t much better. Developing Demary as a primary attacker and cleaning up his scoring and distribution on pick and rolls will go a long way toward making his half-court game more efficient and making Georgia a better team.

To help Demary out, White added Asa Newell, a five-star recruit who defines the modern four-man. He’s just as good converting as a roller at the rim as he is popping. He can also relocate and space the floor. And if Newell settles in quickly, White might have a tandem to power a resurgence in his third season.

Blue Cain is also back after a freshman season that saw him develop as a reliable floor spacer, making 35% of his 3-point attempts. Helping to space the floor will be transfer wings Dakota Leffew and De’Shayne Montgomery, both from Mount St. Mary’s, who combined to make 103 threes on 271 attempts (38%). Tyrin Lawrence arrives as a playmaker and guard to complement Demary.

On the interior, the Bulldogs signed Somto Cyril, a limited offensive player with a monstrous defensive upside, and added Justin Abson in the transfer portal. Abson was a big-time defensive presence in the middle for Appalachian State last season. Then, both Dylan James and R.J. Godfrey should be able to see minutes at the swing forward spot.

Petre Thomas-Imagn Images

The faster Demary, Cain, and Newell develop into reliable starters, the better this whole experiment will go. The projections above are based on many factors described in the text at the bottom of the page. Still, I’ll always point out that while projections aren’t pure guesswork, nothing is set in stone.

Exceeding expectations hinges on Demary growing into a reliable creator as a sophomore. That progress would free White to use the sophomore for roughly 30 minutes a game and boost his usage to 25 percent. The Bulldogs could push for an NCAA tournament bid if Demary’s efficiency holds up.

A lot of this is riding on Demary because there isn’t much ball handling and playmaking behind him.

Leffew and Montgomery were primary playmakers for Mount St. Mary’s, but that was at a program that finished eighth in the MAAC, the nation’s 25th-best conference. Ahead of them is Lawrence, who saw his efficiency slump at Vanderbilt. Again, UGA’s overall roster is the third-least experienced group in the SEC, and the vets White pulled from the portal project as role players.

If you see any differences, that’s because KenPom.com updated last night, so I’ve updated the rating to support all four KenPom, EvanMiya, BartTorvik, and Haslametrics.

These rating are going to change, but if projections hold Georgia did not get a great conference schedule. They have just two Quad one games at home against Auburn and Mississippi State. They have 3 Q1 games on a neutral court, and then all 9 chances on the road. But the road games aren’t even the type of Q1 games you want to see. The ‘worst’ opponent on the road is Ole Miss, and then Arkansas and Bud Walton Arena is one of the toughest venues to play in. With Calipari on board now that crowd will be charged up.

Georgia will really need to outperform expectations in their non-conference slate and steal a few road games if they’re going to have NCAA Tournament thoughts.

THE RULING

Modest expectations could help smooth any struggles White’s roster encounters this season.

Across the SEC, programs used the transfer portal — still stocked with players possessing a fifth year of eligibility — to stay old. Those rosters are easier to project because most older players are at the peak of the development curve. Yet UGA stuck with a more traditional rebuild, and with it comes more variance in how key cogs might perform.

Georgia’s roster features prospects who could turn into NBA-level players, headlined by Demary and Newell. But how many freshmen truly break out and power their teams? Even Reed Sheppard and Stephon Castle operated in supporting roles last season. And suppose that doesn’t happen for Newell. In that case, it’s still likely that general managers will draft him based on projections about how he might perform several years from now.

If Demary and Newell aren’t ready to headline, it will pressure White’s vets to shoulder more work. We know what to expect from players like Lawrence and Leffew, who have combined to play 200 games in their college careers. By now, we know what they are, and it’s hard to envision them pushing UGA up the standings. The same goes for Godfrey and Abson.

There’s a timeline where Demary and Cain take their sophomore leap, Newell shows flashes, and the rest of the talent fills in around them, but the engine is Demary. In that universe, Georgia is a threat in the SEC, plays sound defense and looks like the 2021 Florida Gators with Tre Mann, coached by Mike White. A safe NCAA Tournament team led by a sophomore guard and some consistent shooting.

My Results: Georgia Bulldogs — 14th in Conference, 6-12

About the preview: a number of respected basketball bloggers were asked to submit one pick for the entire league schedule game by game. The game by game option allows us to account for the unbalanced schedule when addressing any kind of power rankings. Each set of picks are reflected in “the Masses” picks. Included in “the Masses” are various SEC media members who made picks at my request, as well as additional credit given to the analytics projections.

If you’d like to submit your picks, click here for the Google Form we used. If you want to know your results, send me an email.

Additionally, instead of relying solely on KenPom.com for the analytics site projections, we’re taking the average of the four main sites (EvanMiya.com, BartTorvik.com, Haslametrics.com, and KenPom.com) to give a closer consensus picture. These are weighted a touch for reliability.

The projections: This is new! In an attempt to be as accurate as we could be we increased the amount of analytics used to make individual projections which influenced how these teams slotted in order. Matt Watkins used an in-depth method for projecting the entire SEC transfer list, we then mixed in EvanMiya.com’s BPR projections, and BartTorvik.com’s preseason individual projections to round out the expected production based upon how each coach routinely uses his rotations.

GLOSSARY

* – an asterisk denotes a walk-on player

GP – Games Played

%min – percentage of total available minutes played, does not account for time missed due to injury

%poss – percentage of team possessions the player is responsible for ending a possession, whether by making a shot, missing a shot not rebounded by the offense or committing a turnover. For returning players this is noted as a percentage of total team possessions. For newcomers it was total possessions when that player was on the floor, better known as Usage Rate.

ORtg – Offensive Rating, similar to a points per possession but averaged out over 100 possessions. So it’s how many points a player would score if they were responsible for 100 possessions.

BPR – Bayseian Performance Rating, a single player efficiency metric created by Evan Miyakawa to determine both offensive and defensive impact when a player is on the floor.

PPG – Points Per Game, RPG – Rebounds Per Game, APG – Assists Per Game: All traditional statistics used to measure player production.

For newcomer player rankings, we used EvanMiya.com’ s rankings for transfers, and 247sports.com ‘s Composite Rating for Freshmen and Junior College signees.