Georgia basketball nears ‘bubble.’ What must UGA do to make NCAA tourney?

ATHENS — Georgia basketball is perilously close to entering the proverbial NCAA tournament “bubble” after three straight losses.

The Bulldogs remained out of the AP Top 25 for a second consecutive week after a six-week run among the ranked teams, the best showing of that kind in 22 years.

Georgia is projected as a No. 9 seed in the tournament in this week’s ESPN forecast, but it’s a tenuous position with the back half of the SEC schedule remaining.

Been there, done that

Coach Mike White has been here before — last year, in this program, at this stage of the season.

Last season’s Bulldogs — who were the first at UGA to make the NCAA tournament in 10 years — were 15-7 through the first 22 games, with a 3-6 mark in the SEC en route to finishing the regular season 20-11 overall and 8-10 in conference play.

This year’s Georgia team is 16-6 overall and 4-5 in the SEC heading into the equivalent of a “bye week,” as there is no mid-week game leading into the road trip to Louisiana State University on Saturday.

“We’re going to jump right back at it,” White said. “We’ve got all kinds of opportunities right in front of us.”

Georgia likely needs to win four of the nine remaining SEC regular-season games to make the NCAA tournament, based on current ESPN projections that forecast 10 teams from the league in the 68-team field. UGA’s remaining games are:

• at LSU, Saturday

• vs. Florida, Feb. 11

• at Oklahoma, Feb. 14

• at Kentucky, Feb. 17

• vs. Texas, Feb. 21

• at Vanderbilt, Feb. 25

• vs. South Carolina, Feb. 28

• vs. Alabama, March 3

• at Mississippi State, March 7

It’s a tough slate, to be sure, with the Feb. 21 home game vs. Texas jumping out as perhaps the most pivotal down the stretch.

The Longhorns, who rallied from a 37-30 halftime deficit Jan. 24 to beat Georgia 87-67, currently are the last team projected to make the field.

The Texas game also is sandwiched between formidable road trips to Kentucky (Feb. 17, 11-2 at home) and Vanderbilt (Feb. 25, 11-1 at home).

Rebound from resiliency

Last season’s UGA team endured two four-game losing streaks, losing eight games in a 11-game stretch between Jan. 15 and Feb. 22.

White takes confidence in knowing returning players Blue Cain, Dylan James and Somto Cyril have shown they can bounce back before, so the current three-game losing streak seems less daunting.

Cain said he didn’t feel UGA had the right “sense of urgency” in its most recent loss to Texas A&M after the Bulldogs fell behind 22-2 in the opening moments.

Of course, that Georgia team had not had a mid-week break in the SEC season, while the Aggies were coming off six days of rest, and that showed.

UGA has a savvy batch of transfers in Jeremiah Wilkinson, Kanon Catchings, Jordan Ross, Justin Bailey and Smurf Millender.

The competitiveness and team chemistry has been obvious, even at times of adversity, as the new players have fit nicely into their roles and stepped up at different points.

Off and running

Georgia still ranks second in the nation in scoring, with 92.3 points per game, and their 22.55 fast-break points per game are the best in the country.

But rebounding — specifically, defensive rebounding — has proved an Achilles’ heel.

UGA ranks last in the SEC and 335th in the nation in defensive rebounding percentage, a statistic that explains how the Bulldogs were exploited and failed to match up well with strong rebounding teams such as Florida, Tennessee and Texas.

White has made it clear Georgia will continue to pound the fundamentals in an effort to maximize a relatively vertically challenged team.

“At this point, after hitting this adversity, you have a week to really hone in on some of those details,” White said.

“All of the little details offensively in terms of what our system is, and when I’m supposed to be in the corner, and when I’m supposed to be filling, and when I’m supposed to flash through the elbow and when I throw to the elbow where I’m supposed to go,” White said, sounding very much like the point guard he was during his playing career at Ole Miss.

“All of those little details ... with defensive rebounding are things that we can improve upon. And this team will work at it. They will.”

‘NET’ worth

The Bulldogs’ NCAA tourney projection is based on its “NET” ranking — which is a computerized metric taking into account level of competition and location of games that’s used by the NCAA selection committee.

Georgia is No. 36 in the NET rankings, one spot behind league standings-leader Texas A&M and ninth among all the SEC teams, ahead of Texas (39th), LSU (57th) and Missouri (70th).

Florida is tops in the SEC with a No. 12 NET ranking, Vanderbilt is 13th, Tennessee is 21st, Alabama is 22nd, Arkansas is 23rd, Kentucky is 28th and Auburn is 29th.

Deep SEC waters, to be sure, but White has confidence in his team.