ATHENS — The Georgia Bulldogs have comported themselves and competed well in the 2023-24 basketball season. Now the push for relevance – not to mention a postseason bid – becomes real as Georgia opens SEC play on the road Saturday against Missouri.
The Bulldogs navigated the non-conference portion of their schedule with distinction, coming out with a 10-3 record that included wins over three ACC opponents. But, so far at least, the cold, sterile metrics that determine NCAA Tournament inclusion remain unimpressed. Georgia ranks 99th in the NCAA’s NET rating. That is 11th among SEC teams.
So, the Bulldogs must prove themselves worthy against their SEC brethren over the next two months. That starts Saturday afternoon with a trip to one of the league’s distant – and challenging – outposts at 15,00-seat Mizzou Arena in Columbia, Missouri (1 p.m., SEC Network).
“It’s go-time, it’s right here,” Georgia second-year coach Mike White said before the Bulldogs hopped on a Midwest-bound plane Friday afternoon. “It’s right in front of us. We have 18 opportunities, and we’ll see what we can make of them. But, yeah, every team in our league is talking about the NCAA Tournament right now.”
As of Friday, the league standings remained at 0-0 for all 14 teams. But there have been some revelations during the 60-day trial that is the non-conference portion of the basketball season.
Undefeated Ole Miss (13-0) and South Carolina (12-1) stand out as the league’s surprise teams, though issue can be taken with the competitive strength of their schedules to date. Auburn (11-2) and Mississippi State (11-2) are right there with them.
Georgia sits in the middle among a group that includes many of the conference’s usual suspects. There, Tennessee (10-3) and Kentucky (10-2) can be found as the league’s highest-ranked teams at Nos. 5 and 6 in the Associated Poll, respectively. No. 22 Ole Miss and No. 25 Auburn are the only other SEC teams included in the Top 25.
As for Saturday’s opponent, Missouri has been undistinctive in its work. The Tigers (8-5) have played one of the league’s more challenging non-conference slates, but they’ve lost to most of opponents of merit. A Dec. 30 home win over Central Arkansas snapped a three-game losing streak to No. 2 Kansas (73-64), Seton Hall (93-87) and Illinois (97-73). Mizzou scored a 71-64 road win over Pitt in the ACC/SEC Challenge and also beat Minnesota (70-68) away from home. But they lost at home to Memphis 70-55 early in the season.
“They have a lot of talented players, a lot of good shooters,” said senior Jabri Abdur-Rahim, Georgia’s leading scorer, at 13.2 points per game. “Their guards are really good, and we’re going to have to be ready to take on the challenge of guarding them individually and as a team.”
The Tigers are led by 6-foot-3 guard Sean East II with a 17.1 scoring average, and Nick Honor (11.3 ppg) is back for another season at the point. Honor logged a game-high 33 minutes and scored 17 points when Missouri beat Georgia 85-63 in the teams’ last meeting in February in Athens.
The Bulldogs haven’t really distinguished themselves in any particular way in Year 2 under White. They are shooting better from 3-point range, moving from the bottom of the league last season to the top half at 34.4% so far. But Georgia continues to rank low league-wide in the critical areas of rebounding margin (13th), scoring (13th), free throws (13th) and turnover margin (10th). However, senior guard Justin Hill is proving to be among the top distributors in the SEC, with an assist/turnover ratio of plus-3.
Overall, the Bulldogs’ performance should be deemed positive considering their roster consists of eight newcomers and no returning starters from a year ago. Graduate guard Noah Thomasson, who is averaging 12.3 points and 3.5 rebounds per game, is among the 13 Georgia players who have never played on the road against Missouri. Only Abdur-Rahim was on the roster when the Bulldogs last visited “Como” in 2022, and he said he doesn’t remember anything about it.
“It’s the first SEC opponent I’ve ever played in my career,” said Thomasson, who transferred to UGA from Niagara College this summer. “I just want to go out there and help our team try to get a win on the road.”
Georgia has one road win to its credit so far, and it was an impressive one. The Bulldogs came back from a 17-point second-half deficit to defeat Florida State 68-66 on Nov. 29. Players were pointing at that experience as reason for optimism.
At this juncture, though, that feat seems like ancient history. That and Georgia’s other nine wins carried little weight in college basketball’s all-encompassing analytics.
What happens in SEC play going forward will.
“The potential’s there,” said White, who led Florida to the postseason in five of the six seasons that berths were available. “Our computer numbers aren’t what we want them to be. But we have 18 opportunities to see what we can do with them in order to put ourselves where potentially we’re in that conversation. We have to focus on today, then we have to focus on tomorrow.”
