With only a handful of games left in the regular season, NCAA Tournament bracketology experts believe that the Georgia Bulldogs are on the right path to returning to March Madness. Georgia is looking to earn back-to-back trips to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2001-2002 and first non-vacated consecutive tournament appearances since 1996-1997. The experts from ESPN and CBS Sports have Georgia as a 10 seed.
CBS Sports projects Georgia as the No. 10 seed in the West Region, projecting No. 7 seed Utah State as its opponent. ESPN also projects Georgia as a No. 10 seed in the West Region, pitting the Bulldogs against No. 7 seed Villanova in Buffalo. BracketMatrix.com had Georgia as the highest-rated No. 11 seed going into Tuesday.
Georgia is coming off a much-needed win after its second losing streak of the season. Georgia opened February with a win at LSU before suffering a 20-point home loss to Florida and a 16-point loss at Oklahoma. On Tuesday, it won at Kentucky 86-78, its first win at Rupp Arena since 2009 and only its fifth win there in program history. ESPN noted the victory bumped Georgia from the “work to do” tier into the “should be in” category in its Bubble Watch article.
“If losing to Georgia was enough to dip Kentucky down from the “locks,” then beating the Wildcats was enough to elevate the Dawgs to “should be in” territory. It’s been a roller coaster for UGA already this season: After winning 16 of their first 19 games, the Bulldogs lost five of their next six and fell from a 97% consensus at-large chance to 66% in the span of three weeks. But those odds are up to 84% again after they grabbed their first Quadrant 1A win of the year at Kentucky. Georgia now sits 40th in the overall résumé rankings — with six wins against the BPI top 50 — and eighth in résumé average. Now mostly through a string of exceptionally tough matchups, it has the SEC’s easiest remaining schedule according to the BPI.”
Blue Cain led Georgia with 20 points in the win Tuesday, with Jeremiah Wilkinson returning after missing the losses to LSU and Florida to score 19 points in 26 minutes off the bench.
“It’s funny. I told Chuck and Scott, it’s not like there were a couple guys or one guy to point at or a couple guys to point at,” head coach Mike White said, after the win Tuesday night. “To steal your term, we were a really ineffective or inefficient defensively in Norman. It was a collection and it was the same thing with this win on the other end of the spectrum. I just thought offensively, we cut hard, we shared it, we made good decisions, we flew to the offensive glass. I don’t think there was just one guy that played great. I thought that we had eight or 10 guys play well and defensively, we were really connected. They hit some hard shots down the stretch. They obviously made it really interesting. They’re very difficult to defend, but the way that we were throwing bodies around with some of our wall-ups, some of the turnovers that we caused, just overall physicality was a big factor for us. We’re not the most physical team in the league, but to a certain extent, I thought we matched a lot of theirs. They got 15 offensive rebounds, and we got 15. Even some of their offensive rebounds, we were in there fighting. We were in for the most part, did a better job.”
Up next for Georgia will be Texas at home on Saturday. Tip-off is set for 3:30 p.m. ET on SEC Network. The Longhorns are on a five-game winning streak, having rattled off victories at Oklahoma, against South Carolina and Ole Miss, at Missouri, and against LSU. Texas is also considered one of the “should be in” teams in the SEC and currently have a No. 9 seed projection on ESPN’s Bracketology.