Georgia Bulldogs Men's Basketball

A basketball programme in a football state

Georgia has fielded a basketball team since 1905, and for most of that time it has been the second sport on campus. The ledger is thin by Southeastern Conference standards: 14 NCAA Tournament appearances, a combined 7-14 record in them, and two of those appearances — 1985 and 2002 — later vacated by the NCAA.

The high point sits in 1983, when Hugh Durham's side won the SEC Tournament and reached the Final Four, losing there to North Carolina State. That team had the residue of Dominique Wilkins, who played in Athens from 1979 to 1982 and is still regarded inside the programme as the best player it has produced. A single SEC regular-season title followed in 1990. The second and last SEC Tournament crown came in 2008, when Georgia entered as a six seed with a 13-16 record and won it anyway — one of the odder runs in the competition's history.

The rest of the honours board is largely individual: Vern Fleming, Jarvis Hayes, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Yante Maten all earned All-America recognition, and Anthony Edwards spent the 2019-20 season at Georgia before going first overall in the NBA draft. None of it translated into sustained March relevance.

The rebuild that stuck

Mike White was appointed in 2022 and the programme has improved in each of his seasons, with at least 20 wins in three consecutive years. The turn came in 2024-25. Georgia finished 20-13, 8-10 in the SEC, and on 13 January 2025 appeared at No. 23 in both the AP and coaches' polls — the first time a Georgia team had been ranked since January 2011. There were wins over No. 6 Kentucky and No. 3 Florida along the way.

Asa Newell carried most of the scoring load that year and the ninth-seeded Bulldogs reached the NCAA Tournament for the first time in a decade, losing the first round to eighth-seeded Gonzaga 89-68. It was a short trip, but it reset what the job looked like.

White's method has been explicit about style rather than personnel. The offence runs, the defence presses, and he has said he intends to keep it that way: his staff loved coaching it and will carry strong conviction into continuing with it. He has also noted that the approach itself now recruits — the way Georgia plays has opened more doors in the transfer portal than the programme used to have.

Eight records in one season

The 2025-26 campaign went further than anything in the archive. Georgia started 12-1 and finished 22-11 overall, 10-8 in the SEC and tied for seventh in a 16-team league. Those ten conference wins were a programme best, and the second straight NCAA bid was the first time Georgia had managed back-to-back appearances since 2001-02.

Eight programme records fell. The 22 regular-season wins were the most in 121 seasons of Georgia basketball. The team scored 2,951 points at 89.4 per game, demolishing the previous average of 82.7 and ranking fifth among 365 Division I programmes. Jeremiah Wilkinson was the engine, with 31 points against Auburn and 32 against Ole Miss.

The crowds moved with the results. Home attendance for the season reached 158,782, the second-highest total the programme has recorded. White's description of it is specific: it gets as loud in the building as anywhere in the league, and the student section is wrapped around Stegeman Coliseum two hours before tip-off.

The SEC Tournament ended in the second round, 76-72 to Ole Miss, with Wilkinson's 32 not quite enough.

Buffalo, 19 March 2026

Georgia went into the NCAA Tournament as an at-large eight seed in the Midwest region and met ninth-seeded Saint Louis in Buffalo. The pre-game framing was a track meet between two of the fastest offences in the country. It was not one.

Saint Louis scored 66 points in the paint, strung together 11 consecutive baskets at the rim during a 23-0 run that began just before half-time, and led 67-32 with just over 15 minutes left. The Billikens shot 58 per cent, passed 100 points for the eighth time that season and held Georgia to 35 per cent. The final was 102-77. Wilkinson scored 30 in defeat. It was the Bulldogs' heaviest loss of a season in which they had won more regular-season games than any Georgia side before them, and it is the single result that has shaped how the team is read ever since.

Four starters back, nine new faces, and a poll to argue with

The portal took a lot. Wilkinson went to Arkansas, centre Somto Cyril to Miami, Jake Wilkins and Jordan Ross to California, Dylan James to George Washington — ten players left in all. What stayed is unusual for the modern game: four starters. Guard Blue Cain, now in his fourth year, averaged 13.1 points, 5.1 rebounds and 2.6 assists. Marcus 'Smurf' Millender led the team with 135 assists at 4.1 a game and scored 12. Forward Kanon Catchings put up 11.6 points and 4.8 rebounds at 38 per cent from three, and Kareem Stagg played all 33 games.

Around them White added nine newcomers. Freddie Dilione V arrives from Penn State, Brady Dunlap from St John's as a shooter White rates as highly as any he has had, James Scott from Ole Miss as a rim protector with 46 blocks, Kemauri Millender — Smurf's brother — from junior college in New Mexico, and Andrew Osasuyi from St Bonaventure. The freshman group includes 6ft 9in Australian Mading Kuany, Atlanta's Hakeem Weems and Donovan Williams from Orlando.

White's own forecast, given in July 2026, was that this side will defend better than last year's but will not score as easily, while playing just as fast. On 15 October he went further on the preseason poll, which placed Georgia 11th of 16 with no Bulldog named to a preseason All-SEC team: he thought they were underrated last year and thinks they are underrated again. He also called it by far the oldest team he has had at Georgia. Not everyone is persuaded — a CBS Sports assessment published on 12 October ranked Georgia 13th and projected them to miss the tournament outright, pointing at Buffalo and the departures of Wilkinson and Cyril.

What the season asks

The pre-season work has been tidy. Georgia beat Georgia State 94-61 in an exhibition on 7 October 2026 and then Charlotte 87-67, with White pleased by the defensive efficiency and unhappy about the defensive rebounding. A third exhibition takes the team to Clemson on 23 October.

The 31-game regular season opens at home to North Carolina Central on 2 November, followed by Presbyterian on 6 November and Florida Gulf Coast on 9 November. Then the schedule turns hard quickly: at North Carolina on 13 November, at Georgia Tech on 20 November, Cincinnati and UCF on consecutive days over Thanksgiving, and Duke at Madison Square Garden on 8 December. SEC play starts at Ole Miss on 2 January 2027 and runs 18 games to a home finish against South Carolina on 6 March, with Florida, Kentucky, Texas, Tennessee and Alabama all on the card.

The stated target is narrow and clear. No Georgia team has ever reached three consecutive NCAA Tournaments. That is what this roster is for.