How Far is Georgia Basketball Away from the Post-Season Play
It seems like an incredibly insane question to ask following one of the worse seasons in program history where the Bulldogs finished with just six wins on the season, only one of those came in the SEC, leaving the Bulldogs with a 6-26 overall record in the fourth and final year under head coach Tom Crean… But, how far is Georgia from post season play?
Athletic Director Josh Brooks and the University of Georgia moved quickly to find its new head coach, just days after letting go of Crean last Thursday, before the news broke that Georgia was going ahead and hiring White, the former Florida head coach the following Sunday.
Optimism is back in the air surrounding Stegman Collesium even after many were initially upset with the hiring of White, as so many cried out for wanting former UGA alum and assistant coach Jonas Hayes to take the head coaching job following Crean, but after the dust settled many are starting to come around to the idea of White leading the Bulldogs basketball program forward.
So what does success look like for the Georgia basketball program? According to the statement put out by the University of Georgia after the firing of Crean, it is competing "for postseason success." Unfortunately, Crean did not achieve that in his time in Athens. Georgia hasn't reached the NCAA tournament since 2015 under then-head coach Mark Fox; Crean even failed to get Georgia into the NIT tournament.
This means that the bar seems to be set incredibly low for an underachieving program in a "fertile" recruiting state, as Mike White termed it in his introductory press conference. The Peach State is home to some of the finest high school prospects in the country, and for years the Bulldogs have seen many of them leave the state for other schools.
Making recruiting the state one of the top priorities from the get-go, keeping one or two of the top prospects home in each cycle would go a long way in helping to turn the results around, but that does not end it once they are on campus, Georgia needs to keep them on campus, something that in hindsight should've signaled the beginning of the end for Tom Crean.
White knows what it takes to get teams into postseason play; after all, he took the Gators dancing on four occasions while also taking them on the run in the NIT in 2016. Getting Georgia back into the NIT would be a success in the eyes of many, as having the season end in the second week of March is not something that appears to some of the top talents. While making the NIT isn't the same as the NCAA tournament, it shows that progress is being made.
Take a look at SEC foe Vanderbilt, while the two programs don't compare historically in basketball. The Commodores are three years into the Jerry Stackhouse tenure as head coach. Stackhouse took over the program after the 2018 season, where Vanderbilt finished 9-23. In just his first season, they improved to 11-21 before going 9-16 in 2020, and now the Commodores have advanced into the 2nd round of the NIT tournament following an 18-16 season.
The success comes after recruiting the 50th ranked class (12th in the SEC) in 2019, the 65th ranked class (11th in the SEC) in 2020, and the 43rd ranked class (9th in the SEC) in 2021.
Georgia's Classes in the Same Period
- 2019: 11th ranked nationally (3rd in the SEC)
- 2020: 17th ranked nationally (7th in the SEC)
- 2021: 60th ranked nationally (12th in the SEC)
Say what you will about Tom Crean, but he showed that Georgia could recruit highly in his tenure. Crean even landed a better class than Mike White at Florida in 2020, according to 247Sports. Following the same trajectory of Stackhouse at Vanderbilt, it shouldn't be crazy to expect to see the Bulldogs back in the NIT by the 2024.
