Georgia hungry to make NCAA tourney history, opens with Gonzaga

Third-year Georgia coach Mike White is familiar to NCAA tournament success having gone 4-0 in NCAA opening round games.

“Greatest sporting event that exists, so we’re fired up, we’re ready to get to work and start watching film and studying Gonzaga,” said White, who in three seasons has elevated the program’s NET ranking from 223 the season before he took over to its current standing as the 33rd-best team per metrics.

“Our preparation has to be on point, we have to defend.”

The Bulldogs practiced on Sunday and will run it back with another workout in Athens on Monday before flying to Wichita on Tuesday to begin on-site preparation.

“We were just getting back to our hunger — the SEC tournament, didn’t necessarily go as we wanted,” UGA sophomore guard Blue Cain said. “Coach White was like, we want to get back to our identity, just being hungry again.”

Team captain Silas Demary Jr. stressed the focus Georgia is bringing into the postseason tourney.

“We want to get back to our main identity, playing hard, showing effort,” Demary Jr. said. “It’s following details and all the little things that we’ve done to get here.”

Demary Jr. and Cain are holdovers from the Georgia team that beat Xavier (White is also 5-0 in first-round NIT games), Wake Forest and Ohio State to reach the NIT Final Four.

The NCAA tourney and Gonzaga represent a sizable jump, however.

The Zags, the No. 8 seed in the Midwest Region, just won the West Coast Conference Tournament for the 20th time under Few’s direction last Tuesday and have won nine of their last 10 games.

Gonzaga, with 26 consecutive NCAA tourney appearances, represents the most consistent collegiate basketball program in the West Region.

White will bring a battled-tested No. 9-seeded Georgia team into the action.

The Bulldogs made the tournament playing out of a historically good SEC that’s sending an NCAA-record 14 teams, shattering the previous mark of 11 bids set by the Big East in 2011.

The Bulldogs — who would likely face Midwest Region No. 1 seed Houston in the second round on Saturday in Wichita at Intrust Bank Arena with a win over Gonzaga — have shown they can compete with and beat the best.

The Bulldogs beat SEC tourney champ and No. 1 West Region seed Florida this season, in addition to toppling Big East tourney champ and No. 2 West Region seed St. John’s.

Georgia’s 20-12 record represents only the sixth time in 119 seasons the program has reached 20 wins in the regular season, and White’s team accomplished the feat in a season that saw UGA play a nation-high eight games against Top 10 competition.

Indeed, 18 of the 32 games the Bulldogs played were against teams that made the 68-team NCAA tournament field.

“The neutral site games we played, the St. Johns’ and Marquette games (Battle 4 Atlantis, Bahamas), those and the strength of our league has got us somewhat prepared,” White said.

“That said, the NCAA tournament is the NCAA tournament, special — but we’ve got a tough-minded group that is incredibly resilient and connected.

“We’ll gain that (NCAA tourney experience on the fly against a power program, we’ll be prepared … we’ll be a tough out, and I think the committee recognized that.”