Georgia goes on road with momentum for regular season finale

ATHENS, Ga. — Georgia hits the road for its regular season finale on Saturday as the Bulldogs make the short trip over to Auburn to take on the Tigers. Ranked No. 14 in the country and playing on their home court, Mike White knows his team will need to be on their A-game, but he’s hoping to ride some of the momentum from Tuesday night’s 69-66 win over Ole Miss instead of feeling the frustrations from a 21-point loss to Auburn just two weeks ago.

“I mean, where do you start? They’re really, really good. There’s a handful of teams that have a chance to win the whole thing, get to a Final Four. They’ve got to be in that conversation. That’s my opinion at least,” White said. “Their depth, their skill level, their role definition. Their front court has got to be one of the best few in the country, and then you look at their back court, and they’ve got a really good back court, too. They run good stuff of course. They play with confidence, and they’re playing really hard defensively. You know, they’re really connected defensively, they turn you over, they block shots, they alter shots, they just smother you. They’re really good.”

Georgia saw five players reach double figures in its last outing with Noah Thomasson leading the way, his fifth performance scoring the most for the Bulldogs in the last six games. Russel Tchewa, Justin Hill, Dylan James and RJ Melendez also poured in at least 10.

Last time Georgia and Auburn meeting, Thomasson had 18, but it was the career-high 25 from Chad Baker-Mazara that was the most in that matchup. Tchewa added 16 as well for Georgia, and Thomasson thinks he’ll be key again in a tough matchup with Auburn’s bigs including Johni Broome who has three career double-doubles in three games against Georgia.

“Russ controlled the game, 11 (points) and 10 (rebounds), 5 assists, two turnovers, that’s big for us to be passing the way he’s been passing. It got us some easy layups. I know he got me going early on a cut to the basket where he made a heck of a pass to get a layup,” Thomasson said on Tuesday. “If he keeps doing those things and keep dominating the paint, I think we could pop some people come SEC Tournament play.”

“We played with a lot of confidence in the first, let’s say 30 minutes of the Auburn game, if memory serves correct. Down the stretch they were really good of course. I thought we had an emotional letdown there late. It was another one of those games at home where it just kind of falls apart on you a little bit despite playing really well at times or even the majority of the first part of the game. So we’ll have to put 40 together,” White added, recalling both the last outing against Auburn and the recent Ole Miss game. “Their arena will be rocking of course, and we’ll have to have a lot of poise, play through adversity, respond to adversities, but we’re coming off a game where I thought we played really hard, we were really solid defensively, and we were connected. We’re going to have to defend at that level or even better. We’re going to have to defensive rebound as well as we have all year, and then we’ve got to value the ball at a higher level than we did in the first half the other day. I thought against Ole Miss in the second half we did a really good job with our decisions. Live-ball turnovers at Auburn, F shots in the paint at Auburn are recipes for disaster. We’ve got to play with poise, we’ve got to make good decisions but play with confidence at the same time.”

As for going on the road and into a Neville Arena that’s seen Auburn fall just once in 15 home games this season, White knows that only makes things even more difficult. However, his team has been solid on the road, winning four times, twice falling by a single score and only losing by more than nine once.

“You know, we’ve been competitive for the most part on the road. I would say probably based on the fact that we’ve got some guys that are pretty resilient, you know? We’ve got guys that continue to work,” White said. “We’ve talked about it all year. Good practices, consistent work ethic, consistent level of competitive spirit, which just kind of gives you a chance of course. We’ll have to play by far our best game, you know, of the season to have some success tomorrow.”

Tip time is set for 6:30 p.m. ET on the SEC Network. A win would be White’s second over the Tigers in as many years in Athens – although the previous came at home. It would also put Georgia over its marks of 16 wins overall and six in the SEC that the Bulldogs totaled in year one under White.