UGA Basketball Gets Must-Win Game over Lethargic South Carolina Gamecocks

ATHENS - UGA basketball got the win Tuesday night it had to get - a 71-60 win over a listless and conference winless South Carolina. 

The Gamecocks had five turnovers in five minutes to start the game. UGA shot 50% from the field, and the game wasn’t in doubt much at all in the second half. That must have been relatively relaxing for Mike White. After all, this game - against a South Carolina with a NET rating of 90, winless in the SEC and just not good - was about as must-win as it will get this season. 

And Georgia won. 

Now the Dawgs can concentrate on moving up the seeding line of the NCAA Tournament. Right now Georgia likely anywhere from a seven to ten seed. How can they be that wide in terms of seeing? Those are the four spots where the committee actually has some flexibility in terms of seeing. After all, it is irrelevant who the eight or nine seed is in a game - the winner will face a one seed, and the location of the game will be predicated on where the one seed is located. 

Pretty much the same thing can be said for the seven-ten situation. 

So now Georgia sits in position in the coming weeks where it can go hunt. At 15-6, Georgia already has several good wins in its pocket - quad-one wins that are not likely to turn into something other than that. 

Georgia’s two best wins - vs. Kentucky (16 NET) at home and vs. St. John’s (26 NET) neutral will almost certainly not fall into quad two wins. The Cats would have to fall another ten spots, and that’s unlikely with their win over the Vols (4 NET) Tuesday night. St. John’s would have to plummet to past No. 50 in the NET rankings… not happening. 

So here we sit - it is unlikely that UGA’s quad two wins will move to quad one (the neutral win over Grand Canyon means GCU would have to fly up to nearly 50 spots; Oklahoma would have to gain about 17 spots, which seems unlikely. It is possible, for sure that GCU could fall into a quad three win, but we will see if that happens. 

There are not a ton of “bad” losses out there to be had for Georgia right now. Let me explain…

After Tuesday night’s results Georgia gets to face 

Quad one games (as of January 28)

at Alabama (7)
vs. State (21)
at A&M (13)
vs. Missouri (25)
at Auburn (1)
vs. the Gators (5)
at Texas (31)

Quad two games (as of January 28)

vs. LSU (67)
at South Carolina (90)
vs. Vandy (37)

It is not possible for the games at South Carolina and vs. Vandy to fall into quad three games. In fact, Vandy “could” sneak into being a quad one game when that happens. But it is the home against LSU… that could become a quad three game. 

That game is about as “must win” as it gets the rest of the season, and that’s a pretty heavy term considering everything UGA has under its belt right now. Should UGA win the three non-quad-one games left on the schedule they would have 18 wins. That, alone could get them into the NCAAs with an 18-13 record. 

That said, you would be pushing it depending on those three wins alone. Home games with State, Missouri and the Gators are all there for the taking. Georgia can win all of those games at home. The program is in great position to steal a really nice road quad-one win by going to Bama, A&M, Auburn and Texas. Beating the Horns in Austin isn’t asking too much - or A&M. Not at all. 

Any win in those contests probably locks Georgia into the tournament for the first time since 2015. 

Why? Why can I say these sorts of things declaratively?

We are at the point in the season, February, where teams not only have to fall to get knocked out, but someone else has to rise. The NCAA Tournament is a zero-sum game.

One in | One out.

Looking at the teams seeded below the Dawgs right now on CBS (says Dawgs are an 8 seed) and ESPN (says Dawgs are a ten ), Arizona State and SMU are both listed as “out” right now by both outlets.

That means one of those two (or someone else, but you get the point), would have to replace Georgia (or someone else). The “problem” for both SMU (ACC) and ASU (B12) is they both have limited chances to get good wins, and both already have a quad-two loss. 

Remember, UGA has seven (7) chances to get a quad-one win in the coming weeks. SMU has three (3); Arizona State has five (5). 

SMU, in particular, is going to really have to surge to get in. They don’t have a win that matters (best win is over No. 67 LSU N), and they have a lot of possible quad-three losses out there, too. ASU has two Q3s to defend against… remember Georgia doesn’t have any of those traps out there. 

So while the dirty work of getting through football season undefeated is done, the work from that time is still paying off. Wins at Tech, vs. Grand Canyon and vs. Notre Dame should have been better than they are now, but they aren’t losses. The win over St. John’s is massive. 

Few programs on the outs have those. Few programs on the outs have the ability to get back in because they have such limited conference schedules. This leaves out the fact that teams’ first games in the SEC Tournament could be quad-one matchups in many cases.

A neutral-site game is a quad-one game when the team you are facing is a top 100 team… EVERYONE IN THE SEC IS IN THE TOP 100. Any win in the SEC Tournament would be a really, really good win. 

So, how to get those wins? 

Tonight is a bad example. South Carolina really is ugly right now. They can’t score. They turn it over a lot… just not much to be happy about in Soda City these days. But UGA shot pretty well. Asa Newell, UGA’s best player, bullied Carolina in his 31 minutes of play. He’s going to have to continue to do that moving forward, and honestly he should. 

That said, he’s not a guard. Someone has to get Newell the ball. Dakota Leffew really played well Tuesday night. His plus-minus was 17 - the best of anyone in the building Tuesday night. Georgia is going to need that from him moving forward. Silas Demary was solid as well, but he fouled out, which isn’t a huge deal, but it could be in the future. 

Those two are going to have to play well going forward. Newell is the key to the team. He added another double-double tonight (5th this season)… that’s a lot of production. That combined with Georgia shooting 62% from the floor in the second half (USC should be ashamed of themselves) was too much for Carolina to overcome. 

This isn’t the formula, but it is a formula. A team that just took two really tough losses away from home had to gather themselves, and they did so with a double-digit win over a team that isn’t good.

That’s what you are supposed to do, and tonight Georgia did it.