Legge's Thoughts: Mike White, UGA Basketball Should be in NCAAs | Can They Make it Count?

ATHENS - Is this going to work? That was the question I asked myself out loud when UGA basketball hired Florida coach Mike White three years ago. 

The short answer is that is has worked this year. 

For the first time in a decade, Georgia is in the NCAA tournament.

Its about time. 

White has taken the rubble left by Tom Crean, and built Georgia into an actual basketball program capable of joining the big boys in the Big Dance. To be honest that might be the hard part. 

Georgia’s complete and total failure over the decades isn’t on any oner player, coach or administrator. But it is on Georgia. To be fair, UGA has done its part lately by dressing up Stegeman; they’ve been there to make basketball matter, and for the most part it has worked. 

Again, Josh Brooks inherited Kirby - he hired Mike White. If this turns around it is a major accomplishment an athletic director at UGA hasn’t had since the late Vince Dooley hired Tubby Smith from Tulsa. 

If Mike White has done nothing else, he’s yanked this program into the real world of college basketball - and he’s done so at the pinnacle of the SEC’s strength in the sport. Gone are the days when the No. 3 seed in the SEC Tournament might not get into the NCAAs. If you are the No. 3 team in this league now you can win the national title.

That’s the next, and perhaps even more difficult step for White. Getting Georgia out of the ditch that it had been inhabiting for 25 years was difficult, but it is not the most challenging part of this new reality for UGA basketball. 

The Dawgs’ peers - Florida, Alabama, Auburn and Tennessee - can all win the national title in a matter of weeks. In fact, it would be a little surprising if one of them didn’t and someone else did (I don’t trust Houston; Duke is favorited to win it all, but its best player is hurt.)

Georgia hasn’t won a tournament game in nearly a quarter century, but I am still going to keep banging my shoe on the table: Georgia should be a national power in basketball. Why? 

The answer isn’t: “Why not.”

The answer is: Because you should be. 

Any drive from Athens to Atlanta involves at least a minimal chance of getting into a fender bender with dozens of power-five basketball players. For decades Georgia has on top of a gold mine without any ability to extract the gold.

How has it been this bad for this long?

This isn’t about location specifically, but that does help. Having one of the largest and best athletic departments in the country helps; having a football program that has shown what winning can do matters a lot, too. Places like UGA and Ohio State shouldn’t fall off the basketball map for decades at a time. 

This is about a lack of imagination of what Georgia should be. 

Can Mike White continue on the journey to correcting that? 

A win over Gonzaga would help.