By: Colin Lacy

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the 2025-26 Georgia Men’s basketball season will be looked at with multiple conflicting feelings.

On one hand, this rendition of Bulldog’s Basketball was the winningest and highest scoring team in program history with a 22-11 record and averaging 89.4 points per game, but on the flip side, Georgia’s season ends with another embarrassing loss in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in the 8/9 matchup.

Georgia got off to a red hot start out of the gate and carried it thru the first half of the season with a 14-2 thru the first sixteen games of the season.

That said, the start of the questions began in late January when Georgia lost five of the next six games, with the only win in that four-week stretch came at LSU who finished in the cellar of the SEC standings.

So, what do you take away from Georgia hoops in 2025-26? Let’s break it down:

Positive: First and foremost, even with the tough four week stretch, 22 regular season wins are the most ever in the regular season in the 121 seasons on the hardwood in Athens.

With those 22 wins, it earned the Dawgs a second straight NCAA bid for just the fourth time in Georgia history and the first since the 2001 and 2002 postseasons.

The biggest change in the Dawgs program this season was the offensive prowess. Again, this Georgia team could almost score at will. 89.4 points per game were the most in the history of the Dawgs and shattered the old record of the 89-90 squad by 6.7 points per game.

The nickname of “Dunkyard Dawgs” spawned because of the proficiency for rim-rattling dunks. Georgia led the country in percentage of field goals that were dunks at nearly 20% of the buckets were dunks. Somto Cyril led the way of all Division 1 players with 83 regular season dunks.

The Negative: The negative boils down to 2 different portions of the season. From January 24^th through the Feburary 14^th matchup at Oklahoma, Georgia went 1-5.

At the beginning of the stretch, Georgia was flirting with the top of the SEC and looking to have turned a corner in the history of Georgia Basketball.

It began with three straight losses on the road at Texas and home against Tennessee and Texas A&M.

While disappointing for Georgia fans, its somewhat understandable with all of those teams making the NCAA tournament but compiled with losses at home against rival Florida (who did win the SEC regular season), but the big blow cane with a loss at Oklahoma 94-78 who was near the bottom of the SEC standings.

While you could chalk that stretch as just a tough portion of the schedule, the ending is tough in postseason play for the Dawgs.

In the SEC Championship, Georgia saw the opening matchup with the 15 seed Ole Miss and fell 76-72.

Ok..Ole Miss got hot and the matchup wasn’t the best… Then we get to March Madness.

Georgia was announced as an 8-seed in the tournament and drew a match-up with the 9-seed St. Louis Bilikins.

The Billikens out of the A10 Conference flat out dominated. SLU throttled the Dawgs 102-77 making back-to-back years that Georgia has been embarrassingly knocked out of a first round matchup in the NCAA Tournament. Last season ended with a #8 Gonzaga knocking off the #9 Georgia 89-68.

The last 5 NCAA Tournament appearances have seen the Dawgs bow out in the first round with the last NCAA Tournament win coming back in 2002 as a 3-seed in the West.

It would be ignorant to say that Head Coach Mike White hasn’t elevated the Georgia program back into prominence after missing the tournament altogether from 2015 until 2025, but the tough part to swallow for Georgia fans and supporters is the abysmal performances in the postseason.

In the day and age of the transfer portal, Mike White and company will be scouring the portal to find the next group of Dawgs to help get them over the hump.