Georgia basketball aims to end NCAA tourney drought. Is support there to make it happen?

When the frenzy that is March Madness got cranked up last season, RJ Melendez was in the thick of it, scoring 10 points with six rebounds for an Illinois team that fell short against Arkansas in Des Moines, Iowa.

A year earlier, he logged 20 minutes off the bench in a round of 32 loss to Houston.

Now the 6-foot-7 junior from Puerto Rico is hoping to help take Georgia basketball to its first NCAA tournament since 2015.

It’s a goal the Bulldogs in their second season under coach Mike White aren’t shy talking about inside the program and publicly.

“We’ve just got to stay together,” Melendez said. “It’s a long season. There’s going to be a lot of ups and downs. We’ve got the potential to go to the NCAA tournament.”

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It would be the next big step for a team that improved from 6-26 before White took over to 16-16 last season.

What's kept Georgia basketball from making NCAA tournament since 2015?

Every SEC program except for Georgia has made the NCAA tournament since the Bulldogs last made it, but why?

Is it coaching? The Bulldogs moved on from Mark Fox in 2018 and Tom Crean in 2022 and hired White from Florida.

Is it players? Georgia had the No. 1 overall draft pick in 2020 in Anthony Edwards and the No. 31 overall pick in Nicolas Claxton in 2019. But it had just three classes inside the top 35 of the 247Sports Composite recruiting rankings going back to 2012 and lost Toumani Camara, Sahvir Wheeler and KD Johnson to transfers from the No. 11 class in 2019 and No. 17 class in 2020.

Is it support from the administration at a school where football is king and the wallet is open for spending on facilities, recruiting and staff for the two-time national champions?

“We kind of plateaued at a level,” Fox said in a recent phone interview. “I think my last five years at Georgia were the best five-year run they had in the SEC in wins and losses.”

Fox went 49-41 in the conference during that stretch, but the win totals decreased each year after going 12-6 in 2014 and the team missed the NCAA tournament his final three seasons.

“When I was let go, they felt like we plateaued and I was like, what have you done to help us get better than we are?” said Fox, now in a support staff role on the Georgetown basketball staff after four seasons as Cal head coach. “We really had done more in the league than had been done in the previous 85 years or so, but they weren’t really doing a lot extra to help us go forward."

Fox, who took Georgia to the NCAA tournament twice in nine seasons, said the current tournament drought “is a combination of everything. Georgia is a place where I think you can ultimately have great success but it takes alignment with everybody. I’m not sure that alignment has completely been like it needs to be. Hopefully one day it will get there.”

The support now for Georgia Bulldogs and Mike White

White, hired by athletic director Josh Brooks and president Jere Morehead, hasn’t voiced issues with support from the administration in his 19 months on the job even after Stegeman Coliseum was shut down for months after last season to fix the roof.

“The initial conversation with Josh and Jere was what their vision was for men’s basketball here and what their level of commitment was,” White said. “How bad did they want to be successful and supported, and there’s been no question since the day that we arrived on campus as a family and as a staff that we’re committed to winning here as men’s basketball and we’re on the way."

In a time where NIL is a growing factor in recruiting, Georgia landed five-star 2024 prospect Asa Newell and is in the running for other elite prospects. It also received a commitment from 2025 4-star Jacob Wilkins, son of former Bulldog great Dominique Wilkins.

Georgia has no plans to replace Stegeman Coliseum — which opened in 1964 — but it is focused on upgrades to the current facility and White mentioned other improvements.

“The weight room downstairs is as nice as any weight room in the Southeastern Conference,” he said. “It was built very, very quickly for us and we’ve already been utilizing it and we’ve already been benefiting from it.”

He said purchasing an analytical software program and the team's trip to Italy this summer are other signs of support.

“Anything that we’ve asked for in terms of, ‘We think our student-athletes can benefit from this,’ Josh has either initially said yes or found a way to support again, our program, operating at the highest level,” White said.

Brooks said his goal for all of his coaches is “to help remove roadblocks whatever they may be to make their job as best as possible. … I’m committed right now to all my head coaches, basketball being one of them, to find out how can we support them. This is a partnership. It’s not just on coaches and athletes, it’s on the administration in how we support them. I take responsibility for all of it.”

What it will take for Georgia basketball to make Big Dance?

On the court this season, how Georgia fares in its nonconference slate could go a long way in what their postseason resume looks like. The Bulldogs will play five top 90 KenPom teams starting with No. 41 Oregon on Monday in its season opener at 4:30 p.m. ET in Las Vegas.

“If we get some of those Quad 1 wins, it will help us if we slip up,” freshman guard Silas Demary Jr. said. “I don’t feel like we’ll slip up, but definitely if it was to happen, I feel like getting those early Quad 1 wins will definitely help.”

White took Florida to four NCAA tournament appearances including the Elite Eight in 2017 during his seven seasons (the tournament was canceled in 2020).

“I’ve probably talked about that goal more so with this team, to be totally transparent with you, than I have in a long time,” White said. “I left it alone, as a head coach, really the whole time I’ve been in it. This year we’ve actually talked about it a little bit. Like, ‘Hey, what’s the goal for this program?’ It’s to break through and to get back to a tournament.”

He said the focus needs to be on what it takes to get there-free throws, defensive efficiency, assist/turnover ratio, communication.

“Ultimately, if we’re not trying to get to the tournament, we’re wasting time in this league,” he said. “Teams in this league that get in the tournament have a chance to make a run. We want to be there with them.”

Fox has added five transfers — Melendez, center Russell Tchewa (South Florida), guard Noah Thomasson (Niagara), forwards Jalen DeLoach (VCU) and RJ Sunahara (Nova Southeastern) and four freshmen in Demary, guards Blue Cain and Mari Jordan and forward Dylan James.

The holdovers are guards Justin Hill and Jabri Abdur-Rahim, forward Matthew Alexander-Moncrieffe and center Fran Anselm-Ibe.

"We have a lot of older guys, a lot of mature guys and guys that have won at different places," Abdur-Rahim said. "I think everybody fits in really well together."

White views this team as a notch above where his first Bulldog squad was.

“I feel like we’ll be better, simply put,” White said. “I think we’re bigger, more athletic, deeper. A better passing team, a better ball-handling team. We’re more familiar with our surroundings you know with expectations, all those things.”

The trip to Italy where the team played three games helped with that.

White said the freshmen arrived with “big aspirations of doing something special at the University of Georgia and laying a foundation.”

For the Bulldogs to play meaningful games in March, the Bulldogs have work to do to get there.

“We have to make sure that for these big games that we’ve got early in the season, we lock in early and don’t make mental mistakes,” Melendez said, “because if we mess up early in the season it could affect a bid in the tournament.”

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Mike White embraces Georgia basketball NCAA tournament talk in year 2