ATHENS, Ga. — For some Georgia programs, making the NCAA tournament is less a goal and more of an expectation. It doesn't mean those teams take making the tournament for granted, but decades of sustained success and rooms filled with shiny trophies have moved those markers of a successful season well past simply making the field.
Men's tennis has appeared in 41 straight NCAA tournaments, winning six team titles and challenging for many more. Women's tennis, currently the No. 1 team in the country and the winners of the ITA National Indoor Championships earlier this year, has played in 37 straight NCAAs, winning two and challenging for many more, including finals appearances in 2019 and 2024.
Georgia's men's basketball isn't yet at that level, but the Bulldogs are trying to get there. And they took a significant step Sunday by making the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2015. The Bulldogs (20-12) are the No. 9 seed in the Midwest Regional and will face No. 8-seeded Gonzaga (25-8) in Wichita, Kan., on Thursday afternoon.
The Bulldogs still have a ways to go to hang with Georgia's most consistent and successful programs, but you don't get to 10, 20 or 30 straight NCAA tournaments without getting to your first.
"Great accomplishment for our program and this team," third-year coach Mike White said. "Georgia is dancing. We've got more basketball ahead of us, so it's a great day."
It was a great day for a program that last made the tournament a decade ago when its third-leading scorer was a junior named Charles Mann. Now, after playing professionally overseas for a while and then working at Army and VCU, Mann is in his third season on White's staff and second season as Director of Player Personnel.
When he returned to Georgia after White was hired, Mann did so because he wanted to help develop players at his alma mater, a place that did so much for him from 2012-16, and because he wanted to help the program grow and reach its potential. Doing so, he said during a Quick Chat in 2022, would be incredibly special.
Mann's teams, coached by Mark Fox, won 20 games in a season three times, but they lost to Michigan State in the first round of the tournament in 2015, their only NCAA appearance.
"I think if we're able to push through that threshold and go even farther, it would mean the world to me," he said in 2022.
They have the chance to do that this year, and to build on that success going forward. The Georgia program has had its high points over the years, including advancing to the 1983 Final Four, but sustained NCAA appearances have thus far been elusive.
Officially, the Bulldogs haven't won an NCAA tournament game since Tubby Smith guided Georgia to the 1996 Sweet 16. Georgia's 2002 tournament appearance and first-round win were later vacated due to NCAA sanctions. Even if you count that vacated win, it has still been more than 20 years since the Bulldogs have tasted any tournament success.
The long drought between tournament appearances and wins isn't White's burden to carry — he was in elementary school when Georgia went to the Final Four in 1983, was playing for Ole Miss when the Bulldogs reached the Sweet 16 in 1996, and was the head coach at Louisiana Tech in 2015 — and it certainly isn't anything the players should feel pressure to stop.
But these Bulldogs know the history, and they want to be the ones to chart a new course. White said any big-picture thinking about what this all means for the program will wait until after the tournament, but this is why he came to Georgia from Florida in 2022, and this is why he and his staff have worked so hard to help these players be in this position.
"We all came to Georgia to come together. We came to Georgia to rebuild and get Georgia to a tournament," he said. "It's special. We're going to celebrate this spring, and (now) we're going to prepare for Gonzaga."
Gonzaga University may be unfamiliar if you don't follow men's basketball. It's located in Spokane, Wash., and the school's nickname is a familiar one: Bulldogs.
If you do follow college hoops, you know that the 'Zags are one of the most accomplished programs in the country over the past quarter century. This is Gonzaga's 26th straight trip to the NCAA tournament, with 14 trips to the Sweet 16, six to the Elite Eight, two Final Fours and two appearances in the championship game.
The only active coaches with more NCAA tournament wins than 'Zags coach Mark Few (43) are John Calipari (56), Bill Self (56) and Tom Izzo (54). That's elite company, and Gonzaga is an elite program, one that has more wins in the NCAA tournament since 2017 (22) than any other school.
Georgia won 20 games this season while playing one of the hardest schedules in the country, so White and his players are used to facing tough competition. The Bulldogs earned their at-large selection after playing a regular-season schedule that included eight games — that's one out of every four on the schedule — against teams ranked in the top 10.
The SEC in 2025 was as good and deep as any conference has ever been, and the league set a record with 14 teams making the NCAA field of 68.
"This league's just a gauntlet," White said.
Two of the tournament's four No. 1 seeds — No. 1 overall seed Auburn and Florida — came from the SEC, and the Bulldogs took down the Gators in Stegeman Coliseum on Feb. 25. A month earlier, Georgia took Auburn to the wire, falling 70-68.
Georgia knows it's a solid, battle-tested team. However, the only player on the roster who has played in an NCAA tournament is junior forward RJ Godfrey, who helped Clemson reach the Elite Eight last season. White led Florida to at least the second round in all four NCAA appearances during his time in Gainesville, including reaching the Elite Eight in 2017.
Nobody yet knows how far Georgia will go in this tournament. But this is a tough, connected group that has faced its share of challenges this season, including a pair of four-game losing streaks in SEC play to incredibly good competition, and come out the other side better and more resilient.
"We have an opportunity as a team to make some noise," White said.
We'll all be watching and listening on Thursday.
Assistant Sports Communications Director John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at Frierson Files.
