While Georgia Basketball Head Coach Mike White would be the first to tell you that there is no time for celebration as there are still fifteen games left in their regular season, one cannot ignore the accomplishment laid before him and his Bulldogs. For the first time since 2011, the Georgia Bulldogs Men's Basketball Team, who sit at 14-2 and 2-1 in SEC play, have been voted into the Top 25 of the Associated Press College Basketball Poll.
Propelled by consecutive wins over Top 25 SEC foes in Kentucky and Oklahoma, respectively, the Bulldogs made the emphatic jump from unranked to No. 23, which is one notch higher than the last time they were ranked in 2011 at No. 24.
If you want to know the last time the Bulldogs were ranked before 2011, you would have to go back another eight years to 2003, where the Bulldogs finished the season ranked as the AP Poll's No. 25 team in the country.
It has been a steady climb from obscurity for White's program. In his third season with the Bulldogs, White has experienced all of the growing pains of turning Georgia basketball into a consistent winner, and while the mid-season ranking is nice, seeing his team maximize its full potential is paramount.
Mike White comments on potential AP ranking after Oklahoma win
"If that were to happen, I'd be happy for our fans,” White said via dawgnation.com. “But I don't really care. I want to reach our potential, reach our ceiling, and continue to get better and prepare well for this next one. If it happens or it doesn't happen, we're still going to talk about how we handle (Saturday’s) success. We've talked a lot about how small the margin for error is in the SEC this year."