4 worst head coach hires in Georgia basketball history

After the disastrous tenure of Tom Crean, Michael White is trying to rebuild the basketball program in Athens, under the enormous shadow of Kirby Smart. Georgia will always be a football school, that goes without saying, but so is nearly every other SEC school, yet many are competitive on the hardwood too. 

With March underway, it’s time for madness in college basketball and the Bulldogs don’t often get to participate. Georgia has not made the NCAA Tournament since 2015 under Mark Fox and has not won the SEC Tournament since 2008. 

White has gotten the Bulldogs to 15-14 (5-11) with Ole Miss heading to Athens for the penultimate game of the regular season. Any chance of an at-large bid is long gone, so the Bulldogs will need to muster up some magic in Nashville to punch their ticket to March Madness. 

The program is certainly still a few years away, but that’s understandable considering all of these three coaches who set Georgia basketball back over the past three decades. 

The last time that Georgia won the SEC Tournament, it was Dennis Felton who led the team there, but that doesn’t mean his six-year tenure was a success. Felton was on the hot seat heading into that 2008 SEC Tournament and pulled out a miracle with a team that went 17-17 and was a No. 14 seed in the NCAA Tournament. 

Felton’s group was bounced in the first round of March Madness, but he couldn’t be fired after a year like that. So, Georgia brought him back for a 9-11 start to the 2009-10 season before he was finally let go and replaced by Pete Herrmann on an interim basis. 

He had just two winning seasons across his six years in Athens and never reached the 20-win mark in any of those years. Felton’s tenure was a major step back after Jim Harrick took the team to the tournament in two of his three seasons.