Georgia basketball head coach Mike White, guard Blue Cain and forward Dylan James met with the media on Monday afternoon to preview the team’s upcoming season. Here are some takeaways from their comments.

Transfer turnover

Georgia basketball’s 2025-26 roster looks much different from last year. While the Bulldogs return seven players, including Cain, James and Somto Cyril, they lost several key contributors to last season’s success.

Forward Asa Newell, the team’s leading scorer and rebounder, was selected by the Pelicans with the 23rd pick in the 2025 NBA Draft and traded to Atlanta. Point guard Silas Demary Jr., who led the team in assists and steals and averaged 13.5 points per game, transferred to UConn. Other notable losses include Dakota Leffew, Tyrin Lawrence and R.J. Godfrey.

However, White was active in the transfer portal and the high school recruiting trail, bringing in a couple highly-rated recruits in Saint Mary’s guard Jordan Ross, California guard Jeremiah Wilkinson and four-star Grayson High School small forward Jacob Wilkins, the son of Georgia and Hawks legend Dominique Wilkins.

White described Ross as a “talented passer,” Wilkinson as “about as athletic of a guard” he has coached and Wilkins as “a really talented guy with great positional size and length.”

“We have a lot of talented guys, we have a lot of hard workers, we have a lot of God-given talents, we have length, athleticism,” James said. “I think in the transfer portal, we were looking for guards specifically, and we got the guards that we wanted. We got a lot of scoring firepower and highlight-reel players.”

Georgia’s high school recruiting class ranked 28th nationally, while the Bulldogs brought in the No. 34 transfer portal class, according to 247Sports. In the new era of college sports, coaches are forced to make quick decisions about players to go after in the transfer portal as new players enter and others get snatched up, and White said he and the coaching staff had to be ready for that.

“When you get this guy, it leads you to potentially get this guy, and before you know it, [the coaches] evaluate how we can finish up portal season with these last two or three guys and complement the current roster we have,” White said. “Literally within weeks, within days, we made some playing style decisions there at the bottom of the ninth in the portal season.”

Turning up the tempo

As White mentioned, the roster shakeup prompted the coaching staff to make some changes in the team’s playing style heading into the new season. White emphasized the importance of playing to the team’s strengths and being adaptable.

“I think we’ll be fun to watch, we’ll play fast, we’ll shoot a lot of 3s,” White said. “We’ve got a lot of ball-handling, it’ll be the best passing team I’ve had in a while. I think we can create some turnovers and defend at a high level, but defend differently. We want to pack it in and we won’t be quite as long and big with the same positional size we had last year.”

One of the main hindrances to last season’s success was slow offense. The team would take a long time setting up plays and moving the ball, leading to poor shot selections and abundant turnovers.

White said he thinks that speeding up the offense will help this group score easier, and the Bulldogs have been getting acclimated to that change in practice this offseason.

“I think the staff’s done a great job with [preparing us] just in terms of practice,” Cain said. “We don’t really rest in between drills, it’s just, ‘Next drill.’ [Director of Athletic Performance Collin] Crane — our conditionings took a step up with him.”

Building off last season

Though it ended with an 89-68 dismantling at the hands of Gonzaga, Georgia’s 2024-25 season was still the best the program had seen in a decade. The Bulldogs made the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2015 and won their most conference games in eight years, including an upset victory over eventual-champion Florida.

Following the tournament appearance, Georgia put a banner in the practice gym commemorating the achievement. However, White said the celebration of the banner-hanging has been short-lived as the team has its eyes forward instead of on the rearview mirror.

“We didn’t really share the moment as a team, but as a staff, we looked up and admired it a couple times, but we’re moving on,” White said. “We want to hopefully hang another one here at some point.”

White praised the 2024-25 team’s resilience in the face of adversity, its consistency in its work ethic and its connectedness. He said the staff is looking to instill those virtues in this year’s roster.

“[We’re looking for] winning habits, just matching the culture that we had last year,” White said. “All of those winning aspects — the things that go into your culture, the toughness, the attitude, the integrity, the loyalty and connection toward one another — remain to be seen. We’ve got a ways to go.”

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