There was a critique that was frequently heard years ago that doesn’t seem to be quite as common anymore. People were sometimes called “haters.”
A hater was someone who was so insecure that they spent inordinate amounts of time looking for even the tiniest faults with would-be rivals. If you’re a veteran viewer of daytime sports talk shows on cable TV you might remember Skip Bayless’ daily diatribes against LeBron James. Bayless was considered a hater.
And while I wouldn’t want to be lumped into the same category with Bayless, I do write this morning in defense of the concept of hating.
Honestly, it isn’t so bad, and I’d recommend you try it.
We are obviously still dealing with the disappointment of another early exit from the NCAA Tournament for Georgia. It was incredibly frustrating to see the Bulldogs be so uncompetitive. That’s a problem that might not be easily solved for UGA, but as it seeks answers, we can bide our time by hating on Georgia’s rivals.
With that in mind, shout out to Florida for losing Sunday in a shocking upset to Iowa in the second round of the Big Dance. You might think with Georgia losing in the first round, we would have no room to mock the Gators, but you’d be wrong.
It would’ve been great if Georgia had won last week, but no matter what, it’s always great to be a Gator Hater. Check out the rest of our coverage below.
Trivia time
What year did Georgia football play its first season?
Answer is at the bottom of the newsletter.
The ‘hard’ steps that must come next for Georgia basketball
It’s hard to know which famous Mike White is having the more difficult week.
The famed showrunner was voted off “Survivor” in a blindside during the 50th season of the show. It was his second time appearing on the reality show.
The Bulldogs at one point trailed by 40 in the second half. They never led and flatly laid down to open the second half, as St. Louis went on an 18-0 run to leave no doubt about who wanted to keep playing basketball this season.
“Really disappointed in our effort, starting with myself, that obviously we weren’t very prepared to compete at the level that I thought we would,” White said. “Did not see this coming. Tough way to end the season. Didn’t give St. Louis much of a game.”
More striking than anything White offered after the loss was what Georgia guard Jeremiah Wilkinson, who scored 30 points with seven 3-pointers, said.
“We didn’t play hard at all,” Wilkinson said. “Turnovers, we’re not getting back. And, you know, I’m guilty of it a couple of times, too, but as a team, they got out and ran on us. And we couldn’t get rebounds, and they went and got rebounds. We were the bigger team today, so we have no excuse for that. We were probably the more athletic team, so there’s no excuse for what happened today.”
Thursday’s showing was so poor that it completely clouds what had been a remarkable season for Georgia. Few thought the Bulldogs would make the NCAA Tournament after losing Asa Newell to the NBA and Silas Demary Jr. to Connecticut.
But Georgia did just that, rattling off 22 regular-season wins — a program record. It was enough to make the tournament for the second time in four years. The last time Georgia went to back-to-back NCAA Tournaments was 2001 and 2002. The latter was also the last time Georgia won a game in the Big Dance.
Softball defeated Mississippi State 7-4 to take series.
Baseball fell to Texas A&M 18-5 but still took series.
Key leaders explain why they stayed at Georgia
Lawson Luckie sat and watched from the sidelines as over a dozen former Georgia players worked out for NFL scouts at the program’s pro day.
It’s not far-fetched to have wondered if Luckie himself would’ve been out there. He was draft-eligible following the 2025 season and has an NFL skill set that some teams would’ve loved.
Yet both came back to Georgia for another season, electing to complete a journey neither believed was finished.
“I’ll just say I came to college with goals in mind, and I just haven’t achieved all of them,” Wilson said. “That’s really the main thing that brought me back.”
The primary goal for Wilson is winning a national championship. He arrived in Athens just as the 2022 team wrapped up an unbeaten season. He wants that same glory that players like Nolan Smith and Chris Smith attained that season.
Georgia guard Marcus Millender (center) looks to shoot over St. Louis center Robbie Avila (right) and guard Quentin Jones during their NCAA Tournament first round game Thursday, March 19, 2026, in Buffalo, N.Y. (Yuki Iwamura/AP)
Quote of the day
White on the next steps for Georgia basketball:
“The next step is we gotta break through. And to have to wait, my gosh, I’m sick to my stomach that we gotta wait, potentially, for another year, to have this opportunity again. Because if you lose 90-86 — and you had a chance down, and you did a lot of good things, and they just hit some hard shots, we were really connected, we were in character — you can live with it.”
Legacy OL Ty Johnson commits to Georgia
Ty Johnson, a 3-star offensive lineman from South Carolina, has committed to Georgia football. He was driving to Athens to catch practice and planned his public commitment once he reached the campus footprint Saturday morning.
To say that the moment that has been on his mind for years would be an understatement.
“I’ve been relatively open in this recruiting process,” he said. “You kind of have to. Because you never really know what is going to happen. To be saying this wasn’t pretty emotional and pretty cool to see is a lie.”
“It is definitely very, well, it has kind of always been my dream, for sure.”
While the scorecard will say the Dawgs won out over South Carolina and then a push from Tennessee, that’s only the box score stuff.
Johnson, a UGA legacy, grew up going to Athens at least once a year to play where his dad played. Travis Johnson, a former OL, was on the same Bulldog teams as current staffers Mike Bobo and Kirby Smart. His father roomed with Smart.
