Mike White raised his profile as an up-and-coming coach by coming to Athens 10 years ago with Louisiana Tech and taking down the Georgia basketball team in an NIT game.

White was on the Bulldogs bench Tuesday night as the Georgia played in its first post-SEC Tournament game since 2017.

Georgia looked like it wanted to stick around for a while in running out to a big second-half lead but then had to hold on tightly down the stretch to notch a 78-76 NIT first-round win over Xavier before 2,756 in Stegeman Coliseum.

"Fortunately, we were able to hold on of course against a heck of an effort by those guys," White said. "Bottom line is we just got a postseason win against a Big East opponent. It was a good win for our program."

Center Russel Tchewa blocked a layup try to tie from Quincy Olivari with 1.9 seconds to go – a goal-tending call was overturned – to keep the game from going to overtime. Xavier got the ball under the basket, but Desmond Claude who scored 30 points never got a shot off after receiving the inbounds pass.

Dayvion McKnight's jumper with 1:35 left cut the lead to 76-74 while Georgia went cold, missing 7 of 8 shots. McKnight's layup with 11 seconds to go made it 78-76 after a Silas Demary steal and layup with 25.4 seconds left.

The Bulldogs, who got 16 points from Demary and 14 from RJ Melendez, built a 12-point halftime lead and opened a 65-42 lead after a Jalen DeLoach dunk with 13:25 to go.

Xavier sank 7 of 13 3s in the second half to rally back.

"I feel like we've grinded out games a lot," Demary said.

Georgia (18-16) won its first postseason game since a 93-84 win over Belmont in the NIT in 2016, when Yante Maten scored 33 points on 14 of 17 shooting, but lost in the second round at Saint Mary’s.

Xavier (16-18) lost its first NIT first-round game in 10 tries and fell to 21-8 in the NIT.

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Georgia Bulldogs points aplenty in the paint

Melendez had two steals in the first half that he turned into a pair of dunks.

The second came off a Xavier inbounds after it called a timeout with 4 seconds left in the half as the Bulldogs scored the final six points of the half.

"I feel like that's one of the positives in my game," said the Illinois transfer who also was 2 of 3 on 3s. "Being able to get out and run."

Georgia scored 28 points in the first half in the paint to take a 46-34 lead into the break. The Bulldogs had 44 points in the paint for the game.

DeLoach had two dunks and layup. Tchewa added six points and 4 assists. Six-foot-10 reserve center Frank Anselem-Ibe had two layups to give him four points, his most since a Jan. 16 win at South Carolina.

The Bulldogs made just 3 of 7 3-pointers in the first half but shot 50% from the field overall. Georgia was 6 of 16 on 3s in the game.

Georgia basketball shows it might belong in NIT

No team in the 32-team NIT bracket had a lower NCAA NET ranking than Georgia’s 100.

The Bulldogs got one of the SEC’s two automatic bids because Ole Miss (No. 90) declined a spot.

"We thought the season was over after the (SEC) tournament, but we got another opportunity so we have to take advantage of it," Melendez said.

The other lowest-rated teams in the NIT: No. 95 Cornell, No. 94 LSU and No. 92 St. Joseph’s.

Xavier was No. 64. The highest ranked NET teams in the NIT field were No. 28 Indiana State and No. 37 Cincinnati.

Among those teams that declined a chance to play: St. Johns’s (No. 32), Pittsburgh (No. 40), Oklahoma (No. 46), Washington (No. 69), Memphis (No. 75), Syracuse (No. 84) and Indiana (No. 98).

Former Georgia coach Tom Crean went on rant about teams opting out of the NIT on the ESPN2 selection show.

“There’s plenty of time for the portal,” he said. “There's plenty of time to talk to recruits. There’s plenty of time to negotiate NIL deals. There’s not plenty of time to play. There’s not plenty of time to get your players on the floor and give them a chance to get better. There’s not plenty of time for guys to continue to play that may never get to play again, and that to me is absolutely ridiculous.”

Georgia Bulldogs-Wake Forest rematch?

Georgia’s next game could be at Wake Forest and a rematch against a team it beat earlier this season.

The Demon Deacons play Wednesday at 8 p.m. in Winston-Salem on ESPN+ against Appalachian State with the winner meeting Georgia on Saturday or Sunday in a second-round game.

"You can tell (Steve) Forbes I'm cheering for App State so we can get a home game," White said of the Wake Forest coach.

The Bulldogs got their first win of the season, 80-77, over Wake Forest on Nov. 10 in Athens behind 21 points from Noah Thomasson.

Wake Forest (20-13) is a No. 1 NIT seed. Appalachian State went 27-6.

The Bulldogs improved to 4-6 in the NIT since the 1999 season.

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Georgia basketball survives Xavier in NIT to move onto second round