ATHENS — A road win at Arkansas on Wednesday night isn’t necessarily a “must-win” for a Georgia basketball team striving to build an NCAA tournament resume.

But the 9 p.m. tip in Fayetteville represents one heck of an opportunity for the Bulldogs (14-4, 2-3 SEC) to steal a road win in the ultra-competitive SEC.

Georgia was most recently projected as a No. 8 seed in the NCAA tournament — one of 12 SEC teams currently expected in the field — per ESPN bracketology expert Joe Lunardi.

The Bulldogs have an average rank of 31.8 among six popular metrics (NET, KenPom, Jorvik, KPI, BPO and SOR), according to a recent UGA release.

Beating the Razorbacks — UGA is a 1-point underdog and has lost seven straight in Bud Walton Arena dating back to a 60-59 win in 2011 — would provided a boost to the Bulldogs’ postseason resume

Georgia, coming off losses at No. 6 Tennessee (74-56) last Wednesday and at home against No. 1 Auburn (70-68) on Saturday, will be facing an uncharacteristically cold Razorbacks (11-7, 0-5) team.

The Razorbacks spent six of the first eight weeks this season under first-year coach John Calipari ranked in the Top 25 on the strength of 11 wins against a schedule that KenPom.com ranks as the 46th toughest in the nation.

Arkansas is expected to be without freshman point guard Boogie Fland, the team’s second-leading scorer (15.1 points per game) and assists leader (103).

Fland injured his hand in the Razorbacks’ 71-63 loss to Florida on Jan. 11 and has been fighting to play through the injury.

Fland, who was a 5-star recruit and McDonald’s All-American coming out of Archbishop Stepinac High School (N.Y.) in the Bronx, played 85-percent of the minutes possible and accounted for 25 percent of the Razorbacks’ shot volume.

Georgia’s only road win to this point was back on Nov. 15, when the Bulldogs beat Georgia Tech (8-11) by a 77-69 count in McCamish Pavilion.

The road will get even rockier later this week for the Bulldogs, who dropped their first two road SEC games at No. 16 Ole Miss (15-3) and at Thompson-Boling Arena in Knoxville, as they travel to play at No. 5 Florida (16-2) on Saturday.

Georgia’s schedule strength ranks only 76th — 12th among SEC teams — despite opening the league slate playing Top 25 opposition in its first five conference games.

Such metrics will take care of themselves as the Bulldogs wade deeper into the SEC waters, but wins will need to be part of the equation for Georgia to make what would be its first NCAA tournament appearance in 10 years.

Lunardi suggested last week SEC teams could make the NCAA tourney fields as an at-large even with league marks as low as 7-11 or 6-12.

That’s not where Coach Mike White’s mindset is at, of course, as he works to identify and improve the team’s ball movement.

The Bulldogs rank last in the SEC in assist/turnover ratio in league games, averaging just 7.8 per outing.

Florida and Arkansas, however, rank 15th and 16th in the SEC in league games in the steals category, which could provide optimism for the Georgia backcourt.

Big picture, White knows he has a capable UGA team that’s in the midst of raising the bar on the basketball culture, and a road win at Arkansas — or any SEC school — would go a long way toward that.