Archive for the ‘Tech/ACC’ Category

Eli celebrates the greatest month a 9-7 team ever had. (AP photo)

Every season ends with music blaring, confetti falling, a trophy awarded. It’s “One Shining Moment,” a pinnacle attained, a champion crowned. But more and more, we’re seeing trophies taken by teams that aren’t quite the epitome of excellence. We’ve entered the era of the accidental champ.

We consider the most recent winners in the six major American sports:

Connecticut, the 2010-11 NCAA basketball titlist: The Huskies finished in the bottom half of the Big East, which numbers 16 teams. They were 9-9 in regular-season conference play and entered the Big East tournament as the ninth seed. They won five games in that event, six in the NCAA tournament. They won more than half as many games (11) in the two postseason events as in the regular season (21).

Boston Bruins, the 2010-11 NHL titlist: They finished the regular season with 103 points, seventh-most in the league. They had the fewest points of any of the six …

Continue reading From Cardinals to Giants, it’s the era of the accidental champ »

You've got to be strong with the ball to outmuscle Wisconsin. Jared Sullinger was. (AP photo)

Hoops Hysterics

1.The silver anniversary — meaning the 25th year — of Bradley’s Bracket Fiasco is almost at hand. How about a silvery sliver of a guess as to who’s going to make the Final Four? I’d say Ohio State, Kentucky and Syracuse have stamped themselves as the three best teams, and unless one of them slips they won’t have to play each other in a regional. I’m guessing I’d pick at least two of those to reach New Orleans. As for the fourth team: I’ve been underwhelmed by North Carolina, and I won’t pick Kansas no matter how good Kansas is because I’ve been wrong so many times before. I liked Florida last season because of its guards and I like the Gators again for the same reason. If you’re looking for a unranked major of substance, I’d try West Virginia. For a mid-major, try Wichita State.

2. With big conference games at hand all across the basketball landscape, how do we …

Continue reading Hoops insider: A early line on Bradley’s 25th Bracket Fiasco »

Brian Gregory offers a friendly reminder. (AJC photo by Johnny Crawford)

GT (Georgia Tech) had just beaten BC (Boston College), and BG (Brian Gregory) was in a GM (good mood). His Yellow Jackets had won their first game in three weeks and their second since Christmas, and when you don’t do it often winning comes to seem a very big deal. “You need tangible evidence sometimes,” Gregory said, and Saturday’s modest victory offered a snippet.

Everyone realized this would be a difficult season: A team that went 13-18 and lost two of its three best players (Iman Shumpert and Brian Oliver) would shuttle between arenas under a new coach, and not just any new coach but a temperamental and tactical departure. But knowing what was coming didn’t make being 8-14 less painful.

“It’s hard on the guys,” Gregory said. “I’m cognizant of that. And it’s not just this year [Tech has been losing] — there’s a piling-on effect. And I know I’m a lot different than what they signed up for. Not to say …

Continue reading Year 1 hasn’t been easy, but Tech and BG are making strides »

Jonathan Dwyer: One of the exceptions who proves the rule. (AJC photo by Johnny Crawford)

One of the charms about ESPN is that the Worldwide Leader has enough correspondents to satisfy every viewpoint. Just yesterday, ESPN recruiting correspondent Jamie Newberg was lauding Georgia Tech for its success in finding prospects of lesser portfolio. But now comes LaRue Cook of ESPN the Magazine to serve as the bad cop.

Georgia Tech, Cook writes, is the nation’s second-worst program at attracting high-end in-state players. (Only Arizona keeps Tech from being No. 1.) Cook’s rationale: Over the past five years, the Jackets have landed only two of the 74 Georgia recruits ranked in ESPN’s top 150.

Wait. It gets worse.

Neither of the two — Jonathan Dwyer and Morgan Burnett — was landed by Paul Johnson and staff. Those two were signed by Chan Gailey, who last coached Tech in 2007. Only one Tech signee under Johnson, Cook writes, has cracked the ESPN 150, and that was Vad Lee of North …

Continue reading ESPN: Tech is the second-worst at keeping in-state talent »

Josh Harvey-Clemons of Lowndes: With whom will he sign? (AJC photo by Phil Skinner)

If you follow college football, you cannot ignore recruiting. Even if you think it’s overblown, attention must be paid. As Jamie Newberg, the ESPN recruiting analyst, said Monday: “Those stars [rankings for each recruit] do mean something. You just have look at the national champions the last 10 years to know that.”

Then this: “But then you look at a guy like [Virginia Tech's] Frank Beamer — he’s never in the Top 10 [of recruiting rankings] but he gets the guys who does what he wants … Paul Johnson has done a good job in that way, too.”

Paul Johnson, as we know, coaches Georgia Tech, and Tech is often seen as an afterthought on National Signing Day. The SEC schools load up on five-star guys and the Jackets make do with lesser lights, and when you look at the rankings — and we all do — Tech is never in the Top 10. But here’s Newberg on this Tech class,  rated the nation’s 57th-best by …

Continue reading Recruiting mavens weigh in on Tech, UGA and recruiting itself »

"So why aren't we better than this? You're asking ME? " (AJC photo by Hyosub Shin)

Hoops Hysterics

1. Georgia is tied for last in the SEC. Georgia Tech is dead last in the ACC. Which team is more disappointing? Georgia, and not just because the Bulldogs managed to lose to Tech in Athens. (The Jackets are 3-9 since.) A team in Year 3 under its coach, as Georgia is, should be much further along than a team in Year 1, as is the case with Tech. If the Bulldogs don’t win a big game or two the second half of the league season, the advances of last season will be canceled out.

2. How many NCAA tournament bids will the ACC command? How many for the SEC? The ACC could get stuck on four — North Carolina, Duke, Florida State and Virginia — if North Carolina State continues to slide and Miami doesn’t make a big push. The SEC has four almost-certains — Kentucky, Florida, Vanderbilt and Mississippi State — but Alabama lost four in a row and, its RPI of 33 notwithstanding, could be overtaken …

Continue reading Hoops insider: So which is the bigger dud – Tech or UGA? »

Which Tech will fly higher? (AJC photo by Johnny Crawford)

Georgia Tech hasn’t confirmed that it will move its game against Virginia Tech in Blacksburg to Labor Day evening, but an announcement should be forthcoming. (The holdup is because the Jackets are shuffling some other games.) So if Tech-Tech, which has become a midseason ACC marquee game, becomes a high-profile opener instead, who benefits?

Tech, I say. (Heh, heh.)

Virginia Tech benefits in that it gets the only other team to win the ACC Coastal since the league moved to divisional play at its place so early. As we know, Paul Johnson’s offense is unlike most others, and teams that have extra time to prepare tend to fare a bit better than those that don’t. (Johnson argues that this bit of conventional wisdom is overblown, but here we note that, of Georgia Tech’s five losses in 2011, three — against Virginia, Virginia Tech and Utah — came against opponents who had more than one week to ready themselves.) That said …

Continue reading Georgia Tech vs. Virginia Tech on Labor Day: Who benefits? »

A stressful night for Coach Cal at the Stegasaurus? (AP photo)

(Yet again, let me note that this feature is part — but only a small part — of our weekly college basketball package, which runs every Tuesday in the print AJC. I offer my contribution for your digital perusal.)

Hoops Hysterics

1. Does Georgia have a prayer against No. 1 Kentucky on Tuesday? Sure. As good as the Wildcats can be, they trailed in the second halves of both SEC road games, and neither of those — at Auburn, at Tennessee — was against top-shelf competition. At 1-4 in league play, the Bulldogs aren’t top-shelf, either. But they’re at home, which means something.

2. If you had to pick one team against the field to win the national championship, would it be Kentucky? North Carolina? Missouri? Syracuse? None of the above. I’d pick the same team I picked — incorrectly — last March. I’d pick Ohio State because I think Jared Sullinger, whose numbers are almost the same as a sophomore as they were as a …

Continue reading Hoops insider: Does UGA have a shot versus No. 1 Wildcats? »

Statues come in bronze. People are more complicated. (AP photo)

In death as in life, timing matters. Had Joe Paterno died Jan. 22, 2011, he’d have been hailed as the one coach who’d negotiated the murky waters of contemporary college football and left, both his sport and this world, with dignity shining. Every obituary would have included, no further down than the second paragraph, the line: “He did it the right way.”

But Joe Paterno died Jan. 22, 2012, and today every first paragraph is duty-bound to mention of his forced departure from Penn State 2 1/2 months before his death, a departure triggered not because some recruit was given a new car but because a longtime assistant coach was indicted for child sex abuse.

Joe Paterno took two national championships, won more games at the major-college level than any other football coach and never saw his program penalized by the NCAA. Had he died at age 84, as opposed to 85, we would have mourned his passing while celebrating a life …

Continue reading Joe Paterno is gone, but our struggle with his legacy endures »

BG of GT, shown in demanding mode. (AJC photo by Johnny Crawford)

If the record doesn’t indicate that Georgia Tech is under new management, two bits of data did. Entering Thursday’s game against Virginia, the Jackets ranked 21st among 338 Division I teams in field-goal percentage defense and 29th in rebounding margin. And that told us … what?

That Georgia Tech, without benefit of top-shelf talent, is paying attention to the grunt work — namely, defense and rebounding — and also that Brian Gregory, in his first season as coach, has gotten his players’ attention. He arrived insisting his teams would guard and rebound, and sure enough …

Here we note the difference from, say, last season. The 2010-2011 Jackets ranked 222nd nationally in field-goal percentage defense, 145th in rebounding margin. Which is why Tech needed a man like Gregory to right a program gone egregiously wrong.

Which isn’t, let’s emphasize, to say that Tech is fully righted.

The Jackets managed 17 points …

Continue reading For Georgia Tech, it was the worst night of a difficult season »