Finding your location...
 
Close Article Return to stream X
NCAA Basketball Videos

2013-14 ACC Basketball Season Grades: Georgia Tech Struggling for Relevance





Remember Georgia Tech? Remember Kenny Anderson and Dennis Scott? The days of Georgia Tech’s time as a nationally-known college basketball program have long since passed. And the 2013-14 season did nothing to bring the Yellow Jackets back to the front burner of hoops thought. Georgia Tech again struggled majorly in the ACC, finishing the season 6-12 in the ACC and 16-17 mediocrity. While Georgia Tech’s overall records screams an up and down year, the ACC mark continues a trend for the Yellow Jackets. The once proud program led by then-head coach Bobby Cremins hasn’t won more than seven conference games since 2007.

That trend didn’t change this season. Georgia Tech is 21-47 the last four seasons in league play. Whether it’s talent, coaching or just apathy as the ACC has gotten larger, the Yellow Jackets seem to be forgotten on the regional and national scenes. Here’s an evaluation on both sides of the ball, plus overall, for the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets in 2013-14.

OFFENSE: For a couple years now, Georgia Tech’s offense hasn’t been effective. This year, the Yellow Jackets managed just 66.7 points per game, 281st nationally. A big factor in that was poor shooting. Georgia Tech hit just 43.1 percent of its shots from the field. Also, the Yellow Jackets were a modest 31.5 percent from three-point range, which in this era where it seems like everyone hits in the 40- to 45-percent range, won’t cut it. Trae Golden led the club with 13.3 PPG as one of four Yellow Jackets to average in double figures. Georgia Tech was even weak from the free-throw line, shooting 68.4 percent. GRADE: D.

DEFENSE: While forcing turnovers wasn’t Georgia Tech’s thing, the Yellow Jackets weren’t bad defensively. Georgia Tech ranked in the top 100 of the country in scoring defense and blocks per game. The Yellow Jackets also grabbed almost 25 defensive rebounds per game. But the defense had a lot of pressure on it game after game because of the inability of the offense to put points on the board. Under the circumstances, the defense did fairly well given all it was asked to do if Georgia Tech was going to have any chance to win. GRADE: B.

OVERALL: The 2013-14 season was another year in which Georgia Tech was just kind of there. The Yellow Jackets have been under .500 overall in seven of the last nine seasons and seem a world away from their NCAA Tournament title game appearance in 2004. There’s a lot of work to be done for the Yellow Jackets to be relevant again. They were average for what they were expected to be, which wasn’t much. GRADE: C.

Twitter-style, the 2013-14 Yellow Jackets in 140 (or less): “And finally Saturday in the ACC, Georgia Tech lost. Now, back to the Georgia State Fencing Championship. #GTHoopsDoNotMatter”

Ed Morgans is an ACC Basketball Writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @writered21 and add him to your network on Google. 

Comment 0 Comments