ACC Preview #6 - Georgia Tech
Josh Pastner has the brains to excel, but does he have the smarts to match?
Georgia Tech is into Year 4 of the Josh Pastner era if you can believe it. The Yellow Jackets coach is still youthful though his Boy Wonder image is somewhat dented these days.
Marked for coaching since he was a teenager, at least since his time at Memphis, Pastner has been a bizarre combination of brilliance and buffoonery.
He clearly understands Xs and Os - his teams, despite a lack of offensive talent, have always defended well.
But the buffoon never seems far from the surface. At Memphis he reportedly indulged his insecurities and growsed to his players about his job security, reportedly complaining about his boss and his job security during practice.
And at Georgia Tech, the whole Ron Bell thing blew up.
If youd somehow missed it, Pastner befriended Bell, a drug addict, and hoped to help him.
Unfortunately, two of his players ended up taking some extra benefits from Bell which caused some NCAA intervention.
That was bad enough. Then Bell, unhappy with a perceived lack of respect from Pastner, turned on him with a spectacular viciousness. He tried to cause trouble with the NCAA and then, in a completely manufactured story, accused Pastner of sexually molesting his girlfriend.
This did not go over well with the legal authorities and ultimately Pastner was completely exonerated of Bell’s bizarre criminal allegations.
How bizarre? We never saw this nugget until just now but apparently Bell wanted the NCAA to investigate him for sexual assault and got alarmingly angry when a representative explained that the NCAA couldn’t do that: “…Bell became irate and angry with the NCAA enforcement staff representatives, demanded an apology, and made threatening statements that caused the NCAA enforcement staff representatives to end the call, cease contact with Bell, and decide that it would be unsafe to send an NCAA enforcement staff representative to Arizona to interview Bell in person. ...”
Wow! This guy really is quite a case.
Thing is, it’s just sort of part of Pastner’s circus. He’s bit of an oddity magnet, a one man Goofus and Gallant, and he has yet to prove that his formidable intelligence outweighs his sometimes questionable judgment.
That’s the meta view of his personality and program. To zoom in a little more to basketball, despite a solid defense, he hasn’t been able to get many scorers enrolled in the Atlanta school.
So while he lost five players from last year’s team, none of them were all that great in the first place. Sylvester Obgonda, Abdoulaye Gueye and Brandon Alston graduated while Evan Jester and Curtis Haywood transferred. Do you remember anything much any of them did while Yellow Jackets?
We can wait. Take your time. They might be missed defensively but he should be able to adapt.
Pastner does have some intriguing newcomers and some interesting pieces back, starting with Jose Alvarado. He’s unlikely to be an NBA player but he’s smart and tough. We love him. He’s had a tough time at Tech so far because of the lack of offensive talent to work with but if your point guard is tough and smart and resourceful, that’s a great place to start.
He’s a junior now and he’s had some tough times so we’d expect him to be a superior leader. Alvarado was Tech’s leading scorer with 12.5 ppg and also led in assists (3.4)
Not surprisingly he led the team in minutes played. Any idea who was second?
Sophomore Mike DeVoe, who averaged 32.3 mpg. That gives Tech a solid defensive backcourt and an experienced one to boot.
The backcourt should be a strong point for Pastner’s squad. Aside from the incumbent starters Alvarado and Defoe, he returns Khalid Moore, a 6-4 sophomore who was solidly in the rotation as a freshman. Moore averaged 16.4 mpg and 4.2 ppg (no one scored a whole lot for Georgia Tech last season).
Shembari Phillips, a 6-3 redshirt senior who averaged about 11 mpg last season, is also back. At a minimum he’s good depth and he knows what to do in practice. He’s continuity in other words.
Bubba Parham transfers in from VMI where was All Southern Conference and was a dangerous three point shooter, which Tech can certainly use. He’s just 5-11 which could be a problem at times but overall he should help and might be a pleasant surprise.
Malachi Rice only played in two games last season so we’re not expecting a whole lot out of him.
Tech also brings in 6-5 freshman Asanti Price. Like Parham, he can light up a scoreboard. Both guys should be a major asset for a team that really had trouble scoring last season.
As for the front court, James Banks transferred in from Texas and quickly became a solid player for the Yellow Jackets last year. He averaged double figures - 10.5 ppg - and 7.7 rpg. He’s a credible inside player and should be better this year.
Raleigh’s Moses Wright came to Atlanta as an athletic but skinny prospect who was seen as a late bloomer. Now a junior, he’s not skinny anymore - he’s 6-9 and 221, which is big enough to compete with most guys this side of Zion Williamson - and he’s still athletic. He could be a really good player for Tech this year.
Fellow junior Evan Cole, who came to Tech as another slender forward, isn’t a lot bigger but he’s a heady guy who found his way into the rotation last season. Like Moses, he could carve out a bigger role. He was one of Kevin Keatts’s last recruits at UNC-Wilmington and the guy has a knack for finding under-appreciated tough players. So we’d say keep an eye on him.
Kristian Sjolund is also back. A Norwegian who played his high school ball in Texas, Sjolund did okay as a freshman, getting 9.4 minutes per game and seeing action in 21. His stats were unexceptional but he got on the court. Like a lot of 19 year olds he needs to gain some weight to play at this level but he’s worth paying attention to.
Georgia Tech also got a solid transfer in forward Jordan Usher, a Georgia native (Camden) who came back home from Southern Cal. He’s athletic and strong and if nothing else will help defensively. He’ll be eligible after the first semester.
And David Didenko is a JUCO who played his freshman year at Palm Beach State College.
He wasn’t big statistically but he might be a solid contributor. We’ll have to wait and see about him.
He’s also got an interesting back story. According to the official bio at RamblinWreck.com, he was “[b]orn in Yakutsk, Russia, came to Brooklyn, N.Y., in August, 2010, at the age of 11, on vacation, and has remained in the United States.”
That probably makes him sound more independent than he really is (or was at 11 anyway), but it’s intriguing nonetheless.
So Pastner has a maturing front line, a backcourt that could be really dangerous and has proven to be an adept defensive coach.
Can he get it done with this group?
We’re back to the brain vs. buffoon question, the Goofus vs. Gallant competition.
Georgia Tech should be better. There’s enough talent on this team, enough intriguing pieces, to win some games and Pastner has proven himself as a defensive coach.
He has not, as of yet, either at Memphis or Georgia Tech, shown that he can create the kind of stability that is needed to build a sustainable power. For one, other than a nice NIT run at Georgia Tech which saw the Yellow Jackets finish second to TCU, Pastner has never gotten past the second round in anything.
And if he can’t show some real progress in his fourth season, his chances of staying at Georgia Tech will diminish.
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