If you're on the coastal area of Georgia, check out Tedward tonight on AM 790 and AM 1350 The Fan. Ted will preview the matchup between the Jackets and the TarHeels. Once we get the mp3 sent over to us, we'll post it as well for those listeners who aren't within reception area.

(H/T: Todd Hayes, FTRS Reader)

AJC - Shumpert shoots Jackets past Eagles

Mark Bradley's article from 2005 that enraged Paul Hewitt. I think Mark Bradley is a sensationalist at times and enjoys fanning the flame. I guess that's his job but, to me, you don't want to alienate the people you rely on for firsthand information.

Greenville News - Clemson Tigers rally over FSU, boosts hopes for ACC bye

Block C - When keepin' it real goes horribly wrong...

RW.com - Tech prepares for final road trip

via 2.bp.blogspot.com

Roddy went 0-2 on the weekend with a BB. We will keep an eye out for the A-Back/Left Fielder.

Saturday afternoon tipoff against the MD Terrapins. TV is Raycom. Testudo Times previews Georgia Tech. The Baltimore Sun is the Terps homebase-ish newspaper so here are some articles about the Terp star, Grevis Vasquez, and the Terp win over NC State a couple days ago.

"That will be a team assignment. Probably Iman [Shumpert] will start off on him, but I think the way we've played it the last couple of years, it'll become a team assignment. He's a first team, all-league guy, so he's the type of guy who can carry a team. He's had some big second halves this year." - Paul Hewitt on who will guard Grevis

The hometown newspapers have some good articles, too. Carroll Rodgers recently wrote a good piece on Derrick Favors and his distrust of the WWL. Coley Harvey wrote a good post-game of the UNC shillacking.

Hello Jacket fans! I a fellow  ACC member am doing my conference duty in welcoming you to the great state of Maryland. We hope you will enjoy our hospitality at comcastle, and sure hope Hewitt displays his usual genius while coaching (http://www.testudotimes.com/2010/2/18/1316311/acc-head-coaching-power-rankings). 

Although your stay will be brief, I hope your seven loses in conference play wont make you cringe when you leave. Look on the brightside, ole Hewitt can tell you all "HEY I GOT FAVORS AND WE GOT 6 WINS! IM a GREAT COACH!" and all will be well in the HIVE.

I see your draft projection is your front page story, and it is my hope you focus your attention back on basketball as that we may properly entertain you with all the tricks our team can't wait to display. I await the show.

Forever yours,

Testudo

 

           My last post dealt with how Georgia Tech's offense fared against the quality of the defense it was facing. In short we played a very tough schedule and fared very well against most teams, and the only times we underperformed as an offense our defense was not able to carry our team to victory. In this post I want to determine how our offense preformed compared to the rest of the ACC. Again I will use the yards per play stat, a simple and effective way to measure the success of an offense. I will also only use conference game statistics in this comparison just to try to weed out any variance. And all my stats are from cfbstats.com. A quick look at the overall stats shows that Georgia Tech's offense was 3rd overall with 6.1 yards/play, behind only FSU and surprisingly Virginia Tech. Although, looking further into the stats I would rank our offense 2nd in conference. Neither Georgia Tech nor FSU had the opportunity to pad their stats by facing their own bad defense (GTwill also noticed this), while Virginia Tech did not have to play arguably the ACC's best defense, their own. Beyond a general comparison I also wanted to look at each team and how other ACC team's offenses fared while facing this team, so I compiled the chart below.

           This chart is organized by the team we faced and the yards per play they allowed to other ACC teams. This shows a couple of interesting things. First off is that we only had one game where we did not perform better than the average ACC offense, Miami. That game was just as bad in the stats as it was to watch. Second is that our offense showed up to play both times against Clemson. We posted the 2nd and 3rd best performance against Clemson and in both games we needed every yard we gained. Finally I can not get over just how awful FSU's defense was, 4 teams gained more than 7 yards/play against them, which is considered to be an elite level of offense. Also their 2nd BEST defensive performance, 5.6 yards/play allowed against Maryland, was equal to Virginia Tech's WORST defensive performance, 5.6 yards/play allowed against Duke. One other thing I wanted to do was compare how well Georgia Tech's offense preformed against the SEC.

             Some quick observations; The 3 SEC defenses we faced would have ranked the 3rd, 5th, and 6th worst ACC defenses we faced, respectively. We also fared below average in only one game, and I think we all know which game that was. While we clearly were not playing the top defenses in the SEC we did very well against the teams we did play, more than a yard per play better than the average SEC team vs. Miss St. and more than a yard and a half better vs. Vanderbilt. I think this validates what all of us GT fans know, our offense works and it works at an elite level. The last thing that I take out of these charts is just how consistent our offense preformed. A simple scan of the charts puts Georgia Tech at or near the top of most every list. I can not wait to see how much more our offense improves in year three with Nesbitt at the helm.

              Thanks for all the comments in the last post, they were extremely helpful and insightful. Please continue to post any comments our questions. My next post will look at the explosiveness of our offense and whether or not this year was a "quick-strike" offense.

Now that football season is over it is time for some review of the great season Tech enjoyed this year. I am going to focus on the offense at first because anyone who watched a game this year saw how our defense preformed, we really don't need numbers to tell us. What I was interested in was comparing how well our offense preformed in comparison to the strength of the defense we faced. I measured the success of our offense by the success we had on each play. Besides scoring the most points possible an offense's main goal is to maximize it's plays. The best stat to measure this is simply yards-per-play. I used ESPN's game logs to take out kneel downs and when our starters weren't in. I also wanted to compare how our offense fared against the strength of the defense we faced. This year Georgia Tech faced 5 defenses ranked in the top 25 according to the S&P+ defensive metric. An explanation of this metric can be found here. Basically S&P+ determines the success of each and every play in a game. This provides a great way to determine a team's success on a play-by-play basis to eliminate factors such as number of possessions and bad starting field position. Once I had all the data I plotted them on this chart.

 

 

This graph simply shows what a lot of fans already knew. Our 3 worst offensive games were all games we lost, which is no surprise. We took care of business when facing truly awful defenses (Vandy, FSU, and Duke). To give you some perspective 5.5 yards a play is a good offense while 7 yards a play is a truly elite offense. In 4 games this year Tech's offense was elite. In only 2 games this year was our offense bad, of course in the Orange Bowl it was awful and I think this graph shows just how great that Iowa defense was. Our average yards-per-play was 6.22, a very good number. That ties us for 17th nationally and 2nd in the conference, only behind FSU. (stats from cfbstats.com) This graph also shows that our offense does its job nearly every time and it struggles only when playing an elite level defense. This shows just how much our offense carried this team. Whenever our offense struggled our defense was not able to pick up the slack. Hopefully Al Groh will be able to fix this and provide a safety net for our offense.

Please post any thoughts or comments. My next post will be how our offense preformed in comparison to the rest of the ACC.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/basketball/nba/raptors/2010-02-10-timeout-jarrett-jack_N.htm

20-second timeout: Raptors guard Jarrett Jack

By J. Michael Falgoust, USA TODAY What's your take on the controversy in Chicago when you stopped to tie a sneaker in the midst of a blowout win? "It was the end of the third quarter, and we were trying to get a two-for-one. I came down really fast ... and I felt my shoe come loose. ... I've got the ball, and I'm about to get in a pick-and-roll situation.

"I can't do it with my shoe untied, so let me tie my shoe right fast and go on with the play. I just didn't think it was such a big deal. ... I wasn't trying to show them up. I was trying to make sure my equipment was together."

Do you still collect electronic gadgets? "Not as much. In college, I was always wanting to get my hands on the latest, greatest technology. My thing back then, too, was sneakers, which I still have a great deal of love for. I'm probably pushing 400 pair. I wear them about once or twice just to wear on the street. If I do play in them, I'll get two pair. When I was with Portland, the (Nike) factory, they knew I was a sneakerhead, so they let me see a lot of the shoes before they came out."

How are the fans different here? "It's totally different with us being an international team. I remember coming to one game, and there were 200 people from Turkey just really behind (Hedo Turkoglu) and proud to see him. Seeing these people coming to support their players is unbelievable. We have a big Spanish following, a big Italian following."

Do you speak Canadian yet? "Noooo. I don't say 'ooout' and 'abooout.' I don't say 'eh,' either. I don't think that's ever going to rub off on me. I laughed at it when I first got here. I knew about the backgrounds and how French is really big in this country. My father speaks French. He's from Louisiana so he's got that whole Creole thing going."

What did you like about The Wire? "The Wire was the best. I hated the way it ended. I was so mad. Some of it was too easy to predict. I expected more.

"My whole team (then the Trail Blazers), I'll never forget, we were in Cleveland — me, Brandon Roy, Travis Outlaw, LaMarcus (Aldridge) — we had The Wire movie party because it was the last show. It was two hours. But we watched the whole thing, and we were like, 'Uh, what? That's it?' "

the Big Eleven committee or whatever its called that runs the conference is trying to convince Texas.. i say again Texas to join em.... from sportscenter it sounded like it might go through..

 

"
Oh! If I had a daughter, sir, I'd dress her in White and Gold,
And put her on the campus to cheer the brave and bold.
But if I had a son, sir, I'll tell you what he'd do--
He would yell, 'To hell with Georgia!' like his daddy used to do."