Burdell's Uncertainty Principle: Georgia Tech vs. Miami

Georgia Tech basketball laid a golden egg on Saturday. That's what an optimist will tell you, anyways. A glass half empty type of fellow might focus on the "egg" part of the previous metaphor, if he used it at all. Here at The Bastion, we like to be analytical as well as whimsical. So with that we bring you he first edition of Burdell's Uncertainty Principle, an occasional series in which we examine happenings in Tech sports in a debate between a classic pessimist techie and an overly-optimistic hippie art student (who is for some reason a Tech fan...don't ask questions). Let's get started.

Question: GT shooting was about as effective as tits on a gerbil last Saturday. Do you credit this to Miami's stout defense or a general inability to shoot the ball?

Pessimistic Techie: Well, if you look at the numbers, we shot 32.7% from the field on last Saturday. Call me crazy, but I don't think those sort of figures indicate anything other than a general lack of ability on our part. I mean at one point Carter Jr. tried to take a shot and ended up looking like he was slipping on a banana peel. I realize the AMC is right across the street from TBS, but I didn't realize all those Hanna-Barbara cartoons I used to watch on that network had gained sentience and wandered on to the playing floor.

Optimistic Art Hippie: C'mon, man. Miami basketball is (surprisingly) not high and lazy all the time, they're actually pretty good on defense. 18th in...what's that called...number of times the ball goes through the net percentage? I don't recognize your corporate, "widely accepted" basketball lexicon man, I use my own flavor. The point is, it's not like we were playing The Citadel again, you gotta expect that we were gonna score less than we were before. Combine the opposing talent increase with the fact that we just had really bad luck out there and you get what happened last Saturday.

Question: Georgia Tech is currently 6th nationally in scoring defense. Do you think this can last?

PT: My opponent couldn't remember the name of "Field Goal Percentage?" God, I feel like Romney in the first debate. Anyways, like anything Georgia Tech sports (excepting beesball), you cannot expect any consistency. We're going to be facing significantly better ball players than we have been in the coming months. Though the defense will still be the strong point of the team (though that's not saying much if you're comparing it to a 41 PPG baseline), we cannot expect to sustain that kind of performance with a crop of young players. If you look at Tech sports in general, wild fluctuations in performance are the norm, and I don't expect that to change. We're cursed!

OAH: Yeah, well, that's just like, your opinion man. We didn't do that terribly on D against Miami, if you look at your so-called precious "numbers:" we held Miami to a Ball Goes Through the Net Percentage of 42, and without the hot hand of Rion Brown (likely the reason this game wasn't competitive), that number drops to 31! So you stick that in your pipe and smoke it, man. Oh wait, that's my job. Never mind, I don't wanna get your sad vibes all over my stuff.

Question: How does GT recover from a whacking like this?

PT: Gotta rely on the senior. Udofia needs to step it up and remind these youngsters that this was only one game and there's a lot of ball left to play to make up for it.

OAH: For once, the conservative estimation is right on target. Can't rely on people who haven't experienced pain to come out of it without help from someone who has.

Question: What did you think of last night's MNC?

PT: Fuck the SEC. No comment otherwise.

OAH: There's too much violence in the world. We need to take a lesson from Picasso's Guernica and chill out. Or we could take a lesson from any Michelangelo work and not make a deal with the devil, Mr. Saban.

Excellent. I'd like to thank today's participants for being here today, and our audience for being so respectful. Now its your turn to beat each other's virtual heads in, audience: What do you think happened? Is it an indicator for the rest of the season? I hope not!