Technical Tidbits 11/17

Georgia Tech basketball opened the season with a more than convincing win over rival uga on Friday, beating the dwags 80-73 in a game which was nowhere near as close as the final score indicates. I had some serious concerns about Tech facing a team as good as uga on day one (some people consider them to be a tournament caliber team), but the Jackets came out and managed to prove both myself and everyone else wrong in what was a fantastic all-around display. I am especially excited about Quinton Stephens, who did his best Kyle Korver impression by going 6-8 on three pointers and pacing the Jackets with 22 points. If Tech can play like that every game this season, the sky is the limit for this team.

Georgia Tech's huge win over Clemson on Saturday didn't come cheap for the Jackets, who lost A-Back Broderick Snoddy to a gruesome broken leg near the middle of the game. There are articles out there with more information on the situation, but I didn't want to link to any of them because all of the others also include an embedded video of the injury.Out of respect for Snoddy, I didn't want to spread the image itself around more than it already is. I think I speak for everyone, however, when I say that we are all rooting for him to make a full recovery, hopefully in time to rejoin the team for what will be his final season on the Flats in 2015.

The most recent SB Nation bowl and playoff projections have Georgia Tech making a trip to the Orange Bowl to face off with former No. 1 Mississippi State. With the big win over Clemson, an Orange Bowl trip seems imminent for the now 9-2 Jackets simply because it takes the second highest-rated ACC team, assuming FSU wins out and makes the playoffs. The reason I say this is because Tech will surely leapfrog Duke this week following an upset of No. 19 Clemson and Duke's ugly loss to Virginia Tech, and I have some serious doubt about the Devils being ranked higher than Tech ever again this season. In fact, it would take an upset of FSU by Duke or a very ugly loss to uga for that to even become a possibility.

Folks, I have to give credit where credit is due. This week, a TON of credit is due to Wisconsin running back Melvin Gordon, who broke the NCAA record for rushing yards in a game in Wisconsin's win over No. 16 Nebraska with a ridiculous 408 yards, topping Ladanian Tomlinson's previous record of 406. The craziest part about Gordon's performance is that he didn't get a single carry in the entire fourth quarter and finished the first quarter with only 49 yards. That means that this one man went for 359 yards in ONE HALF OF A FOOTBALL GAME. Congratulations to Gordon for an obscenely good performance and also to Wisconsin for somehow continuing their tradition of having insanely good running backs.