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With the Dawgs coming to Atlanta in just 7.5 short days and our boys in gold playing their exhibition game against Clayton State tonight, its time for our annual season preview.
For those of you who haven't already, I encourage you to take a look at Wes' articles previewing the players. He has done an excellent job of a detailed analysis on most of them. You can find them back on the main site or linked throughout the article.
Who are the Yellow Jackets?
With Trae Golden, Daniel Miller, Kammeon Holsey, Jason Morris, Stacey Poole Jr. all graduating, Robert Carter Jr. transferring, and the dismissal of Solomon Poole (who is now at FAU) we have some major gaps in our line-up to fill. To put all of that in perspective, 82 percent of Tech's offense. Yikes.
Georgia Tech household names like Marcus Georges-Hunt, Chris Bolden, Corey Heyward, Quinton Stephens, and our beloved Brooks Doyle are all returning for another season with some new faces to bless the paint.
Transfers F Charles Mitchell (Maryland), F Robert Sampson (ECU), and C Demarco Cox (Ole Miss) are all seasoned players that will be making the move to Atlanta and vying for playing time down low, while highly-touted recruit Tadric Jackson will certainly add much needed athleticism on both sides of the ball. Add redshirt froshTravis Jorgenson, coming back from a season-ending injury last year and you have what looks to be an exciting (but young) team.
Who are we playing?
There are some great games on tap this season, all starting off with uga at McCammish Pavilion right off the bat. This is fairly new for us as we normally play them closer to Thanksgiving after we have a few exhibition games, so it will be interesting to see how we fare coming out of the gate.
The Jackets will be playing in the Orlando Classic this year, starting off with a match up against Marquette and looming possible match ups against Tennessee, #18 Michigan State, and #5 Kansas.
This is also the year Georgia Tech will welcome Notre Dame and #8 Louisville to Atlanta as conference foes. Other noteable games include a trip to Head Coach Brian Gregory's last gig, Dayton, a visit from #23 Syracuse, a trek to Pitt, #9 Virginia, #3 Duke, and a home/away with #6 UNC. Where ACC Coastal may lack in football, it definitely makes up for in basketball.
You can view the full schedule here.
So how will our season turn out?
As an optimistic Jackets fan, it is hard to be optimistic about the season in itself. The schedule is rigorous and we are losing a lot. Most of the three/four letter networks have us in the bottom five of the conference and that is probably about right.
If this team can click like last year's team could not, a +.500 record with a few upsets and a possible NIT appearance is feasible. With Clemson, Wake, and Notre Dame on the schedule twice and Boston College at home, I do not think we end up in the cellar, but we will have to pull wins from the up tier of the conference.
Realistically, I think we finish around .500 (15-13) with, unfortunately not enough key wins to get us into the NIT.
So readers, these are my thoughts. What about yours? Do we have a winning season this year? Is CBG on the hot seat?