Technical Tidbits 2/20: Baseball sweeps Atlanta Challenge, basketball upends ‘Cuse

Ben Lammers absolutely ate Syracuse alive yesterday evening in one of the most thrilling victories of the season: a 71-65 win over the Orange at McCamish Pavilion which really strengthened Tech’s NCAA Tournament hopes. Finishing the game with 23 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 blocked shots, Lammers paced Tech from beginning to end. His strong effort was bolstered by solid nights from Tadric Jackson (20 points) and Quinton Stephens (7 points, 6 rebounds, 8 assists) plus an excellent display of ball movement by the whole team — the Jackets recorded 19 assists on 26 made baskets for the night. With the win, Tech improves to 16-11 on the year and a remarkable 7-7 in the ACC with four regular season games remaining.

Jim Boeheim was apparently not too pleased with the outcome, deciding to attack the AJC’s Ken Sugiura rather than answer a question about the game during his press conference. The guy has some pent up anger after having over 100 wins vacated last season as a result of an NCAA investigation, so I suppose this season was supposed to be a revenge tour. Instead what he’s seen is a drastic decline in his team’s performance, one which some Cuse fans have attributed to his coaching, and a big loss which very well could’ve ended his team’s postseason hopes. Time to get over it and do the job next time, coach.

Georgia Tech baseball started off the season with a three-game weekend sweep in the Atlanta Challenge, taking down BYU, Marshall, and Western Michigan to secure a perfect 3-0 record. The starting pitching was excellent all weekend long, with true freshman Xzavion Curry and redshirt freshman Jonathan Hughes shutting down BYU and Marshall, respectively, before Keyton Gibson finished up the series with a dominant performance against Western Michigan. Kel Johnson got off to an absolutely amazing start to the season, going deep a couple of times and driving in 6 runs over the three-game series.

Tech has been the team that doesn’t age for what feels like years at this point, and the same narrative promises to persist yet again in 2017. Many of the main contributors, at least through week one, have been freshmen of one variety or another: Xzavion Curry, Austin Wilhite, and Jonathan Hughes, just to name a few. This team could be a fun one to watch as the year continues.