Technical Tidbits 2/23: Baseball improves to 4-0, Pastner joins “The Sidelines Podcast”

Josh Pastner recently took the time to make an appearance on Fox Sports’ “The Sidelines Podcast”, where he elaborated on what exactly was going wrong during his final years at Memphis and why Georgia Tech emerged as the best fit for him. Pastner got his coaching start at an absurdly young age, turning his passion for basketball into a walk-on spot with the Arizona Wildcats, and launched his career as a graduate assistant shortly thereafter. The interview is excellent if you have time to get through all or most of it; hearing Pastner explain his past in his own words really does the story justice. Mike Bobinski may have been a tremendous bust in just about every other way during his time as athletic director, but he seems to have proven once again that hiring basketball coaches is his forte.

Georgia Tech baseball improved to 4-0 for the season on Tuesday night, taking down in-state rival Georgia Southern by a final score of 10-3 down in Statesboro. Kel Johnson continues to go absolutely power crazy, tying a school record by crushing three home runs in the game to bring his season total up to five after just four games. Kel is tied for the national lead in homers, an honor he currently shares with players from Quinnipiac and Youngstown State. Starting off undefeated is always a welcome sight, but don’t forget about the horrors of last season when Tech turned a 12-0 start into a 38-25 season.

The school in Athens, meanwhile, has looked utterly putrid during the early goings of the 2017 baseball season. Off to a 1-3 start, Georgia dropped two of three to College of Charleston — both in blowout fashion — before scraping by with a one-run victory in the final matchup of their three-game series. They followed that up with another ugly loss, this time to Mercer down in Macon. Maybe those two teams will end up playing in the College World Series, but for now I’m just going to assume that UGA is not a great baseball team.

By the way, they aren’t a great basketball team either at this point — there has been a lot of speculation that head coach Mark Fox’s job could be on the line. Some will call this season unlucky for Georgia, but the preferred term is actually typical. We may have lost the game this year, but they are unquestionably losing the game of the future (™ Butch Jones, 2017).