Technical Tidbits 9/27: Baseball Jackets and basketball practice

Note: I accidentally pressed publish instead of schedule, so you get this edition of Technical Tidbits a full eight hours early. You lucky, lucky people....

With the eleventh year of the Paul Johnson era now a quarter finished, we are starting to see something completely unprecedented: acknowledgement that things are not going super well from major media outlets. Yesterday, the AJC’s Mark Bradley wrote an interesting article about whether or not Tech can do better than Paul Johnson in which he concluded that the school probably can’t given a number of factors. I’m not here to speculate, but the article is worth a read and certainly worth commenting on in the comments below.

Georgia Tech basketball practice is officially underway as Josh Pastner gears up for his third season of hoops on the Flats. Though the team took a step backwards last season and subsequently lost Josh Okogie to the NBA, there are still plenty of reasons to be excited for the 2018-19 season. Tech’s newly-minted sophomores gained plenty of experience last season and the Jackets will break in a top-50 recruiting class, one which includes four-star guard Michael Devoe. Top it off with transfer Shembari Phillips and we could be looking at a team that mirrors the accomplishments of two seasons ago rather than the most recent campaign.

With the MLB season wrapping up shortly, the time has come to reflect on the accomplishments of Georgia Tech’s baseball Jackets who won’t be playing in October. Chief among them is Daniel Palka, who has enjoyed a breakout season for the White Sox wherein he’s contributed 27 homers and 66 RBIs to an otherwise pretty hapless Chicago team. He’ll still need to show improved plate discipline in the future, but a season like that from a rookie is nothing to sneeze at. Congratulations to the former Tech slugger on making it to the big leagues.