Centers Rodney Howard and Cyril Martynov Leaving Georgia Tech

After the news earlier today about center Ebenezer Dowuona transferring in, we got the counterpart news that centers Rodney Howard and Cyril Martynov are transferring out.

Rodney Howard is the bigger news here as he has played a significant role over the last two seasons. He transferred in to GT after a single year at Georgia and played a minor role in the the ACC Championship 20-21 season. Then he took a much larger role in the 21-22 and 22-23 seasons. Josh Pastner was always big on playing his top players big minutes. Rodney Howard at times seemed to meet this standard, but then he’d be in the doghouse for a few games. He ended his GT career with a slate of DNP-Coach’s Decision.

Howard had some positives as a GT player. He was capable on both ends of the floor, if unspectacular at anything. He had a nice stretch near the end of his junior season where over a 7-game stretch his lowest point total was 8 and he was playing great. He was hustling and seemed to have gotten better at positioning. He was getting a lot of feeds to give him easy layups and dunks. He was also a solid rebounder, in particular on the offensive end.

He did have struggles though. He didn’t particularly fit into Pastner’s offensive system. Howard was asked to come get the ball on the elbow and facilitate the offense. That works best with centers who are good passers, have a mid-range shot, and can drive by defenders. That fits Moses Wright and Ben Lammers well, but not Howard. He couldn’t drive by defenders and never really developed the vision to make incisive passes. He was much more successful when he got to play off-ball and rim run or hunt for offensive boards.

Defensively he’s a decent player. He’s not as much of rim protector as you’d like at his height and he sometimes seemed to struggle with switches in the zone. But in man defense against big men who can’t pull him out the three point line he’s a good defender. He had some significant foul trouble issues as a junior, but solved them as a senior.

I think Howard will have a lot of options for big minutes at the mid-major level and maybe even the high major level. Guys his size don’t go on trees. He has one year of eligibility remaining. Good luck Rodney!

Cyril Martynov was a late commit to the Yellow Jackets last season. He reclassified to go to college early and got some bigger name schools after him, like Missouri and Wisconsin. But Pastner was able to get him to the Flats. With him being a young freshman there wasn’t much expectation that he’d be a contributor this year. That was the case. He only saw the floor in end of the game scenarios with the end of the bench. It’s not shocking that he’d transfer, but I hoped that he’d stay on with a new coach and that Damon Stoudamire would see his potential. Martynov has three seasons of eligibility remaining and should have some good options for transferring. Good luck Cyril!