Georgia Tech concludes the home portion of its schedule, as well as the ACC portion of its schedule, with a 7:30 p.m. Thursday game against visiting North Carolina State at Bobby Dodd Stadium.
The Yellow Jackets (6-4, 4-3 ACC) can finish 5-3 in the league standings for the second year in a row if they top the Wolfpack. Tech hasn’t had back-to-back winning seasons in ACC play since 2013-14.
The Wolfpack (5-5, 2-4) had won two consecutive games before losing to Duke at home 29-19 on Nov. 9. State went 9-4 a season ago and was expected to compete for an ACC title this season before starting conference play 0-3.
Weather may be a concern for both teams with the forecasted temperature being less than 50 degrees with strong gusts of wind.
“That has a major affect, now, on the game and how we play the game,” Tech coach Brent Key said of the wind factor.
Things to know about Thursday’s Georgia Tech-N.C. State game
Kickoff: 7:30 p.m. Thursday
Where: Bobby Dodd Stadium (capacity 51,913)
TV: ESPN
Streaming: WatchESPN app
Weather: 46 degrees at kickoff, 0% chance of rain
Tickets: Per Tech’s official ticket website, plenty of tickets remained available as of Wednesday starting at $40 each. On the secondary market tickets can be found for $17.
N.C. State football social media: X | Instagram | Facebook
Georgia Tech football social media: X | Instagram | Facebook
Storylines ahead of Georgia Tech-N.C. State game
Trey Cooley returns to the lineup just in time: In August, Georgia Tech offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner was bubbling with excitement about running back Trey Cooley.
“Trey Cooley’s had a great, great spring. A really, really good summer,” Faulkner said Aug. 13. “He’s gotten bigger. He’s stronger. He’s one of the fastest guys on the team. The bigger he’s gotten, the faster he’s gotten. And he’s played a lot of football for us and played a lot of football in his career. Got nothing but confidence in him to go out and play.”
Eleven days later, in Dublin, Ireland, Cooley was one of two return men back to receive a Florida State kickoff after the Seminoles had taken an 8-0 lead early in the first quarter. Former Tech receiver Christian Leary fielded the ball on the right side of the field and took off from the goal line. Cooley sprinted in front of him to throw a block, but at the 14-yard line he was leveled by FSU’s Byron Turner Jr.
Cooley was left writhing on the Avida Stadium turf. He left the game and didn’t return.
Jordan Williams has started 50 games for the Jackets: Jordan Williams’ college football career is sort of like the span of time when people were alive for both the Wright brothers and the moon landing, except with a lot more pass blocking.
In five years, the Georgia Tech right tackle has lived through whole chapters of college athletics history. If teammates want to know what it was like before players transferred willy-nilly, they can ask him. If they don’t believe that it was typical for Yellow Jackets players to scrounge for spending money with no name, image and likeness deals to support them, he has direct knowledge.
“It wasn’t that bad,” he conceded in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “But it’s definitely a completely different world now.”
SportsCenter will be on campus: Helluva Block Party, Georgia Tech’s pregame tailgate party, will move from its typical location on North Avenue to Tech Green next week ahead of Thursday’s game against North Carolina State. Kickoff between the Yellow Jackets and Wolfpack is scheduled for 7:30 p.m., and Helluva Block Party is scheduled to begin at 3:30 p.m.
Before Helluva Block Party a live edition of ESPN’s “SportsCenter” will air beginning at 2 p.m. The live broadcast, hosted by Matt Barrie (who also will serve as play-by-play announcer for the ESPN game telecast), will feature special guests.
An undefeated home season on the line against N.C. State: On Nov. 27, 1999, Georgia Tech beat Georgia 51-48 in overtime at Bobby Dodd Stadium.
That victory completed a 6-0 run at home for the Yellow Jackets and was part of a memorable season for junior offensive lineman Brent Key. In the 24 seasons since, Tech has not gone unbeaten at home.
That could change Thursday night when Tech faces North Carolina State (7:30 p.m., ESPN).
Tech will have new a goalpost Thursday: Tech fans went viral Saturday following their team’s 28-23 home victory over previously unbeaten No. 4 Miami. After Tech staffers took down one goalpost, fans carried one of the uprights out of the stadium and paraded it around campus before dumping it in the swimming pool at the president’s house.
It’s not the first time that’s happened — some fans will remember the Jackets upsetting Virginia Tech in 2009 (by coincidently the same score), or the win over No. 7 Virginia in 1998 — but what a celebration it was for one of college football’s rising programs.
Jackets got back to work Sunday: Georgia Tech football is no stranger to playing on Thursday nights. Since 1991, the Yellow Jackets have taken the field on a Thursday almost 40 times.
They haven’t won a Thursday game since 2019, however, when they squeaked by visiting North Carolina State 28-26 in front of less than 40,000 fans at Bobby Dodd Stadium. As fate would have it, the Wolfpack of N.C. State come to Atlanta at 7:30 p.m. Thursday for Tech’s first Thursday game since a 16-9 loss to Virginia on Oct. 20, 2022.
Defensive back Taye Seymore on the rise for the Tech secondary: Earlier this season, Taye Seymore was asked if he expected to get as much playing time throughout the early stages of his college career as he has had to that point. The 6-foot, 200-pound defensive back didn’t log a whole lot of reps as a freshman before becoming an integral part of the Georgia Tech defense in 2024.
Not short on confidence, Seymore admitted he didn’t exactly see that path playing out the way it has so far.
Miami win, bowl eligibility aids recruiting: With a little more than a month until high school prospects can sign scholarship papers, Brent Key and his coaching staff will continue to make final pushes and pitches to their top targets to join what will be another strong recruiting class for Georgia Tech football.
There currently are 21 high school seniors pledged to become Yellow Jackets starting in 2025. It’s a class ranked 19th nationally by the 247Sports Composite and third among ACC programs behind Miami and Clemson, respectively.
The slide of Singleton stood out: Georgia Tech’s wide receivers, namely Eric Singleton Jr. and Malik Rutherford, were expected to have big seasons statistically in 2024. In the second year in Tech’s offensive system and starting a second year with returning quarterback Haynes King, that duo, alongside fellow returners Chase Lane, Abdul Janneh and Christian Leary, appeared poised to pose threats all across the field.
But Tech’s passing game hasn’t developed into the robust attack as it was in 2023. And as the Yellow Jackets (6-4, 4-3 ACC) have somewhat altered their attack as the weeks have gone by, the explosive plays through the air have waned as well.
So it would have been somewhat understandable if frustration had begun to mount or buy-in had started to dwindle. Not with these Jackets, though.
Bowling season: Now that the Yellow Jackets are eligible to play in the postseason, the query of where — and whom and when — Georgia Tech will play in a bowl game will hover in the air over the next month.
Tech’s 28-23 win over No. 4 Miami on Saturday made it bowl eligible for a second consecutive season. The Jackets still have games remaining against North Carolina State (Nov. 21) and No. 11 Georgia (Nov. 29), respectively, and won’t officially find out their bowl selection until Dec. 8.
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