Georgia Tech hosts Clark Atlanta for an exhibition Wednesday

Abram is one of nine newcomers on the Tech team and one of six transfers who came to Atlanta to play for first-year coach Damon Stoudamire. The former NBA star began assembling his roster soon after his hiring in March and now hopes he has a team that can, at the very least, be competitive in the always-tough ACC.

Tech went 15-18 last season under former coach Josh Pastner and limped to a 6-14 mark in league play. Stoudamire was brought in lead a change in the trajectory of the program and reignite excitement for the Jackets. The next four-plus months will be the start of those endeavors.

“Honestly, I don’t know what a successful season looks like, but I do know this, I think this team is just going to keep getting better and better,” Stoudamire said last week during the ACC Tipoff event in Charlotte, North Carolina. “I can see it. It’s probably the first team that I’ve ever been a part of where the offense is ahead of the defense.

“I’ve promised myself, but more importantly I’ve adhered to it with the guys, they’ve got to share the basketball. I just came from a place (the Boston Celtics) where we were one of the best assisting teams. But, like I said, I do believe we’re a team that’ll just keep getting better and better and better.”

Along with the freshmen and transfers, Stoudamire’s team will be built around Miles Kelly, Lance Terry, Kyle Sturdivant and Deebo Coleman. They started at least 29 games each last season.

Terry said one of the more significant changes to the Tech team is the way it goes about things on offense. The Jackets will use a lot of screens and pick-and-rolls in their offensive sets and likely will launch a lot of 3-point shots.

“We still have a lot of work to do. It’s going to take time. But I feel like we’ll get our footing and just take off from there,” Terry said. “I feel like we’re going to be really good this year. We’re going to have a winning record. Just going to try to do our best out there.”

Who among Stoudamire’s offseason acquisitions steps up to make an impact remains to be seen over the course of the next few weeks as the Jackets prepare for ACC play. While Stoudamire has publicly set the expectation for Kelly to perform at a high level and praised the preseason improvement of Coleman, which one of his team’s first-year players becomes a reliable weapon is an unknown.

Freshman forward Baye Ndongo has been cited as an impressive talent. Air Force transfer Carter Murphy has shown the ability to knock down shots. Guard Kowacie Reeves, a Florida transfer, has been impressive in his consistency during training camp, Stoudamire said.

But there are still a lot of different pieces who have arrived from different directions which indicates there will be a bit of a learning curve as the weeks and months go by.

“The biggest thing when you’re coming in, that transition year, there has to be some type of connectivity or it’s not going to work. They won’t get out of it what they want and I won’t get out of it what I want,” Stoudamire said. “When I first came in I wasn’t really coaching. I was just trying to figure out personalities, trying to see how guys were, how they acted, what were their personalities, different things.

“So now, I’ve kind of started to pour into them a little bit. You can kind of start weeding out what it is. The leadership part, that’s what I’m trying to figure out from the standpoint of who is our leader? You got to have a leader. Somebody’s gotta be giving out the same message.”

Clark Atlanta will take the three-mile trip to McCamish Pavilion to play Tech for the first time since 2010, a game that also was an exhibition. That is the only previous meeting between the two programs and a matchup Clark Atlanta won by three in overtime.

Coached by Alfred Jordan, the Panthers return Jalen Williams who was recently named to the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference preseason first team. Williams averaged 15 points, six rebounds and 2.6 assists per game last season.

After Wednesday’s exhibition, the games begin to count starting with Tech’s showdown Monday against Georgia Southern at McCamish Pavilion.

“I don’t know what our margin of error will be as of yet, but I do know we can’t have injuries,” Stoudamire added. “I can’t have injuries. We can’t afford to have our best guys and our key guys sitting out for long periods of time. Right now, we had a couple injuries, but luckily for us, it’s not injuries that’s going to take its toll deep down the road. But we’ve got to stay healthy.”