Georgia Tech’s postseason run begins at 2 p.m. Tuesday inside Capital One Arena in Washington D.C.
The Yellow Jackets (14-17) will face Notre Dame, a team Tech lost to twice during the regular season, in the opening game of the ACC tournament. Should Tech win Tuesday it would advance to face Wake Forest at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday.
Coach Damon Stoudamire’s unit goes into the event having won 3 of 4 and 4 of 6. The Jackets took a 72-57 loss on the chin at Virginia on Saturday, but that setback was rendered virtually meaningless in the standings due to other results around the league prior to tipoff in Charlottesville, Va.
Tech is the No. 13 seed in the 15-team tournament and needs to win five games in five days to capture a championship and qualify for the NCAA Tournament.
“Looking back on the games that we lost made us better today,” Stoudamire said Friday about his team going forward. “However this thing ends up, I’m proud of the guys for where they’ve come. I think they got a lot left. I think I’m just as excited as anybody to see what happens over the course of the next week.”
The Jackets had a season of more downs than ups, but proved along the way they can play high-level basketball. Wins over North Carolina, Duke, Clemson and Wake Forest in league play, and over Mississippi State, Massachusetts and Penn State in the nonconference, allowed Tech to believe it can hang with any opponent on the court.
But losses to teams like Louisville, UMass-Lowell, Boston College and Notre Dame reminded Stoudamire’s bunch that if they don’t come with their ‘A’ game every night, results can turn disastrous.
Tech will certainly to be looking to play at the level it showcased during the aforementioned victories and during the three-game winning streak it was on before running into Saturday’s buzzsaw that was Virginia.
“I don’t necessarily know if we’re doing anything better other than the fact that we’re locked in mentally. I’m not big on the physical. I’m big on the mental,” Stoudamire said. “We barely practiced – we practiced for 30 minutes (Friday). It’s not about practicing, it’s not about going on the floor and killing guys for two hours, it’s about mentally what’s the approach? The approach has gotta be the same.
“It’s not anything different that we’re doing. Our numbers don’t say too much difference. But the actions you’re seeing are different. You’re minimizing some of the things that we had a lot of earlier in the year.”
Notre Dame (12-19) goes into the week having lost two straight, but the Fighting Irish had won 5 of 6 before that – including a 58-55 win over Tech on Feb. 14 in South Bend, Ind. Notre Dame came to McCamish Pavilion on Jan. 10 and won 75-68 in overtime by holding the Jackets to just two points in the extra five minutes.
Wake Forest (19-12), who Tech defeated March 5, awaits the winner of Tech-Notre Dame. Pittsburgh (21-10), Virginia Tech (18-13), Florida State (16-15) and North Carolina (25-6) are all on the top half of the ACC tournament bracket along with the Jackets.
Tech will be looking for its first ACC title since 2021 when it went 3-0 in Greensboro, N.C. The program has never won more than three games at a single ACC tournament and, in fact, has never played in more than four. So the Jackets will need to make some history this week in Stoudamire’s first ACC postseason.
“The guys have bought into each other so it’s good to see. If they just play the way they’re capable of playing, they can beat anybody. They can,” the coach said. “They’ve proven that and we’re starting to put games back-to-back. I think that’s given them more confidence.”
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