By: Kenneth Harrison

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

The college basketball season just started so I suppose anything can happen the remainder of the season.

We’re only five games in for Georgia Tech but I do have to wonder, are they cooked? If you are not aware that’s slang to say “struggling” or “done for”. Why would I pose that question so early on?

Last season was Damon Stoudamire’s first season as the head coach in Atlanta. If you are not aware he’s a former NBA player. He played at Arizona from 1991-95 where he was a consensus First-Team All-American (1995), Pac-10 Player of the Year (1995) and three-time First-Team All-Pac-10 (1993-95). He was drafted 7^th overall in the 1995 NBA Draft and he’s the first pick in the Toronto Raptors franchise history. He was NBA Rookie of the Year (1996) and he played in the NBA from 1995-2008.

I love to see former players become coaches. He was an assistant coach in the NBA for many years and he was also an assistant at Arizona. He got his first head coaching job at Pacific in 2016 and coached there until 2021.

During his time there he had one winning season and a 71-77 overall record. He returned to the NBA to be an assistant coach for the Boston Celtics from 2021-23.

That is a lot of basketball knowledge and experience that he can pass on to players. Also, it should help with recruiting since he played and coached at the highest level. So, has it translated thus far? Last season the Yellow Jackets were 14-18. So far they are 2-3. It does not look like this is resonating.

All of their games so far have been at home at McCamish Pavilion.

The season started with an 85-62 win over West Georgia. They lost the second game to North Florida 105-93. Losing to the Ospreys is not a great look.

They followed it up by beating Texas Southern 81-62. Tech has lost their last two games to Georgia and #18 Cincinnati. The most recent game against the Bearcats was an 81-58 blowout. Cincy had a 45-29 lead going into halftime.

“From the jump Cincinnati just did a good job of bringing the game to us. I didn’t think that we matched any of their energy on the initial,” said Stoudamire. “A lot of the execution you can’t get to in a game because of the way the game was being played on the initial. I thought we played hard in the first half in spurts, but we couldn’t put enough good minutes together. And every time we would get things withing striking distance, something would happen. We turned the ball over. A lot of live-ball turnovers, a lot of indecision. Things that we had talked about, but you’ve got to give them (Cincinnati) credit as well.”

Tech has four players that average double digits in scoring; Baye Ndongo, Javian McCollum, Lance Terry and Kowacie Reeves Jr.

They have two more home games against Charleston Southern and Central Arkansas. On paper those should be easy wins but I’m sure they thought that about North Florida.

In December they play at Oklahoma, at #12 North Carolina, Northwestern (neutral site), UMBC, #11 Duke, Alabama A&M and Boston College. In these next nine games I think the Yellow Jackets have to go 7-2 in order to set themselves in the mix to make the NCAA tournament.

I’m not sure they will do that but we will see.