Looking ahead: Can Georgia Tech find its match in Josh Pastner?

Apr 26, 2016

It’s never too early to look at what’s to come. Over the next few weeks, we will give you a peek at what is ahead for teams in the Power 5 conferences and some other teams expected to be players on the national scene. Next up: the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets.

Josh Pastner minced no words and feigned no false optimism about the Yellow Jackets’ prospects for immediate success.

There was no point. Anyone at his introductory press conference and any fan checking in from afar would have known the gruesome details well enough already. Georgia Tech had just had its best season of Brian Gregory’s five-year tenure, with a roster dominated by four senior starters … and managed a 21-15 record overall, an 8-10 ACC mark and a trip to the NIT.

Josh Pastner guided Memphis to the NCAA tournament in four consecutive seasons before missing the past two. Georgia Tech hasn’t been to the dance since 2010. AP Photo/Brandon Dill

It wasn’t a great team in the first place, in other words, and it was also at the relative end of a long-term recruiting and rebuilding cycle. Now those seniors were gone, and the rebuild was beginning anew. Pastner admitted as much.

“I mean, look, it’s not going to happen overnight,” he said April 8. “We’re going to have to take a step back to take two steps forward. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to try to win every game next year and compete, but it is what it is.”

Innocuous enough, right? Sure, except sandwiched in that otherwise unremarkable (if characteristically straightforward) assessment of his team was a prescription that applies to both the coach and the program — on and off the court — he inherited in early April. Both are, in a broad sense, seeking redemption and hoping the path forward starts with a patient step back.

Pastner’s arrival this spring pairs a coach eager to rebound from his frustrating tenure at Memphis with a program eager to once again be a viable, competitive entity. The Yellow Jackets have a reasonably proud hoops history and more than their fair share of alumni in the NBA. The 2015-16 season was Tech’s second 20-win campaign (which, let’s be honest, isn’t all that high …

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