Pre and Post Notre Dame Comments

[New Old Guy]

I thought he was out for Covid health and safety protocol I think for the end of the rehab, so I doubt anything was rushed.

He's a senior so is this career ending? Bummer.

/

the last few games he was out for COVID (ever since he was cleared to play vs USC in Phoenix). So Bubba was not rushed back at all. Further, the article uses words like “may be out” and “could be out”, so it appears to be a question about if Bubba can play again. However, we don’t have a lot of games left, and if the soreness does ease, there may not be time to work him in.

I hate it for Bubba.

 

[William S. Baker]

Maxwell was very impressive in the Duke game.

I meant Notre Dame game

 

[Jim Prather]

AJC reporting Bubba is out for the rest of the season.
Not certain if we rushed him back too soon or what?

No we didn't rush him back. Recovery from that injury depends entirely on where the tear is. If it around the edges then it can be trimmed and the person can usually (not always) get back to fairly normal. But, if the cartilage tear is more in the center of the meniscus, then full recovery is very rare. I had a similar surgery a few years ago. At the time I was a competitive tennis player (local and state level leagues and tournaments). While the surgery worked, I have never been able to play tennis again competitively. Every time I have tried, my knee has swollen up like a balloon. I really hate it for him because I know that he feels fine physically - except his knee simply won't cooperate

 

[YlJacket]

IMO people forget that a big reason why Jose, Moses, Mike, Ush etc developed the way they did was because they played through early. We absolutely should not be going with Ush/Moore as our bigs this year. For one it's not a winning strategy in the best of scenarios but also it just further delays the development of our bigs. Play Meka and Saba. Let them learn from their mistakes and when Howard returns let him do the same.

If we need to play players who are not ready right now so that they can learn then we are not executing on "Get Old Stay Old" - we are executing on a "build up and accept a rebuild" strategy. "Staying Old" means guys are ready for their role when their year comes around and they are ready to play at a level for us to at least be middle of the ACC/bubbly. Not restart with the way Jose, Moses et al took 4 years to get to the one year of NCAA tourney. Now if your point is that as of now we ain't making the tourney so go ahead and play them - then OK I understand that but for the love of god please don't run the modified princeton set through our bigs. But recognize that is converting to an accept a rebuild strategy.

Getting old and especially staying old is hard - no matter which way you go. Last year we finally got old but a combination of both recruiting misses and incorrect expectations on when development bigs would be ready has kept us from staying old this year. It will be even more acute next year without a couple of wins in the transfer portal or a ready made frosh like ND's . Without Jalen Moore (who I like a lot) making a miracle jump next year I don't see a way to "develop" our way to the dance next year.

 

[Connell62]

He could probably petition for a medical red-shirt acception. Don't know if he's interested in that. I'm disappointed. I think when he came here he filled a specific role, and that was not a scoring threat. I think he would have been that 3rd scorer this year because he would have been looking to score like he did before he came to Tech.

Sucks...but hopefully more minutes for Maxwell. He's not scared to look for his shot.

 

[Connell62]

If we need to play players who are not ready right now so that they can learn then we are not executing on "Get Old Stay Old" - we are executing on a "build up and accept a rebuild" strategy. "Staying Old" means guys are ready for their role when their year comes around and they are ready to play at a level for us to at least be middle of the ACC/bubbly. Not restart with the way Jose, Moses et al took 4 years to get to the one year of NCAA tourney. Now if your point is that as of now we ain't making the tourney so go ahead and play them - then OK I understand that but for the love of god please don't run the modified princeton set through our bigs. But recognize that is converting to an accept a rebuild strategy.

Getting old and especially staying old is hard - no matter which way you go. Last year we finally got old but a combination of both recruiting misses and incorrect expectations on when development bigs would be ready has kept us from staying old this year. It will be even more acute next year without a couple of wins in the transfer portal or a ready made frosh like ND's . Without Jalen Moore (who I like a lot) making a miracle jump next year I don't see a way to "develop" our way to the dance next year.

Losing Meka to injury all of last year hurt us more than we knew. In my opinion, he is clearly the best of our 3 big men and has a bright future.

He probably should have gotten minutes last year behind Moses, and he would have been in much better position to be a contributor this season.

 

[Wrecked]

If we need to play players who are not ready right now so that they can learn then we are not executing on "Get Old Stay Old" - we are executing on a "build up and accept a rebuild" strategy. "Staying Old" means guys are ready for their role when their year comes around and they are ready to play at a level for us to at least be middle of the ACC/bubbly. Not restart with the way Jose, Moses et al took 4 years to get to the one year of NCAA tourney. Now if your point is that as of now we ain't making the tourney so go ahead and play them - then OK I understand that but for the love of god please don't run the modified princeton set through our bigs. But recognize that is converting to an accept a rebuild strategy.

Getting old and especially staying old is hard - no matter which way you go. Last year we finally got old but a combination of both recruiting misses and incorrect expectations on when development bigs would be ready has kept us from staying old this year. It will be even more acute next year without a couple of wins in the transfer portal or a ready made frosh like ND's . Without Jalen Moore (who I like a lot) making a miracle jump next year I don't see a way to "develop" our way to the dance next year.

Agree, Ive never liked the GOSO strategy, because to me, its admission that a coach can't recruit the top players to come in and contribute immediately. THere is ZERO reasons Tech BB is not recruiting top 20 classes year and year out unless the coach is just not that good a recruiter which I think we see Pastner isn't. I think Pastner can develop players, but having to wait 2-3 years between tourney trips is not acceptable when Tech has shown it can be a consistent tourney team. I would go hire LaBarrie back and give him a second chance and tell the NCAA to pound sand. We would put a fence around Atlanta HS's.

 

[lv20gt]

If we need to play players who are not ready right now so that they can learn then we are not executing on "Get Old Stay Old" - we are executing on a "build up and accept a rebuild" strategy. "Staying Old" means guys are ready for their role when their year comes around and they are ready to play at a level for us to at least be middle of the ACC/bubbly. Not restart with the way Jose, Moses et al took 4 years to get to the one year of NCAA tourney.

Any strategy for program building can have rebuilding phases. Just because you have a certain strategy doesn't mean there won't be times where things go wrong and you don't get exactly what you want.

Regardless, a lot of people seem to not understand get old, stay old. That doesn't mean never play young players (how else would you stay old). It means to always try to have a core group of upperclassmen who have experience to build around. But that happens when you also find ways to get young players experience so by the time they are upperclassmen they have it. Also, we aren't restarting the way Jose and Moses did. The roster is in a much better spot than it was when they came in.

Getting old and especially staying old is hard - no matter which way you go. Last year we finally got old but a combination of both recruiting misses and incorrect expectations on when development bigs would be ready has kept us from staying old this year.

We got old two years ago when we had primarily 6 upperclassmen and a second year starter in our top 8. Last year our top 6 were uperclassmen. This year we were set up to have Devoe, Usher, Bubba, Moore, Howard, and Sturdivant to be upperclassmen to build around. That is again staying old, although we had some luck there from Ush and Bubba getting an extra year. But the reality is no matter what roster building strategy you take, even if you execute it well, things can go wrong. There are plenty of example of the "recruit your way to success" that shows that exact thing.


Making the NCAAT every year is hard to do no matter what your approach is. Yes, getting old and staying old is hard. So to is any other method. We just got done with the first cycle under Pastner (his first real class just graduated). from a roster composition standpoint he's done a fine job with the get old stay old. The issues mostly stems from two things. One, injuries to Meka and Maxwell made it so we were unlikely to see either take a big step forward this year like you often see with sophs. Second, Howard and Sturdivant didn't get the experience they needed to last year. Against ACC teams, Sturdivant is averaging 10 ppg on 44/45 shooting with a 2-1 ATR. He is developing, but not at the pace we need him to. Had he gotten more time last year then he might have been further along and that might have been enough. Howard is an even more egregious case. His first 6 games this year he was fine, but he wasn't ready for the increased level of play. That is directly related to limited action last year. Now it is probably worth it with what we accomplished last year but it hurts for this year. So the question to ask is why we couldn't get them more experience last year. Partially because Pastner was probably coaching for his job, but also because we just didn't have the margin of error most of the time. Why didn't we have the margin of error? You can look at the roster for the answer. And the roster was the way that it was because of recruiting. Which goes back to the state of the program , and so forth and so on. Every program building strategy is cyclical by nature. So breaking into a new cycle isn't going to come without its issues initially.

 

[slugboy]

Agree, Ive never liked the GOSO strategy, because to me, its admission that a coach can't recruit the top players to come in and contribute immediately. THere is ZERO reasons Tech BB is not recruiting top 20 classes year and year out unless the coach is just not that good a recruiter which I think we see Pastner isn't. I think Pastner can develop players, but having to wait 2-3 years between tourney trips is not acceptable when Tech has shown it can be a consistent tourney team. I would go hire LaBarrie back and give him a second chance and tell the NCAA to pound sand. We would put a fence around Atlanta HS's.

in the “Fire Josh Pastner” thread, I went back and looked at the Gregory and Hewitt eras. Towards the end of the Hewitt era we were getting highly ranked classes and one-and-done lottery picks on the team and still missing out on the NCAA tournament. I think that Pastner would have gone a lot farther with Hewitt's and Gregory's teams than they did.

I'm not sure what you mean by a consistent tourney team. Here's the last 25 years. Even the best Hewitt years are every 2-3 years in the tourney. I didn't include it, but Pastner has done better in conference than Hewitt or Gregory did. And Pastner is having to rebuild from what Gregory left. And, we haven't given him a ton of recruiting support--not nearly what FSU is giving, for example.

		Over	Over	Over
		Over	Over	Over
Rk	Season	W	L	W-L%	AP Pre	AP High	AP Final	NCAA Tournament	Seed	Coach(es)
1	2021-22	6	8	.429						Josh Pastner (6-8)
2	2020-21	17	9	.654				Lost First Round	9	Josh Pastner (17-9)
3	2019-20	17	14	.548						Josh Pastner (17-14)
4	2018-19	14	18	.438						Josh Pastner (14-18)
5	2017-18	13	19	.406						Josh Pastner (13-19)
6	2016-17	21	16	.568						Josh Pastner (21-16)
7	2015-16	21	15	.583						Brian Gregory (21-15)
8	2014-15	12	19	.387						Brian Gregory (12-19)
9	2013-14	16	17	.485						Brian Gregory (16-17)
10	2012-13	16	15	.516						Brian Gregory (16-15)
11	2011-12	11	20	.355						Brian Gregory (11-20)
12	2010-11	13	18	.419						Paul Hewitt (13-18)
13	2009-10	23	13	.639	22	19		Lost Second Round	10	Paul Hewitt (23-13)
14	2008-09	12	19	.387						Paul Hewitt (12-19)
15	2007-08	15	17	.469						Paul Hewitt (15-17)
16	2006-07	20	12	.625	23	19		Lost First Round	10	Paul Hewitt (20-12)
17	2005-06	11	17	.393						Paul Hewitt (11-17)
18	2004-05	20	12	.625	3	3	25	Lost Second Round	5	Paul Hewitt (20-12)
19	2003-04	28	10	.737		3	14	Lost National Final	3	Paul Hewitt (28-10)
20	2002-03	16	15	.516						Paul Hewitt (16-15)
21	2001-02	15	16	.484						Paul Hewitt (15-16)
22	2000-01	17	13	.567				Lost First Round	8	Paul Hewitt (17-13)
23	1999-00	13	17	.433						Bobby Cremins (13-17)
24	1998-99	15	16	.484						Bobby Cremins (15-16)
25	1997-98	19	14	.576		22				Bobby Cremins (19-14)

Provided by CBB at Sports Reference: View Original Table
Generated 1/10/2022.

Get Old Stay Old is a good fundamental part of building a good team. If you're going to build a team, the first thing is GOSO. The next level is adding in top 100 players and the occasional one and done to be a top 15 team. It's the second thing that we haven't done enough of. Stepping up recruiting support to bump up our recruiting even a little would pay big dividends. But Pastner has done a solid rebuild job.

 

[Wrecked]

in the “Fire Josh Pastner” thread, I went back and looked at the Gregory and Hewitt eras. Towards the end of the Hewitt era we were getting highly ranked classes and one-and-done lottery picks on the team and still missing out on the NCAA tournament. I think that Pastner would have gone a lot farther with Hewitt's and Gregory's teams than they did.

I'm not sure what you mean by a consistent tourney team. Here's the last 25 years. Even the best Hewitt years are every 2-3 years in the tourney. I didn't include it, but Pastner has done better in conference than Hewitt or Gregory did. And Pastner is having to rebuild from what Gregory left. And, we haven't given him a ton of recruiting support--not nearly what FSU is giving, for example.

		Over	Over	Over
		Over	Over	Over
Rk	Season	W	L	W-L%	AP Pre	AP High	AP Final	NCAA Tournament	Seed	Coach(es)
1	2021-22	6	8	.429						Josh Pastner (6-8)
2	2020-21	17	9	.654				Lost First Round	9	Josh Pastner (17-9)
3	2019-20	17	14	.548						Josh Pastner (17-14)
4	2018-19	14	18	.438						Josh Pastner (14-18)
5	2017-18	13	19	.406						Josh Pastner (13-19)
6	2016-17	21	16	.568						Josh Pastner (21-16)
7	2015-16	21	15	.583						Brian Gregory (21-15)
8	2014-15	12	19	.387						Brian Gregory (12-19)
9	2013-14	16	17	.485						Brian Gregory (16-17)
10	2012-13	16	15	.516						Brian Gregory (16-15)
11	2011-12	11	20	.355						Brian Gregory (11-20)
12	2010-11	13	18	.419						Paul Hewitt (13-18)
13	2009-10	23	13	.639	22	19		Lost Second Round	10	Paul Hewitt (23-13)
14	2008-09	12	19	.387						Paul Hewitt (12-19)
15	2007-08	15	17	.469						Paul Hewitt (15-17)
16	2006-07	20	12	.625	23	19		Lost First Round	10	Paul Hewitt (20-12)
17	2005-06	11	17	.393						Paul Hewitt (11-17)
18	2004-05	20	12	.625	3	3	25	Lost Second Round	5	Paul Hewitt (20-12)
19	2003-04	28	10	.737		3	14	Lost National Final	3	Paul Hewitt (28-10)
20	2002-03	16	15	.516						Paul Hewitt (16-15)
21	2001-02	15	16	.484						Paul Hewitt (15-16)
22	2000-01	17	13	.567				Lost First Round	8	Paul Hewitt (17-13)
23	1999-00	13	17	.433						Bobby Cremins (13-17)
24	1998-99	15	16	.484						Bobby Cremins (15-16)
25	1997-98	19	14	.576		22				Bobby Cremins (19-14)

Provided by CBB at Sports Reference: View Original Table
Generated 1/10/2022.

Get Old Stay Old is a good fundamental part of building a good team. If you're going to build a team, the first thing is GOSO. The next level is adding in top 100 players and the occasional one and done to be a top 15 team. It's the second thing that we haven't done enough of. Stepping up recruiting support to bump up our recruiting even a little would pay big dividends. But Pastner has done a solid rebuild job.

Agree that Pastner would have gone to more tourneys with Hewitts talent, but he wouldn't have had his talent. Hewitt should have gone to more tourneys but I think we can infer he was a much better recruiter than coach. And I am not dissing Pastner, I think he is a solid coach, but I also am greedy and want a recruiter and a bench coach. We should own the 404 and the state in BB. All Tech coaches had good to great assistants when they made their successful runs. I do believe Pastner needs to upgrade his bench and get a close the deal recruiter.

 

[GTbball2016]

Seems like the ACC was significantly stronger during Hewitt and Gregory’s era. The league is simply awful this year.

 

[Steverc]

Seems like the ACC was significantly stronger during Hewitt and Gregory’s era. The league is simply awful this year.

I agree. The ACC was watered down by the football money grab. The eight team conference of my day was truly magnificent.

 

[Techster]

After his first two shots, I thought every time Maxwell had the ball in his hands something was going to happen. He seems to have a certain "energy" about him that good players have. I really hope to see more minutes for Maxwell this year. He could be a consistent 8-12 pt guy for us.

Meka, IMO, shows a bit of the young Moses Wright. Really athletic, quick first step, and a good bounce...just really raw right now. A LOT to work with...he's easily our most athletic post right now, but he doesn't have the height and length of Howard or Saba.

I think if Saba continues to work with Reveno, he'll be our best post player of the 3. You see flashes from him that gets you excited. He just needs to be a lot more aggressive (dunk the d@mn ball with authority!!!) and work on his strength. I don't think Saba understands the advantage he has versus 95% of the guys he'll play against. Once he does, gets stronger, and works on his quickness, and becomes more aggressive...I think he could be one of the best 5's we've had under Reveno's coaching...which is really saying something.

There is a LOT of talent on this team outside of Devoe and Usher. It bodes well for the future...unfortunately, it's young talent and we need a few of them to mature yesterday.

 

[sgreer]

I agree. The ACC was watered down by the football money grab. The eight team conference of my day was truly magnificent.

It sure was but you would think adding Syracuse and Louisville would make it hands down the best hoops conference year in year out- Looks like SEC and their football $ are taking over that sport as well

 

[awbuzz]

I thought he was out for Covid health and safety protocol I think for the end of the rehab, so I doubt anything was rushed.

He's a senior so is this career ending? Bummer.

/

He could most likely qualify for a medical red shirt and play next year.

 

[Root4GT]

Any strategy for program building can have rebuilding phases. Just because you have a certain strategy doesn't mean there won't be times where things go wrong and you don't get exactly what you want.

Regardless, a lot of people seem to not understand get old, stay old. That doesn't mean never play young players (how else would you stay old). It means to always try to have a core group of upperclassmen who have experience to build around. But that happens when you also find ways to get young players experience so by the time they are upperclassmen they have it. Also, we aren't restarting the way Jose and Moses did. The roster is in a much better spot than it was when they came in.



We got old two years ago when we had primarily 6 upperclassmen and a second year starter in our top 8. Last year our top 6 were uperclassmen. This year we were set up to have Devoe, Usher, Bubba, Moore, Howard, and Sturdivant to be upperclassmen to build around. That is again staying old, although we had some luck there from Ush and Bubba getting an extra year. But the reality is no matter what roster building strategy you take, even if you execute it well, things can go wrong. There are plenty of example of the "recruit your way to success" that shows that exact thing.


Making the NCAAT every year is hard to do no matter what your approach is. Yes, getting old and staying old is hard. So to is any other method. We just got done with the first cycle under Pastner (his first real class just graduated). from a roster composition standpoint he's done a fine job with the get old stay old. The issues mostly stems from two things. One, injuries to Meka and Maxwell made it so we were unlikely to see either take a big step forward this year like you often see with sophs. Second, Howard and Sturdivant didn't get the experience they needed to last year. Against ACC teams, Sturdivant is averaging 10 ppg on 44/45 shooting with a 2-1 ATR. He is developing, but not at the pace we need him to. Had he gotten more time last year then he might have been further along and that might have been enough. Howard is an even more egregious case. His first 6 games this year he was fine, but he wasn't ready for the increased level of play. That is directly related to limited action last year. Now it is probably worth it with what we accomplished last year but it hurts for this year. So the question to ask is why we couldn't get them more experience last year. Partially because Pastner was probably coaching for his job, but also because we just didn't have the margin of error most of the time. Why didn't we have the margin of error? You can look at the roster for the answer. And the roster was the way that it was because of recruiting. Which goes back to the state of the program , and so forth and so on. Every program building strategy is cyclical by nature. So breaking into a new cycle isn't going to come without its issues initially.

Drinking the Gold Color magic juice. Pastner has failed as a recruiter which is the core issue for our team. We do not have a roster that is upper 1/2 ACC much less one that can compete for an ACC championship. He got lucky with a once in a generation player who went from nothing to Conference Player of the year. That won’t happen again.

Until he starts getting ACC level talent every year recruting we will have an occasional good year for two/three bad years.

 

[augustabuzz]

After his first two shots, I thought every time Maxwell had the ball in his hands something was going to happen. He seems to have a certain "energy" about him that good players have. I really hope to see more minutes for Maxwell this year. He could be a consistent 8-12 pt guy for us.

Meka, IMO, shows a bit of the young Moses Wright. Really athletic, quick first step, and a good bounce...just really raw right now. A LOT to work with...he's easily our most athletic post right now, but he doesn't have the height and length of Howard or Saba.

I think if Saba continues to work with Reveno, he'll be our best post player of the 3. You see flashes from him that gets you excited. He just needs to be a lot more aggressive (dunk the d@mn ball with authority!!!) and work on his strength. I don't think Saba understands the advantage he has versus 95% of the guys he'll play against. Once he does, gets stronger, and works on his quickness, and becomes more aggressive...I think he could be one of the best 5's we've had under Reveno's coaching...which is really saying something.

There is a LOT of talent on this team outside of Devoe and Usher. It bodes well for the future...unfortunately, it's young talent and we need a few of them to mature yesterday.

Good observations.

 

[awbuzz]

Drinking the Gold Color magic juice. Pastner has failed as a recruiter which is the core issue for our team. We do not have a roster that is upper 1/2 ACC much less one that can compete for an ACC championship. He got lucky with a once in a generation player who went from nothing to Conference Player of the year. That won’t happen again.

Until he starts getting ACC level talent every year recruting we will have an occasional good year for two/three bad years.

... so you are sayin' I was lucky to be around during the early Cremin's era...

 

[sgreer]

... so you are sayin' I was lucky to be around during the early Cremin's era...

Yes we were- that won’t happen again unless we start paying players major NIL $

 

[forensicbuzz]

After his first two shots, I thought every time Maxwell had the ball in his hands something was going to happen. He seems to have a certain "energy" about him that good players have. I really hope to see more minutes for Maxwell this year. He could be a consistent 8-12 pt guy for us.

Meka, IMO, shows a bit of the young Moses Wright. Really athletic, quick first step, and a good bounce...just really raw right now. A LOT to work with...he's easily our most athletic post right now, but he doesn't have the height and length of Howard or Saba.

I think if Saba continues to work with Reveno, he'll be our best post player of the 3. You see flashes from him that gets you excited. He just needs to be a lot more aggressive (dunk the d@mn ball with authority!!!) and work on his strength. I don't think Saba understands the advantage he has versus 95% of the guys he'll play against. Once he does, gets stronger, and works on his quickness, and becomes more aggressive...I think he could be one of the best 5's we've had under Reveno's coaching...which is really saying something.

There is a LOT of talent on this team outside of Devoe and Usher. It bodes well for the future...unfortunately, it's young talent and we need a few of them to mature yesterday.

I was thinking the other night when watching the game what this team would be like if Coleman and Kelly were sophomores this year and Maxwell was able to play last year. With those 3 shooters being locked in, we would be a much better scoring team and would be more dangerous.