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Wednesday, February 8, 2006
Blame goes both ways
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Hi, everybody.
Name’s Matt Winkeljohn, and I’m new to this. Well, not really, but sort of.
I just finished about 10 months covering the NFL after seven years covering the Falcons, and now I’m going to cover Georgia Tech basketball. Lucky me, right?
Hey, actually, Tech was the first beat I ever wanted at the paper, and I’ve been at the AJC since 1987 so I’m looking forward to it. A great change of pace, especially since it’s about nine minutes from my door to Tech’s.
Anyway, Rana Cash, my predecessor, has gone over to the dark side, to be an assistant sports editor. Oddly (in my humble opinion), that’s what she has wanted to do for some time. It’d be difficult for me to dress that nicely every day, sit in a lot of meetings, and listen to fussing writers and so forth. But Rana’s far better equipped for that than me. She’s a peach of a person, and will be a great editor both for her patience and people skills. As for the Jackets, hey, they’re not exactly on fire, of course, unless one might suggest they’re burning.
Still, I look forward not only to covering the team, but also to Thursday’s trip to Tallahassee. I haven’t been there in about 10 or 11 years, when I covered college football in the mid-1990s.
As I wrote for Thursday’s paper, Jeremis Smith called a players-only meeting Sunday, the day after the team blew a halftime tie at home with Miami and got smoked by 17.
Bottom line, they apparently agreed that most of what’s happened in this seven-game losing streak is on them. There’s far more skill on the team than that, even from my distant vantage point previous to now.
Of course, Paul Hewitt both recruited and is coaching these players, and some blame goes his direction. But I’m of a mind that as 19-, 20-, 21-year-old men, these guys are more than a little responsible for taking direction than they have the past seven games. They’re not pros, at least not yet, but as I said there’s not a deficit of skill on this squad.
Are they on a par with Duke, N.C. State and North Carolina? No. But they should be in the middle of the pack in the ACC, and they’re nowhere close.
The finger of blame points both ways — at coaches for not pulling the Jackets out of the muck, and at players who continue to settle for trudging through it.
I look forward to blogging with you all, even the Georgia fans who roll in and take mean shots. Hey, I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, still love Ohio State, and know well and good what a little old-fashioned collegiate animus is all about.
Later — Matt
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