After Georgia Tech’s win Tuesday night over Morehouse, Yellow Jackets wing player Jordan Usher offered a novel idea.
Tech vs. Morehouse at the Maroon Tigers’ Forbes Arena.
“I wish we would have played (Tuesday’s game) at Morehouse,” Usher said. “I think that’s something, if we could do it next year, that’s something I’d want to do, and do that more often.”
Usher added that he thought “a lot of us on our team” would be in agreement. (Tech center James Banks, sitting next to Usher at the post-game news conference, co-signed Usher’s proposal.) Usher said that he has been to games at Morehouse and praised the fan experience at Forbes Arena.
Morehouse coach Grady Brewer, born and raised in Atlanta and the Maroon Tigers’ coach for the past 20 seasons, called it a dream to have the Jackets in Forbes Arena. He had jumped at the chance to bring his team, chockful of metro-Atlanta players, to McCamish Pavilion on Tuesday, where the Jackets prevailed 82-54.
“It’s special for me as a coach and a former player at Morehouse to play Georgia Tech,” he said. “I think it’s great for the city of Atlanta. My dream is for Georgia Tech to one day come over to our 6,000-seat arena, Forbes Arena at Morehouse, and come and play us a home game. I just think that would be tremendous for Atlanta, tremendous for both schools.”
Alas, it appears to be a non-starter. Part of the team’s scheduling philosophy is that it will only play road games against Division I opponents, according to an athletic department spokesman. As Morehouse is a Division II school, that would preclude that possibility.
Even without a scheduling philosophy in place addressing the situation, there would be some hurdles. Tech and coach Josh Pastner do not make a practice of playing Division II opponents. The Tech-Morehouse game arose out of Pastner’s preference to fill in the team’s open dates during ACC play with non-conference games. Pastner wanted to play a power-conference team, but when none were available, his next option was to give a local team an opportunity to play at McCamish and, in his words, “make it a community event.”
It’s the second time in Pastner’s four seasons that he has filled an open date with a Division II opponent, having played Tusculum in Feb. 2017, his first season.
From a competitive standpoint, playing a Division II team does not offer much in the way of benefit. From a perspective of RPI or NET or the NCAA tournament selection committee, the game is completely disregarded. In a way, it’s a lost opportunity for Tech (or any other team that schedules a Division II opponent) to improve its NET rating or make an additional impression on the selection committee.
Financially speaking, while attendance was small on Tuesday – perhaps 1,000 fans were in the building – to give up a home date means giving up the revenue of ticket sales and concessions. For an athletic department that seeks to be wise with every last dollar, that isn’t a small consideration.
The philosophy also apparently covers exhibition games, which might be a more feasible option for Tech to play at Morehouse. However, while the preseason games aren’t often meaningful from a competition standpoint, the athletic department puts a high value on them as they serve as a dry run to prepare the staff for its operation of regular-season games.
As it would be a rarity in college athletics – a Division I power-conference opponent visiting a Division II school just down the road – a Tech-Morehouse game at Forbes Arena would likely create a vibrant atmosphere, just the sort that Usher envisions. It would also be a gesture of goodwill by Tech and Pastner to support a neighboring school, honor an Atlanta coaching pillar in Brewer and serve the community of basketball fans in Atlanta with a most unlikely event.
But, it is apparently not to be.
The more logical option for Tech to play an intra-city matchup would be Georgia State. It’s not likely Georgia State coach Rob Lanier would be able to help Pastner fill in his open-date hole, but the Panthers might be the most intriguing non-conference matchup that the Jackets could play outside of the annual matchup with Georgia or a visit from a blueblood like Kentucky (whom the Jackets will, in fact, play next November at State Farm Arena as part of a two-game series).
However, Pastner has said in the past that he doesn’t want to play Georgia State, as he sees it as a no-win situation. The two teams did play an exhibition game for charity in Nov. 2017, won by the Panthers. Pastner told the AJC Tuesday that there were no plans for Tech and Georgia State to play. The two teams last met in the regular season in Dec. 2008, a Tech win.
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