Georgia Tech’s first ACC road game with coach Brian Gregory in charge will be a juice-free excursion.
In the transition from former coach Paul Hewitt to Gregory, little has changed in the Yellow Jackets’ travel routine for road games. The only difference that guard Nick Foreman could think of was that the beverage selections at pregame meals have changed to water and ... water.
“Which is weird because I love to drink juice and other stuff,” Foreman said. “So we’ve had to get used to that, but that’s the only thing that’s different.”
The Jackets will undergo a trial Wednesday at N.C. State to determine if many of the other changes that Gregory has instituted will turn around their performance on the road. At the conclusion of Hewitt’s tenure, Tech had become an abysmal road team. The Jackets were 6-28 in his final three seasons, 1-10 last year.
Ultimately, the solution to winning road games is better players. In Raleigh on Wednesday, Gregory is counting on the maxed-out effort and unity that his team displayed in a closer-than-expected loss to Duke on Saturday in the Jackets’ ACC opener.
“The teams with the best chemistry and the best leadership always tend to be a little more successful on the road,” Gregory said Tuesday.
Even if the Jackets remembered to bring those intangibles to Raleigh, the challenge will be considerable. The Wolfpack are 12-4 under new coach Mark Gottfried and began ACC play with a 79-74 win over Maryland on Sunday. Forward C.J. Leslie leads N.C. State with 13.5 points per game, one of five players who averages in double figures. Gregory was wary of point guard and Centennial High grad Lorenzo Brown, who has averaged 6.8 assists per game. Further, the RBC Center is one of the louder arenas in the league.
While the Jackets are 7-8 and on a four-game losing streak, they have managed a 2-2 road record, already surpassing last season’s road victory total. That includes their Dec. 7 win over Georgia, which ended their 13-game losing streak in Athens. To center Daniel Miller, the win did not hinge on a strategic adjustment or emotion-filled pep talk. Rather, it was almost the opposite.
“We got the lead and we didn’t destroy it,” he said. “We just kept doing what we were supposed to do, and it turned out for the best.”
Guard Jason Morris invoked the same all-out effort theme as his coach.
“I feel like that was our problem, sort of, last year,” he said. “We came out a little too relaxed to start games.”
Still, the Jackets can hardly consider themselves road titans. Any team that can lose to Fordham (Sagarin rating: No. 242) while getting out-rebounded 45-30 will invoke more snickers than fear in ACC circles.
“You can [talk about effort] as much as you want, but we’ll see once we tip off how it goes,” Morris said. “But that is the plan, coming out full-fire, full-fledge, because we have lost the last four games.”
The Jackets have the opportunity to build on a strong performance against Duke, in which the Jackets trailed by as few as two points in the final minute before falling 81-74. That game followed losses to Mercer, Fordham and Alabama, the last a 73-48 shellacking that Miller said shook up the team.
“We came in focused the next couple days of practice and then it showed in the game,” he said, “and we just figured out, if we keep this up, we can play like that in the game.”
About the Author
