CHARLOTTE -- The Georgia Tech basketball team is down to 11 scholarship players, rebuilding under first-year coach Brian Gregory, and virtually homeless, while Alexander Memorial Coliseum is transformed into the McCamish Pavilion. But if you ask Yellow Jackets, those are good things.
This is a team that endured public outcry against former coach Paul Hewitt and ultimately his firing. The drawbacks now are far easier to handle.
“The kind of negative attention we were getting last year, it was almost a distraction,” Tech sophomore guard Jason Morris said Wednesday at the ACC media day. “This year that negative attention is fueling the team.”
Georgia Tech has to play five of its home games this season at Gwinnett Arena and the rest at Philips Arena, but that’s not nearly as confusing as some of the sentiments they faced last season at home from their fans.
Walking from the floor to the sideline for a timeout, players saw fans decked out in Tech garb booing Hewitt or holding signs that said, “Your time is up.” Security guards often confiscated the signs and escorted some fans out, but not before their message was heard.
And eventually Hewitt’s message was lost, too.
“Towards the end, his message wasn’t getting through,” Morris said. “And it arguably wasn’t his fault. It was the team’s fault for basically not stepping up and supporting their coach much.”
Morris said even when it was clear Hewitt was right, the team wasn’t listening. He pointed to the decisive play in the Georgia game last December.
Georgia Tech lost 73-72 on a 3-pointer from Dustin Ware with 18 seconds left. Morris said in the timeout before the play, Hewitt had predicted Ware would take the last shot, a 3-pointer from the wing, and implored his team not to let the driving Gerald Robinson draw Ware’s defender away.
But that’s exactly what happened.
Afterward, Morris said, “You could see the fire in his eyes. He just stood there. He was rubbing his forehead, trying to figure out how to get through to the guys on the team. ... Not only did he have to fight with having a young team. It was fighting the crowd and the media, [and] now he’s got to fight with us.”
The tension in that moment in a silent Tech locker room might help explain the contrasting upbeat demeanor from Morris and his teammate Mfon Udofia on Wednesday.
They talked about the Yellow Jackets’ improved intensity in practice and about making the best of their home-away-from-home situation. They did so, even in the midst of ACC Operation Basketball, where the Yellow Jackets were chosen to finish 10th in the writers’ preseason poll.
Tech was only five official practices into Gregory’s tenure as head coach, but his message wasn't muddied. The players aren’t caught in the middle of an irate fan base and a coach anymore.
“It’s almost a sigh of relief,” Morris said. “Last year there was nothing we could do about that. There was no drowning out all those voices. What people are saying now is something that we can use to drive us. We have this fresh start; it’s up to us to go out there and make a statement and direct the program the direction that Georgia Tech is known for.”
Gregory isn’t building players’ trust on promises of immediate ACC grandeur, when it’s obvious the Jackets have a significant overhaul ahead. But he is making promises that if they build around effort and intensity, their fans will recognize it.
The rest, he realizes, is blind faith.
“I’m not sure it’s there yet,” Gregory said. “They’ve been in a very controlled environment. How are they going to respond when we lose a game that maybe we shouldn’t? Will they get big-headed if we win a game we shouldn’t? All those are unknowns, but those are the steps you have to take to build a program.”
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