A season with few bright lights grew even dimmer Friday.
Following the team’s practice, Georgia Tech coach Brian Gregory announced that guard Glen Rice Jr. has been suspended indefinitely. Rice, who leads Tech in scoring, rebounding and steals, was not at practice Friday and did not make the trip with the team for its game 3 p.m. Saturday at Virginia Tech.
It is a non-basketball matter. Gregory did not offer more explanation or comment. The Yellow Jackets, who have lost 12 of their past 14 games and are in last place in the ACC, will try to stop their plunge against the Hokies.
“Nobody’s really down, in a giving-up mode,” guard Mfon Udofia said. “With the season going so rough as it is, guys tend to do that, but nobody’s really doing that.”
It is Rice’s second suspension of the season. He began the season with a three-game suspension for violating team rules. He also was benched for the final games of the 2010-11 season by then-coach Paul Hewitt for disciplinary reasons.
With backup center Nate Hicks out with mononucleosis, Tech will play the Hokies with nine scholarship players, including former walk-ons Nick Foreman and Derek Craig. At practice Friday, Gregory and assistant coach Josh Postorino ran plays with the scout team to make up for the shortage.
“We’ve just got to dig deep, and we’ll find out who we are by not having some of our really good guys,” center Daniel Miller said.
Gregory has found that despite the losses, players have maintained good attitudes and have tried to follow his coaching.
“It feels different [than last season] to me because I feel like we can still change things,” Miller said. “Like last year, we said it, but I didn’t really feel like it was going to happen. But this year, I feel like, if we can all get on the same page, that we’re going to be successful.”
The Jackets have largely played credible half-court defense, but have sabotaged themselves with lapses in other areas. In Tech’s 59-50 loss at Wake Forest on Wednesday, the Jackets held the Demon Deacons to 32.7 percent shooting from the field but gave up 14 offensive rebounds, good for 17 second-chance points, to one of the weaker rebounding teams in the league. Gregory described much of the first half as “very lethargic.”
“It was stretches where, OK, if we play like this, we can beat anybody in the ACC, and stretches where, if we played like that, we could lose to anybody in the ACC,” Udofia said.
Udofia has shown better form recently, with 14 assists against four turnovers in the past three games. Miller has had four double-figures scoring games in a row with 18 rebounds and eight blocks in the past two games. In the two most recent losses, to N.C. State on Feb. 9 and to Wake Forest, Tech was within four points with less than four minutes to play in each.
“We’ve got to have almost everybody play well in order to be successful,” Gregory said. “We’re just good enough to be in those games. Now we’ve got to figure out a way to finish some of them.”
