With three games to play in the regular season, the NCAA tournament appears to be the longest of long shots for Georgia Tech. While the Yellow Jackets haven’t abandoned it – they can get in by winning the ACC tournament and capturing the league’s automatic berth – the NIT is out there as a possibility, though that would require some work, too.
“If it came to that, any chance to extend your season is going to be a blessing, especially for a senior,” senior center James Banks said. But, “you know what every kid wants. You want that ‘One Shining Moment,’ and that doesn’t happen in the NIT. That happens in the NCAA. We’re grateful for whatever chance we get, of course, but we’re not striving for (the NIT) at all.”
Tech (14-14, 8-9 ACC) will try to continue its late-season run Saturday evening with a home game against Miami (14-13, 6-11). A win over the Hurricanes would be the Jackets’ fourth in the past five games and keep alive the possibility of finishing with a .500 or better record in league play.
Coach Josh Pastner’s goal has been to finish in the top nine in the conference standings – which would mean the Jackets would avoid playing in the first round of the tournament. Tech has played on the first day of the tournament in each of Pastner’s first three seasons, losing each time.
Tech has finished in the top nine only once in the past nine seasons, and that was in 2013, when the ACC was 12 teams, not 15. Pastner sees it as part of his long-stated vision to get the Jackets into the NCAA tournament by next season, his fifth at Tech.
“That’s a big step for us,” Pastner said.
Going into Saturday’s games, Tech was in a three-way tie for seventh. The Jackets can also finish at .500 in league play with a 2-1 finish in the last three games against Miami, Pitt and at Clemson. Tech’s last .500 season in ACC regular-season games was the 2006-07 season. It bears mention that the Jackets are making this charge in a season when the league is down from its usual standards and this Tech team is arguably Pastner’s strongest.
“There’s a lot to play for, and there’s a lot to play for with Miami,” Pastner said.
Tech actually is banned from the postseason as a sanction for NCAA recruiting violations, but has appealed the penalty. By NCAA rules, penalties under appeal can’t be enforced until the appeal process is over, and it’s expected that the appeal will not be completed until after the season. Some Tech fans have advocated withdrawing the appeal for the ban (which is permitted by NCAA rules) and sitting out this postseason to ensure a clean slate for next season rather than risk losing the appeal and facing the ban next season. However, indications are that Tech will proceed to play in the postseason this year, including the ACC tournament in Greensboro, N.C.
“I haven’t heard anything other than I’ve been instructed to coach the team and the administration’s handling all the stuff with the NCAA,” Pastner told the AJC.
Pastner, like Banks, isn’t ready to entertain the thought of playing in the NIT. Tech played in the consolation tournament in 2017, at the end of Pastner’s first season, and reached the finals.
“We’re playing for the NCAA tournament,” Pastner said. “I mean, that’s what we want to do. Obviously, playing in the postseason, the objective is to play in the NCAA tournament. If you’re not going to play in the NCAA tournament, you want to play in the NIT, obviously. But our first thought is to play in the NCAA tournament.”
Whether it’s on the radar, an NIT berth would still take some doing. The Jackets would almost certainly have to finish at .500 or better, and Tech, at least in the view of the NCAA tournament selection committee, is actually 13-14, not 14-14, as it only considers games against Division I teams. Tech played – and beat – Division II Morehouse in January.
Should the NIT take the same view, if the Jackets lost one of its remaining regular-season games to finish 15-15, they would have to win at least one ACC tournament game to stay at .500. But, a 16-16 record would guarantee Tech nothing.
Last season, the NIT took nine teams from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC. They happened to be the nine power-conference teams with the highest NET rankings that weren’t selected to the NCAA tournament and had records of .500 or better. The range was 33-66.
After Thursday’s games, Tech’s NET (a replacement for the NCAA’s longstanding evaluation metric, RPI) was No. 78. The Jackets likely would be in good position for the NIT if they could win the next three games to get to 16-14 and win one tournament game to finish at 17-15, but even that would not seem a lock by any stretch.
In the NET ranking after Thursday’s games, there were no less than 14 power-conference teams ahead of Tech in NET with records of .500 or better that weren’t in ESPN’s projected NCAA tournament bracket as of Friday afternoon.
The simple solution for Tech is to keep winning.
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