For the third time this season, Georgia Tech has lost at least three consecutive conference games, a dubious note that has sent Tech into a three-way tie for last place in the ACC standings in mid-February.
The Yellow Jackets (10-14, 3-10 ACC) will be looking to break that skid at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Notre Dame, a team they’re tied with at the bottom of the table.
“For me right now, it’s not necessarily about any team we play strategically. We gotta get better. It’s about us. We gotta do things better just, in general. That’s how I feel right now,” Tech coach Damon Stoudamire said. “The way we’ve been losing games, to me, has nothing to do with either side of the ball. It’s just having a competitive spirit each and every game and a will to a win. We had opportunities in each conference game to, actually, get a stop and maybe the game goes the other way. And we just haven’t been able to do it.”
Stoudamire’s team has, somewhat unexpectedly, gone the wrong direction in a fortnight.
After beating No. 3-ranked North Carolina on Jan. 30, a victory that brought Stoudamire to joyful tears, the Jackets have lost to North Carolina State, Wake Forest and Louisville, respectively. They’ve allowed 80.3 points per game in those defeats.
Defensive consistency has been a constant struggle for Stoudamire’s team, which ranks 13th in the league in scoring defense and 350th nationally in turnovers-forced percentage, according to kenpom.com.
“Practice has to be about getting better on the defensive end. Figuring out how to get stops, putting ourselves in those positions, having late-game situations that’s gonna mimic the game,” Stoudamire said. “If you look at our defensive ratings in the first half, we’re solid. The problem is we get to the second half of the game, and we get tired and then mentally we check out. That’s our issue.”
To make matters tougher moving ahead, senior forward Ebenezer Dowuona injured his left ankle last week in practice and is expected to miss, “maybe a couple weeks,” Stoudamire said Monday. The 6-foot-11 Dowuona has started 13 of the 18 games he has played and is averaging a shade under 10 minutes per game.
Stoudamire said Dowuona’s minutes will be divided by committee and whoever plays in his place will be matchup-based, starting with Tech’s rematch with Notre Dame. Those two teams met Jan. 9 in McCamish Pavilion, and the Fighting Irish outscored Tech 9-2 in overtime in a 75-68 win. Baye Ndongo made a 3-point shot with five seconds to go in regulation, and then the Jackets got a defensive stop to force overtime, but then Tech went 1-for-8 (and 0-for-6 from 3) during the extra five minutes.
The Irish lost seven consecutive after that before beating Virginia Tech at home Saturday. Notre Dame hasn’t won back-to-back games since Dec. 22 and Dec. 30, when it knocked off Marist and Virginia, respectively.
Should Louisville win at Boston College on Tuesday and Tech lose Wednesday, the Jackets would fall to dead last in the ACC standings. The Jackets have seven league games remaining and need to win at least two of those to avoid their worst ACC record since 2021-22 (5-15).
“You gotta have a sense of pride when you’re playing the game. For me that’s the biggest thing,” Stoudamire said. “You gotta have a sense of pride, and we can’t hang our heads when things don’t go right for us, and we gotta have a better recovery. If we can do that, we can string a couple games together. If we don’t do that, we’re gonna keep going the other way.”
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