GREENSBORO, N.C. – One minute Friday morning, Georgia Tech coach Josh Pastner was on a videoconference call with ESPN’s broadcast team to discuss the Yellow Jackets’ Friday night ACC Tournament semifinal against Virginia. The next, he was being informed by the conference that his team was being advanced to the championship game after a positive COVID-19 test within the Virginia team had necessitated its withdrawal from the tournament.
“We would have preferred to win the game to get to the championship game, but we’re just in a crazy time,” Pastner said Friday afternoon.
The fourth-seeded Yellow Jackets are now scheduled to play for the ACC championship Saturday night at the Greensboro Coliseum against the winner of the Friday night semifinal between No. 2-seed Florida State and No. 6-seed North Carolina. While that game’s winner would have to pass tests following its game, Pastner at least could confirm that his team had had its health cleared Friday. Pastner said he gave no thought to the possibility of pulling out of the tournament to protect his team’s health in advance of the NCAA Tournament.
“We want to have a chance to play for a championship,” Pastner said.
However the moment has arrived, the Jackets can add to a season that in so many ways has been unlike any that has preceded in it in team history. Tech has won but three ACC Tournaments, most recently in 1993. Given the Jackets’ strong season, including the team’s highest finish in the ACC since 2004, it’s not as though they would be pretend champions.
“However you got there, years down the road, they’re not going to look at how you got there, there’s just going to be that name of that school in that championship if you’re fortunate enough to win that game,” Pastner said.
Virginia’s withdrawal was yet another instance of the pandemic infiltrating the refuge that athletes, coaches and fans have sought to find in sports. After the Cavaliers had swept the Jackets in the regular season, Tech players were eager for a third shot at Virginia. They had hoped to end an eight-game losing streak to coach Tony Bennett’s powerhouse and deliver to Pastner his first win over the Cavaliers, the only ACC team that he has yet to defeat after five seasons at Tech’s helm.
“We would have loved another opportunity,” Pastner said. “We wanted another opportunity.”
Virginia became the second team to have to remove itself from the ACC’s prized event because of COVID-19, following Duke on Thursday before its quarterfinal matchup with Florida State. Along with Kansas also pulling out of the Big 12 Tournament after its own positive test, it raised questions about the viability of the NCAA Tournament, which begins next week in Indianapolis and the surrounding area. Duke has ended its season. Virginia was exploring options to continue its season.
“It would be devastating for (Virginia) not to play,” Pastner said.
The withdrawal reinforced to Pastner the diligence with which Tech’s own health needed to be safeguarded.
“Anxiety’s an understatement,” he said.
Tech has sought to maintain a tight circle since traveling to Winston-Salem, N.C., on March 4 to play Wake Forest the next day. The team did not return to Atlanta after the game, instead busing directly to Greensboro, from where the travel party will fly to Indianapolis for the NCAA Tournament.
The group has attempted to limit outside interaction to the point of only seeing family members only from a distance, avoiding close interaction with members of other teams and not getting on elevators that are already occupied.
“It’s awful and it stinks, but it’s the only way to protect the bubble,” Pastner said.
Pastner has worked in concert with Tech senior associate athletic director for sports medicine Angelo Galante, the athletic department’s chief medical officer, and team trainer Richard Stewart in establishing the structure of Tech’s arrangements in Greensboro.
“I’m not a scientist or a doctor, but I trust the doctors and the scientists, and they all say it’s the close quarters, indoors, elevators, restaurants, air droplets,” Pastner said. “So to avoid that, you’ve got to avoid those situations and just stay in your bubble. We’ve tried to do the best we can on that, and we’ve just tried to stay away from everybody.”
In a non-pandemic tournament, one or more Tech coaches would watch Friday night’s semifinal in person to scout, but Pastner was considering not having anyone go simply to avoid any unnecessary contact.
With his high-alert state, Pastner was eagerly awaiting Tech’s arrival in Indianapolis, expressing his high confidence in the protocols in place for the event. Players, coaches and staff will have to pass daily COVID-19 tests for seven consecutive days before arriving. The NCAA has booked entire hotels for teams, and will restrict teams to their own floors.
Pastner said that the team will likely travel from Greensboro either Sunday or Monday by charter flight.
“We have to get to Indy,” Pastner said. “That’s first and foremost.”
From a competitive standpoint, it obviously isn’t the worst outcome for Tech to have a day of rest between its quarterfinal win over Miami on Thursday and the championship Saturday night. Guard Jose Alvarado injured his knee in Thursday’s game, and forward Moses Wright (calf) and guard Bubba Parham (hamstring) also sustained minor injuries.
Pastner also was optimistic that Wright would play better Saturday after perhaps his poorest game of the season Thursday, which was played three days after he was named ACC player of the year. Pastner anticipated that he would not play well against Miami after he was deluged with media requests for the award. It was attention he is not used to, and Pastner believed that it had put extra pressure on him.
“This is new to him, and he’ll play better,” Pastner said.
Tech split with Florida State this season and beat North Carolina in the teams’ only meeting. Alvarado had one of his better games in the Jackets’ 72-67 win over the Tar Heels on Dec. 30 at McCamish Pavilion (20 points, seven rebounds, seven assists, three steals). Wright contributed 23 points, seven rebounds and six steals in the 76-65 win over the Seminoles on Jan. 30 in Atlanta, which followed a 74-61 loss in Tallahassee, Fla., in which Tech shot 5-for-20 from 3-point range (25%), its third-lowest rate of the season.
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