As healthy as it has been since the end of December, Georgia Tech will go to Greensboro, N.C., hoping it’s not too late to make something out of the season.
The Yellow Jackets will open the ACC tournament Wednesday as the No. 11 seed and will play No. 14 seed Boston College in a first-round game at 7 p.m. The Jackets, with forward Robert Carter regaining his agility and shooting touch in his return from a torn meniscus in his left knee and guard Trae Golden moving better after a groin injury suffered a little more than a month ago, have not been this whole since Carter’s injury Dec. 29.
“I’m just excited,” Golden said. “I remember telling a couple of the guys after the game, the Syracuse game, I felt for the first time I was just kind of moving freely as my body let me and not necessarily thinking about the injury.”
Golden has played the past two games –67 minutes – without a turnover while scoring 30 points and dishing out 11 assists. His play has helped spur Tech’s first two-game winning streak in ACC play in coach Brian Gregory’s three-year tenure.
Boston College presents a familiar challenge. The teams played each other three times last year, with the Eagles ousting the Jackets by an 84-64 count in last year’s first round of the ACC tournament, and will meet three times again this year. Tech snuck out wins in both regular-season meetings, but played without Carter in the first game and Golden in the second.
“We all know they beat us last year in the tournament, so sometimes facing your demons and your fears of the past is the best thing for you to advance,” Gregory said Saturday following Tech’s 62-51 home win over Virginia Tech.
Should Tech advance, the Jackets will play No. 6 seed Clemson at 9 p.m. Thursday. They would have a chance to redeem themselves from one of their poorest games of the season, a discouraging 63-55 loss at McCamish Pavilion Feb. 22. It was Tech’s ninth consecutive loss to the Tigers.
The tournament will be perhaps most notable for the initial appearance of longtime Big East power Syracuse, as well as Notre Dame, and the last for Maryland, a charter member of the conference, before it departs for the Big Ten. Last year, Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim poked fun at Greensboro as something of a second-rate site, as the Big East’s tournament home had been New York and Madison Square Garden.
Boeheim was kidding, but the good people of Greensboro, and the prideful ACC as a whole, took umbrage. He will be a bespectacled test on the limits of Southern hospitality.
No. 6 seed Clemson, No.7 seed N.C. State and No. 9 seed Florida State will likely need to advance deep to have a chance to receive NCAA tournament bids. Virginia, Syracuse, Duke, North Carolina and probably Pitt will be playing for tournament seeding.
Expanding from 12 teams to 15, the tournament will begin on Wednesday for the first time. The top four seeds – No. 1 Virginia, No. 2 Syracuse, No. 3 Duke and No. 4 North Carolina – will receive byes through the first two rounds of the tournament.
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