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Message: [QUOTE="Rooster C., post: 5326183, member: 10168"] Georgia Tech it's your turn. Georgia Tech had a solid performance last year overall finishing at 9 - 9 in the ACC and 22 - 11 overall. They also went to the NCAA tournament as a 9 - seed and that's when everything started to go badly for them. They lost in the first round to Richmond by 25 points. Then late in the summer Nell Fortner unexpectedly retired. That left little time for the school to find themselves a new coach - most of the players entered the portal - and left the incoming coach scrambling to hire a staff, recruit from the remaining players in the portal, and start recruiting hs players asap. The new hire is a first time HC (at any level) BUT Karen Blair has 25 years of coaching experience and is well known and respected in the community. Her last stint was as an assistant to Brenda Frese at Maryland for the past 7 years. There is another former assistant of Brenda's who also took a HC job at an ACC school some 17 years ago - and we all know how well that went. Karen Blair also brought in as her main assistant someone with as much experience as herself - and her name may sound familiar - Marsha Frese. So I'd say this looks to be a pretty solid hire as Fortner's replacement and between Blair and Frese I'm certain they'll recruit well. Having said that - the first year will be a difficult one for Blair as her late hiring put her in the same unfortunate situation as it did Miami's new HC a year ago. ALL of the starters from last year's team are gone - 2 to graduation and 3 to the portal. In fact a total of 7 players went in to the portal so 9 players in total departed. What was lost : Let's start with the starters. Z. Smith (6'1" F 7.4ppg) and K. Blackshear (6'1" F 6.0ppg) graduated. T. Morgan (Sr. 5'9" G 13.7ppg), K. Dunn (Sr. '11" G 15.5ppg), D. Carnegie (So. 5'9" G 12.9ppg) and C. Wright (So. 5'4" G 7.2ppg) all left via the portal. Morgan to KY, Dunn to USC, Carnegie to GA, and Wright to IA. Those 4 were all Top 100 ranked coming out of hs. Also entering the portal were critical reserves T. Thompson (So. 5'10" G 4.0ppg), R. Augustinaite (Jr. 6'0" G 5.2ppg), and G. Grooms (So. 5'9" G 2.1ppg). What remains: Only 3 players but with a decent amount of playing experience. A. Termis (Jr. 6'6" C 4.0ppg) from Spain, I. Noguerro (Sr. 5'11" G 4.5 ppg) also from Spain, and D. Thomas-Harris (Jr. 6'2" G/F 1.8ppg). Not a lot but not nothing. Incoming transfers: B. Turnage (Sr. 6'1" G 1.7ppg from FSU), S. Samuel (Gr. 6'1" G 6.3ppg from BC), D. Mukeba (So. 6'5" C 1.7ppg from BC/Belgium), T. Walker (So. 5'10" G 5.6ppg from PSU), E. Moon (rs So. 5'6" G 1.5ppg from Tx A&M), C. Alben (Sr. 5'7" G 16.6ppg from Charleston Southern), L. Foster (Jr. 5'10" G 11.9ppg from Austin Peay), J. Crawshaw (Jr. 6'0" F 10.4ppg from Long Beach St./Australia). Incoming Freshmen: L. Urdiain (5'11" G) from Spain and M. Taylor (6'1" C). So the backcourt looks like it's pretty wide open outside of Noguerro with a combination of transfers who were starters and double digit scorers at smaller schools and experienced reserves who were lower single digit scorers at P5 schools. There's about 8 total so I'm sure many different combinations will be tried (especially in the pre-season) but chances are good they'll know who their starting backcourt will be from observing the players in practice before the first game is played. As for the front court A. Termis should get the nod with Mukeba as back up and Thomas-Harris or Crawshaw if they decide to go with a smaller line up. The results with this roster probably won't differ too much from how Miami fared last year - which was not great. It's likely we'll see a lot of turnover at year's end. Blair will hit the portal hard I'm sure and already seems to be making some inroads with recruiting 2026 Top 100 players for next year to start the process of building a program. Even if this were one of the top existing coaches in the conference I don't think they would win too many games with the talent pool available here. They may even struggle against weaker small-school opponents in the non-conference games that are usually just glorified practices for most schools.I think seeing how this team fares against their non-conference schedule will be a decent indicator of what to expect once the "real" games start. I would not anticipate GT doing much better than the lower tier group finishing around 14th to 18th. [/QUOTE]

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