March 20, 2013
THE FLATS – Georgia Tech has been invited to be part of the field for the 2013 Barclays Center Classic in Brooklyn, N.Y., next season and is slated for two games at the new arena Nov. 29-30.
Coach Brian Gregory’s third Yellow Jacket team will join Penn State (Big Ten), Ole Miss (SEC champion) and St. John’s (Big East) in the field for the second year of the event, which featured Kentucky and Maryland among other teams last year. Tickets for the Barclays Center Classic go on sale March 22 at www.barclayscenter.com or www.ticketmaster.com. Match-ups, tip times, and television arrangements will be announced at a later date.
“We’re excited about playing in the Barclays Center Classic and look forward to being in the New York area with the chance to play in this new arena,” Gregory said. “It’s important for our program to play in these early season events against challenging opponents, and this event certainly has that.”
The $1 billion Barclays Center opened in September of 2012 with eight sold-out Jay-Z concerts. The 17,732-seat arena is the home of the Brooklyn Nets and hosted the Atlantic-10 Conference Tournament. It is the center of the Atlantic Yards commercial and residential development project in Brooklyn.
Tech has played in a big early season event each of the last four years, and in six such events since 2006.
The Yellow Jackets won two of three games last Thanksgiving weekend in the DirecTV Classic in Anaheim, Calif., including a victory over NCAA Tournament team Saint Mary’s for third place. Tech played in the Charleston Classic in 2011, defeating VCU on the heels of the Rams’ Final Four run the season before.
Previously, the Yellow Jackets were the runner-up in the 2006 EA Sports Maui Classic, won two of three games at the 2007 Paradise Jam in the Virgin Islands, won two of three games in the 2010 Puerto Rico Tipoff and were the runner-up in the 2010 Legends Classic in Atlantic City, N.J.
Tech last played in the New York area on Dec. 29, 2011, with a 72-66 loss at Fordham, but has not played a tournament there since the 2003 Pre-Season NIT, which the Yellow Jackets won. Tech has played in three Pre-Season NIT events and four Holiday Festivals at Madison Square Garden.
From its time as a member of the Southeastern Conference, Tech played Mississippi 19 times, winning 11, between 1926 and 1964. The Yellow Jackets are 1-2 against Penn State, including one post-season NIT loss in 1998 and a split of two ACC-Big Ten Challenge contests. Tech and St. John’s have split eight previous meetings, seven of them on neutral floors.
Gregory will welcome back for of the Yellow Jackets’ five starters and 10 of the top 11 scorers from last year’s team which went 16-15 and finished ninth in the Atlantic Coast Conference with a 6-12 mark. The returnees include 6-11 ½ senior center Daniel Miller (Loganville,Ga.), who averaged 8.4 points and 6.6 rebounds and led the ACC in blocked shots, and three sophomore starters in 6-5 forward Marcus Georges-Hunt (College Park, Ga.), Tech’s leading scorer at 10.8 points per game, 6-8 forward Robert Carter, Jr. (Thomasville, Ga.), 9.9 ppg, 6.7 rpg, and 6-3 guard Chris Bolden (Suwanee, Ga.), 7.3 ppg.
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