March 17, 2004
By PAUL NEWBERRY
AP Sports Writer
ATLANTA – As the coach who first guided Georgia Tech to national prominence, Bobby Cremins can see it all happening again.
The flashy guards. The 20-win seasons. The annual trips to the NCAA tournament.
“The excitement is back,” Cremins said Tuesday from his retirement home in Hilton Head, S.C. “The respect across the country is there. Paul Hewitt has done it. That guy came in and brought it all back.”
Indeed, Georgia Tech (23-9) has reclaimed its place among the country’s elite teams, earning a No. 3 seed with only its second NCAA appearance in eight years.
With a stellar backcourt and deep bench, the Yellow Jackets are mentioned frequently as a team that could go all the way to the Final Four.
That’s the way it used to be.
That’s certainly not the way it was the last seven years.
The Yellow Jackets struggled after making the NCAA tournament in 1996 with a team led by Stephon Marbury. The following season, they were 9-18 – the worst record of the Cremins’ 19-year tenure. Two of the next three seasons also resulted in losing records.
In 2000, Cremins stepped aside.
“It was time for me to go,” Cremins said. “The program had slipped. It needed new juice, new blood.”
His replacement was the same type of guy Georgia Tech turned to back in the early ’80s – a 30-something coach who wasn’t well known outside the profession but brought enthusiasm and vitality to a downtrodden program.
Amazingly, too, Hewitt seemed to follow the Cremins timetable.
There was an unexpected trip to the NCAAs in 2001, but that was an overachieving team that went one-and-out in the tourney. The Yellow Jackets missed out the last two years, finally breaking through in Year 4 of the coaching regime.
“That’s one of the reasons I came here. They had lost some of their luster,” guard Jarrett Jack said. “I thought if I came in here and played hard I could definitely help this team get back to where it used to be.”
Back in 1981, Cremins took over a program that was downright laughable, going 1-27 its first two years in the ACC. By Year 4, the Yellow Jackets won the conference tournament and made it all the way to the NCAA regional finals.
“That ACC title was very special,” said Mark Price, a star on that team who went on to a long career in the NBA. “I know how low Tech was when I got there. Then, just a couple of years later, we were winning the ACC championship. That was unheard of.”
So began the most glorious era in Georgia Tech basketball. Nine straight trips to the NCAA tournament. Three ACC tournament championships. A steady stream of talented players: John Salley, Dennis Scott, Kenny Anderson, Jon Barry, James Forrest, Travis Best, Drew Barry, Matt Harpring, Marbury.
The apex came in 1990, when the Yellow Jackets reached the Final Four for the first – and still only – time. Little did anyone know, but the program was about to slip into decline.
“We could have become a powerhouse like Duke and North Carolina,” Cremins said. “We had our chance to almost be like a dynasty. We came close, but we couldn’t get over the hump.
“We probably should have been to two or three Final Fours. We probably should have won at least one national championship.”
Scott left after the Final Four season with a year of eligibility remaining, weakening a team Cremins thought was poised to make another run for the national title. Others would leave, too – Anderson after two seasons, Marbury after only one.
Cremins wasn’t ready for the new realities of college basketball. He believed in recruiting just one or two high-profile players each year. He never had a very deep bench. When his stars began leaving school early, he couldn’t adjust.
“He didn’t recruit numbers very much,” Price recalled. “He kind of expected that guys wouldn’t leave until after their junior years, at the earliest. When guys started leaving after their second or even first years, it made a real big impact.”
The current group doesn’t know a whole lot about Georgia Tech’s proud history, other than the banners hanging from the ceiling of Alexander Memorial Coliseum or the trophies sprinkled around the building.
Will Bynum was only 8 when Forrest knocked down a miracle 3-pointer in the 1992 NCAA tournament, giving the Yellow Jackets a 79-78 upset of a second-seeded team.
“That was against North Carolina State, wasn’t it?” Bynum asked Tuesday.
Nope, it was Southern Cal.
“They were wearing those black jerseys, weren’t they?” Bynum asked.
Nope, they were navy blue.
Oh, well.
But many of those old players have maintained ties to the program. Price lives in Atlanta and has season tickets. Anderson sent a fruit basket to Hewitt after the Yellow Jackets ended Duke’s home winning streak a couple of weeks ago.
Hewitt doesn’t want his current players to forget the past.
“The last two years, when things weren’t going the way we wanted, we told them they had the responsibility to uphold a very strong tradition around here, he said. “Now, they’re starting to get it.”
