THE FLATS – Georgia Tech senior Pressley Harvin III (Alcolu, S.C./Sumter) was named first-team punter on the Associated Press’ All-Atlantic Coast Conference team, which was announced on Monday.
One of 10 semifinalists for the 2020 Ray Guy Award (presented to college football’s top punter), Harvin leads the nation with a 48.0-yard punting average this season. To put his whopping 48.0-yard average into perspective, the margin between Harvin’s average and the third-best average in the nation (46.7 – Washington State’s Oscar Draguicevich) is the same as the margin between Draguicevich and the nation’s ninth-best average (45.4 – San Diego State’s Tanner Kuljian).
In addition to the 48.0-yard average, 49% of Harvin’s 45 punts this season have traveled 50 or more yards, 47% were fair caught, 40% were downed inside the opponent’s 20 yard line and only 17% were returned. Thanks in large part to those gaudy numbers, Georgia Tech ranks second nationally as a team in net punting (44.6-yard average).
Harvin averaged at least 51 yards per punt three times in nine games this season (51.2 vs. UCF on Sept. 19, 51.0 at Boston College on Oct. 24 and 51.0 vs. Pitt on Dec. 10). He was named the Ray Guy Award National Punter of the Week twice and one of the award’s “Ray’s 4” recipients (honoring the nation’s four best punters each week) five times. Since the beginning of the 2019 season, he is the only punter in the nation that has had a net punting average of 50 yards in three different games (min. four punts), including twice this season – vs. UCF and at Boston College.
Harvin’s 48.0-yard average also set a new ACC single-season record (prev.: 47.8 – North Carolina’s Brian Schmitz, 1999) and shattered Georgia Tech’s single-season school record of 45.6 yards, previously set by Rodney Williams in 1997.
The ACC’s official all-conference team will be announced on Tuesday at 9 a.m. on the ACC Network, while the three finalists for the Ray Guy Award will be revealed on Tuesday at noon on ESPN.
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