THE FLATS – Punter Pressley Harvin III (Alcolu, S.C./Sumter) became only the second Georgia Tech football student-athlete in the last eight seasons to earn first-team all-Atlantic Coast Conference recognition when the ACC announced its 2020 all-conference teams on Tuesday morning.
In addition to Harvin being named first-team all-conference, senior linebacker David Curry (Buford, Ga./Buford) and true freshman running back Jahmyr Gibbs (Dalton, Ga./Dalton) received honorable-mention all-ACC recognition as a return specialist.
Harvin was a landslide selection for first-team all-ACC honors, receiving 161 total points in balloting by a voting pool that included the conference’s head coaches and selected media. Only three student-athletes in the entire league received more points than Harvin – Clemson quarterback and ACC Player of the Year Trevor Lawrence, Clemson wide receiver Amari Rodgers and North Carolina wide receiver Dyami Brown.
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 also currently holds a new ACC single-season record for punting average (prev.: 47.8 – North Carolina’s Brian Schmitz, 1999). His 48.0-yard average shattered Georgia Tech’s single-season school record of 45.6 yards, previously set by Rodney Williams in 1997.
Curry was an honorable-mention all-ACC selection for the second-straight season after leading the team and ranking fifth in the ACC with 8.4 tackles per game (84 total). He also led Georgia Tech with 9.0 tackles for loss (good for 19th in the league) and added 1.5 sacks, two pass breakups, a forced fumble and a fumble recovery in his final season on The Flats.
One of the nation’s most dynamic true freshmen, Gibbs earned his all-conference recognition on the strength of averaging 25.6 yards per kickoff return, which would rank second in the ACC had he had enough attempts to qualify for the official league rankings. Despite being limited to just six-and-a-half games, Gibbs led Georgia Tech in all-purpose yards (968) and scoring (seven TDs) and ranked second on the team in rushing yards (460), rushing touchdowns (4), receptions (3), receiving yards (303) and touchdown receptions (3). Since 2000, Gibbs is one of only seven Power Five conference players to compile 450 rushing yards, 300 receiving yards and 200 kickoff return yards in his team’s first eight games of the season, joining an elite list that includes Reggie Bush (USC – 2004), Marion Grice (Arizona State – 2013), Christian McCaffery (Stanford – 2015), Joe Mixon (Oklahoma – 2016), Saquon Barkley (Penn State – 2017) and Lynn Bowden, Jr. (Kentucky – 2019), a feat made even more impressive by the fact that he missed the season opener at Florida State and left his final game of the season versus Duke before halftime due to injury.
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