By Andy Demetra | Voice of the Yellow Jackets
Georgia Tech will end the year with the team that ended its year.
Counting down the seconds to New Year’s Eve tonight? You’ll get good training at McCamish Pavilion when Tech hosts Notre Dame (7-5, 0-1 ACC) to restart ACC play. The Yellow Jackets and Fighting Irish continued their history of inevitable, white-knuckle matchups last season, playing three games that all went down to the final ticks of the clock.
The Jackets came up short in each one, though, including an 84-80 defeat at the ACC Tournament that spoiled career highs from Naithan George (24 points) and Baye Ndongo (22 points). After straitjacketing Alabama A&M to 20.8% field goal shooting on Saturday, Georgia Tech (6-7, 0-1 ACC) will now look to ring in the New Year with some revenge against the Fighting Irish.
Before the ball drops, the ball tips at McCamish. Enjoy the top notes from my chart as Tech prepares for a hard-fought, halfcourt-oriented battle in Atlanta (2:30 p.m. ET, Georgia Tech Sports Network):
Naithan George’s career highs in assists (11) and points (24) both came against Notre Dame last year. (photo by Danny Karnik)
The best guard Georgia Tech faced in the ACC last year?
Not North Carolina’s R.J. Davis or Duke’s Jeremy Roach according to Damon Stoudamire. Not even Notre Dame’s quicksilver point guard Markus Burton, the reigning ACC Rookie of the Year who remains out with a knee injury.
In Stoudamire’s mind, the trickiest cover was Burton’s backcourt mate, 6-4 sophomore Braeden Shrewsberry, who leads the Irish in scoring (16.5 ppg). The son of head coach Micah Shrewsberry, the younger Shrewsberry scored a career-high 25 points (5-9 3pt.) against Tech at McCamish, then poured in 23 more (5-8 3pt.) at the ACC Tournament. He’s a cunning catch-and-shoot artist who moves well off the ball and plays with loads of gamesmanship around screens.
Tech will have to keep high levels of alertness and fight over screens to clog Shrewsberry’s catches and turn him into a driver. Pay attention as well to 6-9 forward Tae Davis (15.8 ppg, 53% FG), who has stepped up in Burton’s absence and gives Notre Dame an athletic right-handed driver. In many ways he was the X factor in Notre Dame’s wins last year:
Tae Davis 2023-24
- Season average: 9.2 ppg, 5.1 rpg, 44.1%
- vs. Georgia Tech: 13.0 ppg, 6.3 rpg, 51.7%
Expect Notre Dame to layer in flares, back screens, fake DHO’s, and plenty of two-man action in its halfcourt offense. They’ll even invert their pick-and-roll action and use Davis as a ballhandler and Shrewsberry as a screener. They may not have a hyperkinetic breakdown artist like Burton, but the Jackets will have to be well-spaced and not get stretched out by Notre Dame’s ball rotation.
With a celebration worthy of a March Madness game winner, Georgia Tech’s bench erupted after walk-ons Emmer Nichols and Marcos San Miguel scored their first career points in the waning minutes against Alabama A&M.
Walk-ons often toil in anonymity, but Stoudamire actually knew about San Miguel, a product of nearby Campbell High School in Smyrna, not long after he arrived at Georgia Tech.
It turns out his former player with the Boston Celtics, Al Horford, is close friends with San Miguel’s family.
“When I got this job here, he had already gotten accepted to Georgia Tech. He was coming to Tech but he wanted to walk on the basketball team. Al talked to me about bringing him in,” Stoudamire said on his radio show.
Notre Dame finished 13-20 last year, but don’t pin that on suspect defense – the Fighting Irish ranked an impressive 39th nationally in defensive efficiency.
Stoudamire says the Irish resemble Northwestern in the way they pack the paint, commit hard, and recover on shooters. They also excel at limiting clean looks from three – opponents are shooting 29.6% from three-point range, good for fourth in the ACC.
“We have to be prepared to make the next read,” Stoudamire said.
An 82% assist rate against Alabama A&M should give Tech a good template heading into Tuesday’s matchup. Can the Jackets work the second side, avoid over-penetrating, and play well out of pocket passes? Naithan George has labored through 25% field goal shooting in Tech’s two ACC games, but the sophomore dropped in a career-high 24 points against Notre Dame at the ACC Tournament and a career-high 11 assists against the Irish at McCamish. With his ability to hit from the midrange and spray passes to shooters, could Notre Dame – stingy defense and all – provide the ideal conditions for a bounce back?
Marcos San Miguel (33) scored the first points of his career last Saturday against Alabama A&M. (photo by Danny Karnik)
In tight games, every extra possession gets magnified.
If Tuesday’s game plays according to form, keep an eye on the offensive glass – Notre Dame had three of its six highest offensive rebounding percentages of ACC play against Tech.
It didn’t make a dent in the outcome, but Tech did allow its highest OR% of the season against Alabama A&M (35.1%). Stoudamire still praised his guards’ rebounding against the Bulldogs; they’ll need to be active chasing scrambles and 50-50 balls against the Fighting Irish. Watch out for 6-10 Kebba Njie (6.8 ppg, 5.9 rpg), a space-devouring big who racked up free throw trips against the Jackets last year. In three games, he went a combined 19 of 21 at the free throw line.
Notre Dame fortified its frontcourt with the addition of 6-10 Nikita Konstantynovski, a transfer from Monmouth. More impressive than his 22-point, 20-rebound game versus Stony Brook last year may be his Scrabble rack of a surname, which checks in at a hefty 16 letters.
By comparison, the longest last name in Georgia Tech basketball history? A mere 12 letters, held by the late Michael Stenftenagel in 1964.
Now that we’re prepared, we hope you are as well. Join us for New Year’s Eve coverage starting with pregame at 2 p.m. ET on the Georgia Tech Sports Network. See you at McCamish.
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Full Steam Ahead is a $500 million fundraising initiative to achieve Georgia Tech athletics’ goal of competing for championships at the highest level in the next era of intercollegiate athletics. The initiative will fund transformative projects for Tech athletics, including renovations of Bobby Dodd Stadium at Hyundai Field (the historic home of Georgia Tech football), the Zelnak Basketball Center (the practice and training facility for Tech basketball) and O’Keefe Gymnasium (the venerable home of Yellow Jackets volleyball), as well as additional projects and initiatives to further advance Georgia Tech athletics through program wide-operational support. All members of the Georgia Tech community are invited to visit atfund.org/FullSteamAhead for full details and renderings of the renovation projects, as well as to learn about opportunities to contribute online.
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Georgia Tech’s men’s basketball team is in its second year under head coach Damon Stoudamire. Tech has been a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference since 1979, won four ACC Championships (1985, 1990, 1993, 2021), played in the NCAA Tournament 17 times and played in two Final Fours (1990, 2004). Connect with Georgia Tech Men’s Basketball on social media by liking their Facebook Page, or following on X (@GTMBB) and Instagram. For more information on Tech basketball, visit Ramblinwreck.com. Tickets for men’s basketball can be reserved here.
