Jan. 18, 2007
By Jim Sumner, TheACC.com – Georgia Tech joined the Atlantic Coast Conference in time for the 1979-80 academic year. The Yellow Jackets went 1-13 in their inaugural ACC men’s basketball season. Then they got worse. The 1981 Georgia Tech team went 0-14 in the ACC, 4-23 overall. It’s not easy for an ACC team to go 4-23. In fact, only two teams in ACC history have ever won fewer than four games overall.
It wasn’t like Georgia Tech didn’t have some basketball tradition. In 1955 Tech upset Kentucky in Lexington, ending Kentucky’s 129-game home winning streak. All-American Roger Kaiser led Tech to the 1960 NCAA Tournament, while Rich Yunkus took Tech to the finals of the 1971 NIT, where they lost to North Carolina. Dwayne Morrison coached Tech to a 17-8 finish in 1978, their last year in the Metro Conference. Morrison had coached at South Carolina the second half of the 1964 season after Chuck Noe retired but the second time around, he was unable to recruit at an ACC level and the program plummeted. Georgia Tech went looking for a new coach.
