Georgia Tech carries hot offense into NIT championship

When Georgia Tech lost its first-round game in the ACC Tournament, it ended any long-shot hopes it had to get an invitation to the NCAA Tournament. It would have been easy for the players and staff to pack it in and mentally check out.

Instead, the opposite has happened. The Yellow Jackets dug in and attacked the National Invitation Tournament with the same verve they showed during the ACC campaign. The hard-charging approach they took all season has carried over — if not gotten more intense — in the postseason.

Now, head coach Josh Pastner’s club stands on the edge of adding another layer to what has been a remarkable season. A win on Thursday night against TCU (23-15) in the NIT final at Madison Square Garden would the latest step in restoring the program to the prominence it once enjoyed.

The NIT Championship starts at 8 p.m. and will be shown on ESPN.

“After losing to Pitt, we kind of lost our hopes of getting there,” freshman guard Josh Okogie said. “We realized we still had a lot of stuff to play for — to reach 20 wins, which we weren’t there, and we had a chance to play for another championship.”

Since starting play in the NIT, Georgia Tech has reeled off four straight wins — its longest streak of the season — and improved to 21-15, which matched last year’s record. The Yellow Jackets haven’t won more than that since 2009-10.

One more win – which would send the Yellow Jackets home with the NIT trophy – would be the cherry on top.

“It’s been a heck of a season,” Pastner said. “It’s a great lesson for me that these guys, to see it all unfold … the power of team. That gets thrown around a lot, team and chemistry, but to really see it and how we have been able to beat teams that are more talented than we are, because that night we were the better team.”

The Yellow Jackets have surpassed all the doomsday predictions that had them finishing next-to-last in the conference. Mike Bobinski, the athletics director who hired Pastner, warned him that the team was going to get hammered for a couple of years. Coaching friends watched Pastner and told him that five wins would be a reachable goal.

The non-conference performance schedule gave little indication that anything special might be taking place, the exception being a nice win at Virginia Commonwealth. The low point may have come against Georgia, which held the Yellow Jackets to 43 points. But when the ACC schedule began, something unexpected happened: the Yellow Jackets stunned North Carolina on New Year’s Eve and cut through the season with only a couple of embarrassing losses. Otherwise, Georgia Tech was competitive in every other game.

“We worked our butts off — day in, day out — and you know, just being there is a blessing and being able to win a championship just shows how hard work pays off in the end,” Okogie said.

Georgia Tech has played its most consistent stretch of good basketball through the NIT. In each game, the Yellow Jackets have scored at least 70 points (and are 17-0 when that happens) and allowed no more than 66. They have made 101 field goals, and 77 of those have been assisted.

“We’ve been an elite defensive team all year long,” Pastner said. “We are playing our best offense we have all year long in the NIT. But we have been an elite defensive team, and if you look at our numbers, we’re in the top five now in ratings in defensive efficiency.”

The unusual final also has a couple of head coaches in their first seasons in new jobs going against each other. Jamie Dixon took over the TCU program this year after a long successful stint at Pittsburgh. One of Dixon’s assistants is Brian Herrion, who was on the Georgia Tech staff under Brian Gregory. TCU, like Georgia Tech, is young, lacks experience and can benefit from the postseason exposure.

“I think for both teams, it’s just playing for a championship, playing in a tournament-like situation, where it’s one-and-done and if you don’t win, you go home,” Dixon said. “It’s a different atmosphere and I think it’s great preparation for us going forward.”

This story was originally published March 29, 2017 at 6:49 PM with the headline "Georgia Tech carries hot offense into NIT championship."