Monday night saw two ACC coaches (Virginia Tech’s Mike Young and Georgia Tech’s Josh Pastner) traveling in opposite directions. They started the season in somewhat similar fashion – looking for early season credibility. One has found it, while the other floundered.
Let’s start with Virginia Tech’s Mike Young…
Young was a 17 year head coach at Wofford making 4 NCAA tournaments, while having 8 losing seasons. His coaching record was solid, but fairly unremarkable. He did go 30-5 in his final season at Wofford, and the year before that beat North Carolina. It didn’t look like a bad hire, but there were question marks. He’d never coached in any capacity at the Power 5 level. Could he recruit? Could he fill the big shoes left by the highly-regard Buzz Williams? With major roster turnover, the Hokies were expected to finished somewhere from 12th to 15th in the ACC.
No one would have thought less of Young if the Hokies had a poor 2019-2020 season. It was his first year, and the rebuilding job would take time. Young has answered every question and more in the early part of his Virginia Tech tenure. He landed two top 100 recruits, and then has coached the Hokies to a stunning 6-1 start.
When the Hokies opened the season with 67-60 win at Clemson, it made you look up. When you knock-off pre-seasom top 5 Michigan State coached by Hall of Famer Tom Izzo, then everyone pays attention. Athlon named the Spartans their pre-season national champion, and the Hokies knocked them off in Maui 71-66. Landers Nolley is playing like an All-American, and Young has them believing they are far better than predicted. Whatever happens the rest of the year almost is almost immaterial, Young has built instant credibility by working with what he has rather than lament a roster made up young players and transfers. Even the loss to a very good Dayton team, Hokie fans couldn’t have asked for a better start.
At the other end of the spectrum is the maligned Georgia Tech Josh Pastner. Pastner needed a fast start to the 2019-2020 after a tumultuous off-season that saw Georgia Tech placed on NCAA probation for violations that occurred under his watch. While Pastner was cleared of any wrong doing, but that didn’t make any Georgia Tech fans feel better. His 48-53 overall and 19-34 ACC record coming into the season didn’t help. His 2019 recruiting class hardly set the world on fire too. Pastner needed something to good to happen and quickly.
After an 82-81 win at NC State, Georgia Tech suffered back t0 back losses to predicted 2nd Division SEC teams Georgia and Arkansas. Certainly Virginia Tech is proof you can’t always trust pre-season rankings, but Pastner needed no worse than a split to alleviate fears that it would be another lost season in Atlanta. Losing PG Jose Alvarado to injury has hurt, but against Arkansas, Yellow Jackets didn’t just look bad on offense they looked completely dysfunctional. With non-conference games still against Kentucky, Boise State, and Houston then conference games with Syracuse, at FSU, at UNC, and Duke, Georgia Tech could have 6 or more losses before the 2nd week of January. All the early-season has done so far is continue to confirm to Pastner critics that he isn’t the long term answer at Georgia Tech.
Young has his fanbase dreaming of NCAA possibilities, while Pastner has his fearing they will never get out of the basketball abyss with him at the helm.
