Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets men's basketball

Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets
Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets
	2024–25 Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets men's basketball team
University	Georgia Institute of Technology
All-time record	1,399–1,251 (.528)
Head coach	Damon Stoudamire (2nd season)
Conference	Atlantic Coast Conference
Location	Atlanta, Georgia
Arena	McCamish Pavilion ; (capacity: 8,600)
Nickname	Yellow Jackets
Colors	Tech gold and white;
Uniforms
NCAA tournament runner-up
	2004
NCAA tournament Final Four
	1990, 2004
NCAA tournament Elite Eight
	1960, 1985, 1990, 2004
NCAA tournament Sweet Sixteen
	1960, 1985, 1986, 1990, 1992, 1996, 2004
NCAA tournament appearances
	1960, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1996, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2010, 2021
Conference tournament champions
	1938, 1985, 1990, 1993, 2021
Conference regular season champions
	1938, 1985, 1996

The Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets men's basketball team represents the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets in NCAA Division I basketball. The team plays its home games in McCamish Pavilion on the school's Atlanta campus and is currently coached by Damon Stoudamire. Bobby Cremins led his team to the first ACC tournament victory in school history in 1985 and in 1990 he took Georgia Tech to the school's first Final Four appearance ever.^[2] Cremins retired from Georgia Tech in 2000 with the school's best winning percentage as a head coach.^[2] The Yellow Jackets returned to the Final Four in 2004 under Paul Hewitt and lost in the national title game, losing to UConn. Overall, the team has won 1,352 games and lost 1,226 games, a .524 win percentage.^[3]

History

Basketball was invented by Springfield College teacher James Naismith in 1891. It seemed to take off in the Southern colleges in 1906, when Yale's basketball team traveled throughout the South.^[4] That year Georgia Tech organized a small basketball club under Coach Chapman.^[5]^[6] Tech lost to Auburn in the first college basketball game played in Atlanta, and won the two other games they played that season, against rival Georgia.^[6]

In 1909, continuous dribbling and shots off the dribble were allowed.^[7] Tech organized another basketball team, under famous coach John Heisman, also Tech's baseball and football coach. Heisman had a winning percentage of .142 that season and improved the team's percentage to .500 in 1912 and 1913.^[6] Heisman wasn't able to keep up with a basketball team, and his successor Bill Alexander revived the Georgia Tech basketball program in 1920.^[6] From 1924 to 1926, the team was coached by Harold Hansen, also the football team's backfield coach.

Roy Mundorff

Roy Mundorff coached Georgia Tech basketball from 1927 to 1942. Georgia Tech became a charter member of the Southeastern Conference in 1932 (the first season was in 1933). The 1936-37 team was captained by future Tech coach John Hyder and posted an 11-1 conference record. Tech won the conference title the next season in 1938.

Dwight Keith

During World War 2, the basketball team was coached by assistant football coach Dwight Keith.

Roy McArthur

Former Tech quarterback Roy McArthur coached the team after the war. He was "among the forerunners of the present run-and-shoot brand of basketball".^[8]

John Hyder

Coach John Hyder, whose teams won 292 games in 22 seasons, put the program on the national map when his 1955 team defeated Adolph Rupp's Kentucky team, ending the Wildcats' 129-game winning streak at home.

The Yellow Jackets played their first NCAA tournament game in 1960. Led by all-American Roger Kaiser, the team defeated Ohio University before losing in the second round to the eventual champion, Ohio State. Hyder continued to have strong teams in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1964, Georgia Tech's final season in the Southeastern Conference, the team went undefeated at home and was the conference runner-up. In 1971 the Yellow Jackets, led by Rich Yunkus, reached the finals of the National Invitation Tournament but lost to the University of North Carolina.

Georgia Tech became a charter member of the Metro Conference in 1975 (the first season started in 1976), and then became the eighth member of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) in 1978 (starting play in 1979). As of the 2020–21 season, the Yellow Jackets have won four ACC tournament championships and been the ACC's top seed twice. Through 2021, Georgia Tech has received 17 berths in the NCAA tournament, and seven of its teams have made it to the Sweet Sixteen.

Bobby Cremins

The 1985 team, led by head coach Bobby Cremins and players Mark Price, Duane Ferrell, Yvon Joseph, Craig Neal, Bruce Dalrymple, and John Salley, won the school's first ACC championship and advanced to the final eight in the NCAA tournament. Tom Hammonds earned Rookie of the Year honors in the ACC in 1986. In the 1990 tournament, the trio of Kenny Anderson, Dennis Scott, and Brian Oliver (nicknamed "Lethal Weapon 3") carried the Yellow Jackets all the way to the Final Four, where they lost to eventual champion UNLV in the national semi-finals. In 1992, Cremins led an inexperienced Tech team to the Sweet 16, thanks in no small part to James Forrest's buzzer-beating game-winning three-pointer in the second round against USC. The following year, the Yellow Jackets won the ACC tournament.

Georgia Tech's nine consecutive appearances in the NCAA Tournament from the mid-1980s and the early 1990s accounted for the nation's fourth-longest active streak before it ended in 1994. In 1996, the team finished first in the ACC's regular season and returned to the tournament behind future NBA All-Star Stephon Marbury. In 1998, Matt Harpring was third-team All-American.

Cremins's 19-year tenure (1981–2000) stands as the team's most successful era. Cremins is Georgia Tech's all-time winningest coach and is third among all ACC coaches. Upon his retirement after the 1999–2000 season, his teams had won 354 games and lost 237 for a .599 winning percentage (Cremins would later come out of retirement to coach at the College of Charleston). The floor at McCamish Pavilion is named "Cremins Court" in his honor.

Paul Hewitt

In 2000, head coach Paul Hewitt was hired away from Siena College and immediately helped to revitalize the Yellow Jacket program. In his first season, Georgia Tech beat UCLA, Kentucky and five ACC rivals that were ranked en route to an NCAA tournament appearance. Georgia Tech experienced a Cinderella season in 2003–04: winning the Preseason NIT, ending Duke's 41-game winning streak at Cameron Indoor Stadium, making it to the school's second Final Four and first national championship game, in which they lost by nine points to UConn. Notable players sent to the NBA under Hewitt include Chris Bosh, Jarrett Jack, Mario West, Luke Schenscher, Thaddeus Young, Will Bynum,^[9] and Anthony Morrow. In back-to-back years (2008 & 2009), Hewitt also successfully recruited national top-10 high school prospects in Iman Shumpert and Derrick Favors.

During the 2009–10 season, the Yellow Jackets played for the ACC tournament championship game as well as earning Hewitt's fifth NCAA tournament appearance at Tech. They advanced to the round of 32, losing to Ohio State. Georgia Tech then finished the 2010–11 season 13–18. On March 12, 2011, Paul Hewitt was dismissed as the head coach of the Georgia Tech after eleven seasons.^[10] Brian Gregory was appointed as his successor, Georgia Tech's 13th men's basketball coach, on March 28, 2011.^[11]

Brian Gregory

Brian Gregory, who led Dayton to 97 victories over his last four seasons there and worked under Tom Izzo at Michigan State when the Spartans won the 2000 NCAA championship, was named Georgia Tech's head men's basketball coach on March 28, 2011. In their first season with Gregory at the helm, Georgia Tech finished 11–20 and 11th in the ACC while playing without a true home court while McCamish Pavilion was under construction. Gregory only had two seasons with overall winning records and no seasons of winning records in ACC play. On March 25, 2016, after five disappointing seasons and no trips to the NCAA tournament, Georgia Tech fired Brian Gregory.^[12] He was 76–86 overall and 27–61 in ACC play.^[12]

Josh Pastner

Josh Pastner was hired by the school on April 8, 2016.^[13]^[14] Pastner was 167–73 with four NCAA tournament bids in seven years as the head coach of Memphis.

Pastner took Tech to the NIT finals in his first season, and was that season's ACC Coach of the Year. After that season Tech was hit with NCAA violations, although most punishments would later be dropped. Because of this, Tech struggled for the next few seasons. However, Pastner ultimately led the team to their first ACC title since 1993, as well as their first NCAA tournament berth since 2010, as the Yellow Jackets defeated Florida State to win the 2021 ACC championship. They would end up losing to Loyola Chicago in the first round of the NCAA tournament. It is Tech's latest postseason appearance.^[15]

The success wouldn’t last though, Tech parted ways with Pastner on March 10, 2023 following two disappointing seasons. He finished 109–114 in his seven years coaching the Jackets. He finished as the fourth-winningest coach in school history, behind only Hewitt, Hyder, and Cremins.^[16]

Damon Stoudamire

On March 13, 2023 Damon Stoudamire was named the fifteenth coach in program history.^[17] Stoudamire came to Georgia Tech after serving as an assistant coach of the NBA's Boston Celtics for nearly two seasons. Before that he served as the head coach at the University of the Pacific from 2016 to 2021.

Damon Stoudamire became the first Tech coach in the Yellow Jackets’ ACC history to defeat Duke in his first try when the Yellow Jackets stunned the then seventh ranked Blue Devils 72–68 on December 2, 2023.

Postseason

NCAA tournament results

The Yellow Jackets have appeared in the NCAA tournament 17 times. Their combined record is 23–17.

Year	Seed	Round	Opponent	Result
1960		Sweet Sixteen Elite Eight	Ohio Ohio State	W 57–54 L 69–86
1985	#2	First Round Second Round Sweet Sixteen Elite Eight	#15 Mercer #7 Syracuse #3 Illinois #1 Georgetown	W 65–58 W 70–53 W 61–53 L 54–60
1986	#2	First Round Second Round Sweet Sixteen	#15 Marist #10 Villanova #11 LSU	W 68–53 W 66–61 L 64–70
1987	#7	First Round	#10 LSU	L 79–85
1988	#5	First Round Second Round	#12 Iowa State #13 Richmond	W 90–78 L 55–59
1989	#6	First Round	#11 Texas	L 70–76
1990	#4	First Round Second Round Sweet Sixteen Elite Eight Final Four	#13 East Tennessee State #5 LSU #1 Michigan State #6 Minnesota #1 UNLV	W 99–83 W 94–91 W 81–80^OT W 93–91 L 81–90
1991	#8	First Round Second Round	#9 DePaul #1 Ohio State	W 87–70 L 61–65
1992	#7	First Round Second Round Sweet Sixteen	#10 Houston #2 USC #6 Memphis	W 65–60 W 79–78 L 79–83
1993	#4	First Round	#13 Southern	L 78–93
1996	#3	First Round Second Round Sweet Sixteen	#14 Austin Peay #11 Boston College #2 Cincinnati	W 90–79 W 103–89 L 70–87
2001	#8	First Round	#9 Saint Joseph's	L 62–66
2004	#3	First Round Second Round Sweet Sixteen Elite Eight Final Four National Championship	#14 Northern Iowa #6 Boston College #10 Nevada #4 Kansas #2 Oklahoma State #2 Connecticut	W 65–60 W 57–54 W 72–67 W 79–71 W 67–65 L 73–82
2005	#5	First Round Second Round	#12 George Washington #4 Louisville	W 80–68 L 54–76
2007	#10	First Round	#7 UNLV	L 63–67
2010	#10	First Round Second Round	#7 Oklahoma State #2 Ohio State	W 64–59 L 66–75
2021	#9	First Round	#8 Loyola–Chicago	L 60–71

NIT results

The Yellow Jackets have appeared in the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) nine times. Their combined record is 13–9.

Year	Round	Opponent	Result
1970	First Round Quarterfinals	Duquesne St. John's	W 78–68 L 55–56
1971	First Round Quarterfinals Semifinals Finals	La Salle Michigan St. Bonaventure North Carolina	W 70–67 W 78–70 W 76–71 L 66–84
1984	First Round	Virginia Tech	L 74–77
1994	First Round	Siena	L 68–76
1998	First Round Second Round Quarterfinals	Seton Hall Georgetown Penn State	W 88–70 W 80–79 L 70–77
1999	First Round	Oregon	L 64–67
2003	First Round Second Round Quarterfinals	Ohio State Iowa Texas Tech	W 72–58 W 79–78 L 72–80
2016	First Round Second Round Quarterfinals	Houston South Carolina San Diego State	W 81–62 W 83–66 L 56–72
2017	First Round Second Round Quarterfinals Semifinals Championship	Indiana Belmont Ole Miss Cal State Bakersfield TCU	W 75–63 W 71–57 W 74–66 W 76–61 L 56–88

Coaches

Players

Many famous and talented players have played with the Yellow Jackets. Dennis Scott was the 1990 National Player of the Year and the 1990 ACC Player of the Year,^[18] Jarrett Jack was the 2005 Basketball Times All-South player.^[18]

A notable fictitious player for the Yellow Jackets is eternal Tech student George P. Burdell, who is officially listed in team media guides as having earned three letters (1956–58).^[19]

Basketball Hall of Famers

Georgia Tech has one alumnus in the Basketball Hall of Fame, Chris Bosh who played at Tech from 2002–2003.

Retired numbers

Matt Harpring, Roger Kaiser, and John Salley, whose numbers were retired by Georgia Tech

No.	Player	Pos.	Tenure	No. ret.	Ref.
15	Matt Harpring	SF	1994–98	1998	^[20]
20	Tom Hammonds	PF	1985–89		^[21]
21	Roger Kaiser	G	1958–61	1961	^{[citation needed]}
22	John Salley	PF	1982–86		^[22]
25	Mark Price	PG	1982–86		^[23]
40	Rich Yunkus	PF	1968–71	1971	^[24]

All-Americans

Player	Year(s)	Team(s)
Roger Kaiser	1960	Consensus Second Team – AP (2nd), USBWA (1st), NABC (2nd), UPI (3rd), Sporting News (2nd)
Roger Kaiser	1961	Consensus First Team – AP (1st), USBWA (1st), NABC (1st), UPI (1st), NEA (1st), Sporting News (1st), NCAB (1st)
Rich Yunkus	1970	UPI (3rd)
Rich Yunkus	1971	AP (3rd)
Mark Price	1984	UPI (3rd)
	1985	Consensus Second Team – AP (2nd), NABC (2nd), UPI (3rd)
	1986	AP (3rd), NABC (2nd), UPI (3rd)
John Salley	1986	NABC (3rd)
Tom Hammonds	1989	NABC (3rd)
Dennis Scott	1990	Consensus Second Team – AP (2nd), USBWA (2nd), NABC (3rd), UPI (2nd)
Kenny Anderson	1990	AP (3rd)
Kenny Anderson	1991	Consensus First Team – AP (1st), USBWA (1st), NABC (1st), UPI (1st)
Stephon Marbury	1996	AP (3rd), NABC (3rd)
Matt Harpring	1998	AP (3rd), USBWA (2nd), NABC (2nd)

All-time leaders

Points

Rank	Player^[25]	Years	Points
1.	Rich Yunkus	1968–71	2,232
2.	Matt Harpring	1994–98	2,225
3.	Mark Price	1982–86	2,193
4.	Dennis Scott	1987–90	2,115
5.	Tom Hammonds	1985–89	2,081
6.	Travis Best	1991–95	2,057
7.	James Forrest	1991–95	1,978
8.	Brian Oliver	1986–90	1,848
9.	Duane Ferrell	1984–88	1,818
10.	Malcolm Mackey	1989–93	1,736
11.	Marcus Georges-Hunt	2012–16	1,728
12.	Michael Devoe	2018–2022	1,704
13.	Tony Akins	1998–02	1,658
14.	Roger Kaiser	1958–61	1,628
15.	B. J. Elder	2001–05	1,616
16.	Bruce Dalrymple	1983–87	1,588
17.	John Salley	1982–86	1,587
18.	Kenny Anderson	1989–91	1,497
19.	Jim Wood	1973–77	1,459
20.	Jose Alvarado	2017–21	1,429

Rebounds

Rank	Player^[26]	Years	Rebounds
1.	Malcolm Mackey	1989–93	1,205
2.	Alvin Jones	1997–01	1,075
3.	Matt Harpring	1994–98	997
4.	Jim Caldwell	1962–65	993
5.	Rich Yunkus	1968–71	955
6.	Tom Hammonds	1985–89	885
7.	James Forrest	1991–95	846
8.	Daniel Miller	2010–14	821
9.	John Salley	1982–86	798
10.	Ben Lammers	2014–18	774
11.	Ed Elisma	1993–97	762
12.	Bruce Dalrymple	1983–87	744
13.	Jim Wood	1973–77	740
14.	Gani Lawal	2007–10	712
15.	Jeremis Smith	2004–08	708
16.	Lenny Horton	1976–80	704
17.	Michael Maddox	1994–98	687
18.	Duane Ferrell	1984–88	680
19.	Ivano Newbill	1990–94	654
20.	Luke Schenscher	2001–05	640

Assists

Rank	Player^[26]	Years	Assists
1.	Drew Barry	1992–96	724
2.	Travis Best	1991–95	692
3.	Craig Neal	1983–88	659
4.	Tony Akins	1998–02	560
5.	Jarrett Jack	2002–05	543
6.	Brian Oliver	1986–90	538
7.	Mark Price	1982–86	510
8.	Kenny Anderson	1989–91	454
9.	Bruce Dalrymple	1983–87	446
10.	Jim Thorne	1968–71	410

Steals

Rank	Player^[26]	Years	Steals
1.	Mark Price	1982–86	240
2.	Bruce Dalrymple	1983–87	227
3.	Jose Alvarado	2017–21	226
4.	Travis Best	1991–95	217
5.	Iman Shumpert	2008–11	207
6.	Drew Berry	1992–96	193
7.	Jarrett Jack	2002–05	183
8.	Matt Harpring	1995–98	176
9.	Tony Aikins	1998–01	173
10.	Kenny Anderson	1989–91	168

Blocks

Rank	Player^[26]	Years	Blocks
1.	Alvin Jones	1997–01	425
2.	Daniel Miller	2010–14	286
3.	Ben Lammers	2014–18	254
4.	John Salley	1982–86	243
5.	Malcolm Mackey	1989–93	199
6.	Ed Elisma	1993–97	174
7.	Luke Schenscher	2001–05	157
8.	Gani Lawal	2007–10	127
9.	Moses Wright	2017–21	108
10.	Alade Aminu	2005–09	105

Arena

Hank McCamish Pavilion (formerly known as Alexander Memorial Coliseum) has been home to the Yellow Jackets since 1956.

The Hank McCamish Pavilion, rebuilt and renamed from Alexander Memorial Coliseum (also nicknamed "The Thrillerdome") in 2012, is an indoor arena located on Tech's Midtown Atlanta campus. It is the home of the Georgia Tech basketball teams and hosted the Atlanta Hawks of the National Basketball Association from 1968 to 1972 and again from 1997 to 1999. Tech's women's volleyball team occasionally uses the facility as well, primarily for NCAA tournament games and other matches that draw crowds that would overflow the O'Keefe Gymnasium. During the 2011–12 season, the Yellow Jackets split their home schedule between Philips Arena and the Arena at Gwinnett Center in suburban Duluth while McCamish Pavilion was under reconstruction.