Georgia Tech and the plight of the sleeping giant

The Yellow Jackets' men's basketball program has any number of advantages, namely its location in Atlanta, yet for the past 15 years, it has floundered. The reasons for it outweigh a hopeful moniker

It was only so many minutes into Damon Stoudamire’s introductory press conference at Georgia Tech last month when an unavoidable question was posed, the very one that leaders at the school hope his arrival can solve.

How would the Yellow Jackets’ new men’s basketball coach leverage the school’s biggest natural advantage – its location right in the middle of Atlanta – to improve the program’s dwindling fortunes?

“Me and the staff that I put together are going to beat the pavement to do the best we can to find the best student-athletes for here, but we have a major major hub here in Atlanta,” Stoudamire said. “I don't think it has been tapped into the way it could be tapped into."

Seven years earlier, the man Stoudamire replaced, Josh Pastner, expressed a similarly optimistic sentiment.

"When you're in coaching, you want to have an opportunity to win a national championship,” Pastner said at his introductory press conference in 2016. “You want to be able to compete at the highest level. You want to have a championship program year in and year out. I truly believe Georgia Tech, the job here, is a true gold mine."

When Georgia Tech fired Pastner on March 10 after seven largely underwhelming seasons at the university, it not only prompted a discussion about who would replace him, but it raised existential questions. How did the Yellow Jackets get to this point? What was a realistic outlook for them moving forward? And what path could they chart to get there?

At the root of all these queries was something larger, a point of confusion for those who follow the program from afar and a source of frustration for those who live and die with it – why aren’t they better?

On a more superficial level, Georgia Tech has many of the ingredients in place needed to be a consistently successful college basketball outfit, if not a national power. It’s in a major conference, giving it all the perks that come with such a designation (and, admittedly, some of the headaches). It has a demonstrated, sustained track record of success in its relatively recent history. It has sent players to the NBA, fulfilling the biggest wish of many of the recruits it pursues.

Most of all, it has the place it calls home. It’s the only major Division I school in Atlanta, putting it at the center of not only one of the most talent-rich areas nationally, but perhaps the most culturally relevant city in modern America, even more than New York or Los Angeles.

Despite all of those enviable variables, the Yellow Jackets find themselves in a rut. Over the past 13 years, they’ve made just one NCAA Tournament, which ended in a first-round exit. They’ve finished with a winning record in ACC play just twice since 2004. While Stoudamire offers hope for a more prosperous future, he’s set to be the program’s fourth coach since 2010.

That chasm between what Georgia Tech can be and what it is places it among a certain subset of college basketball programs and slaps it with a label that offers both encouragement and exasperation – sleeping giant.

But like many programs that have been categorized that way, it’s been in a slumber for a reason.