| Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets | ||||
| University | Georgia Institute of Technology | |||
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| Conference | ACC | |||
| Location | Atlanta, GA | |||
| Head coach | Brian Gregory (1st year) | |||
| Arena | Alexander Memorial Coliseum (Capacity: 9,191) |
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| Nickname | Yellow Jackets | |||
| Colors | Old Gold and White
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| Uniforms | ||||
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| 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 | ||||
| Conference tournament champions | ||||
| 1938 (SEC), 1985, 1990, 1993 |
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| 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 Alexander Memorial Coliseum. Under the tenure of Bobby Cremins, Georgia Tech established itself as a national force in basketball. 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.[1] Cremins retired from Georgia Tech in 2000 with the school's best winning percentage as a head coach.[1] Overall, the team has won 1,169 games and lost 1,026 games, a 53% win percentage.[2]
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Georgia Tech's first recorded official participation in basketball was in 1906,[2] when a small club organized under Coach Chapman.[3] They won two of the three games they played that season.[3] The next time Tech had a basketball team, it was under the 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.[3]
Since that time, Georgia Tech has forged a solid basketball program on the strength of coaches like John Hyder and Bobby Cremins, and such players as Roger Kaiser, Rich Yunkus, Mark Price, Scott Petway, Craig "Noodles" Neal, John Salley, Tom Hammonds, and Matt Harpring. Georgia Tech became a charter member of the Southeastern Conference in 1932 (the first season was in 1933) and won the conference title in 1938. Coach Hyder, whose teams won 292 games in twenty-two 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. Coached by Hyder and led by all-American 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 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 ACC in 1978 (starting play in 1979). As of the 2007-08 season, the Yellow Jackets have won three ACC Tournament championships and two regular season conference titles. Through 2007-08, Georgia Tech has received fifteen berths in the NCAA tournament, and seven of its teams have made it to the Sweet Sixteen.
The 1985 team, led by head coach Bobby Cremins and players Mark Price, Scott Petway, Craig Neal, Bruce Dalrymple, and John Salley, won the school's first ACC championship and advanced to the final eight in the NCAA tournament. In the 1990 tournament, the trio of Kenny Anderson, Dennis Scott, & 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 3-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 won the ACC regular-season championship and returned to the tournament behind future NBA All-Star Stephon Marbury. Cremins's nineteen-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 Alexander Memorial Coliseum is named "Cremins Court" in his honor.
In 2000 head coach Paul Hewitt was hired away from Siena College and immediately helped to revitalize what had become a stagnant program in Cremins's final years. Georgia Tech experienced a Cinderella season in 2003-2004: 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, Javaris Crittenton, Will Bynum[4] 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.
But in three out of four seasons from 2007 to 2011, Hewitt's team posted losing records. For the 2010-11 season, attendance and general fan interest had diminished to the point that Tech failed to sell out a single home game in Alexander Memorial Coliseum. Georgia Tech finished the season 13-18 and were eliminated in the first round of the ACC Tournament. On March 12, 2011, Paul Hewitt was dismissed as the head coach of the Georgia Tech after eleven seasons.[5] Brian Gregory was appointed as his successor, Georgia Tech's thirteenth men's basketball coach, on March 28, 2011.[6]
Since the beginning of the Georgia Tech basketball program, it has had 13 head coaches. John Heisman and William Alexander were also head coaches for Georgia Tech's football and baseball teams.
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,[7] Jarrett Jack was the 2005 Basketball Times All-South player,[7] and Mark Price was the 1985 ACC Player of the Year.
The team has retired six numbers: Matt Harpring (15), Tom Hammonds (20), John Salley (22), Mark Price (25), Rich Yunkus (40), and Roger Kaiser (21).
The Alexander Memorial Coliseum (also nicknamed "The Thrillerdome") is an indoor arena located in Atlanta, Georgia. It is the home of the Georgia Tech basketball teams and hosted the Atlanta Hawks of the National Basketball Association from 1968–1972 and again from 1997–1999. 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.
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