ATLANTA – Halfway through his first Atlantic Coast Conference season, Josh Pastner has exceeded expectations at Georgia Tech.
It’s been a surprising start for the 39-year-old basketball coach. The Yellow Jackets have wins against top-10 teams with victories over North Carolina and Florida State. Last week they upset the Seminoles by a wide margin and took a last-second Top 25 victory over Notre Dame.
Pastner has made this happen with a roster he regularly cites as “the least experienced in the nation.” He mentions in every interview that Georgia Tech is early into “a four- to five-year major rebuild” and that it begins every game with “zero margin for error.”
Even so, nobody figured the Jackets would be 13-8 overall, much less 5-4 in the ACC, after they needed overtime to beat Division II member Shorter in an early November exhibition.
Georgia Tech was picked in the preseason to finish at the bottom of the league.