Game is Thursday at 4 p.m. (Trying to find if it will be televised or streamed.)

Tae is playing on Team Icon (along with Zelus Hicks and some other familiar names).

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Cruz came in as a ILB, not sure what all he’s strengths are but could he be the used as a Parsons/Abdul linebacker. Penn State has done well with using linebacker types as rushers all over the line.

Amazing 🤣

Former hoops player and current broadcaster Jon Babul’s twin brother. Dead at 47.

What a year 2024 has been for me personally and professionally.

It has had it's high highs (including getting the opportunity from @Kelly Quinlan to come on board full-time with JOL back in August). It has also had the lowest of lows with the sudden loss of one of my cousins back in May unexpectedly. There were a whole lot of other things in between, but 2024 has definitely been a year I'll never forget.

I was perfectly content working as the sports editor at the Rome News-Tribune. Honestly, I enjoyed that job very much, and it was close to home around people that I knew and loved. There were very few other opportunities that would even make me consider leaving (I'm talking maybe 2 or 3). But JOL staff writer was one, and when it became an option for me, I didn't hesitate one second before jumping on it.

I won't lie, I was scared. I was scared of the unknown. I was scared of starting a completely different challenge after covering mainly high school sports for most of the last 15 years since graduating college. I was scared to try to fill the shoes of someone who did an incredible job and was so well-loved by JOL in Russell.

But I was also extremely excited for the new challenge and for the chance to cover college football, basketball, recruiting (and whatever else I'm going to be doing). I can promise you I have tried my best every single day to take full advantage of this opportunity and prove to Kelly that I was the right choice, to prove to the board that I was a valuable addition and to hopefully make Russell proud of the man who replaced him. I still have plenty of room to grow and a lot to learn, but I will continue to try to work hard and get better every day.

I hope to see Georgia Tech Athletics continue improve and become legitimate contenders in the ACC and beyond in the coming years and give Kelly and myself a lot of great things to write about. Maybe one day JOL will expect the best instead of the worst at all times. (I know that's a longshot, but there is always hope. Haha.)

So to wrap up my rambling and make a long story short, I just wanted to say thank you to JOL for welcoming me in and all the encouraging words that have been shared in the past few months. It has already been a fun ride since I started in August, and I look forward to much more of that in 2025.

Thank you and Happy New Year, JOL!

Seeing some talk of it in twitter. Anything more?

Greetings from McCamish Pavilion for #GaTech-ND men's basketball this afternoon. Kowacie Reeves and Luke O'Brien are ringing in the new year in matching boots on their right feet.

Javian McCollum is warming up, brace in his ankle. No Doryan Onwuchekwa.

I'm curious to see how folks opinions differed from watching on TV vs being at the game. I think the ref jobbing was watered down on TV.

Yes my name is Dan
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Edit: He deleted his original edit/announcement post. Added his follow-up pinned Tweet

Quoute

Some big news in the game that has nothing to do with this latest score: Cam Ward is out, with Emory Williams taking over at quarterback. There's no injury here, as this seems to be all about Ward avoiding injury before an NFL draft where he's likely to go very early in the first round.

And yet Cristobal is allowing him to be on the sidelines? Weak…

Where do we draw the line between the referees costing us a game and our own mistakes costing us a game? Refs were horrible, but GT didn’t do much to help themselves either.

KQ- I talked about this on the live show last night, but Georgia Tech did not play well enough to win the game in the first half, but Vanderbilt also didn't do enough to put the game away giving Georgia Tech a shot at winning the game. However, the refs and their actions created a 14-plus point swing in the game that changed the possible outcome of the game. At the end of the day, while Brent Key is mad about it, this isn't the same as the UGA game where the better team lost.

I see a lot of guys in the portal using agents. Are HS recruits now allowed to use actual agents? If so, is this happening?

KQ- The short answer is yes for NIL purposes, but there are laws governing what you can and cannot do state by state. So in Missouri, you can pay a high school kid while they are still in high school whereas here you cannot.

Are there schools bending these rules, absolutely.

Do you have any ideas about what conferences and/or the NCAA (ha, I know) can do to improve officiating from the steaming pile of dog poo we saw in COFH and Birmingham Bowl? I know these are humans who will make mistakes judging a fast paced game, but there is so much money, TV and gambling, not to mention fanbase passion, at stake for refereeing to be so bad.

KQ- I think you have to embrace technology like the MLB has. My thought has been have a central NCAA HQ that monitors calls and any flag that is more than a 5-yard penalty is automatically reviewed in real time. The refs already huddle half the time to talk about it and you take out of the equation their buddy from the same league being in the TV replay booth making that call. I think you see a lot of bullshit I'm not going to overturn my buddies call stuff going on. The whole PI thing is awful as is. They don't call it correctly 1/4 of the time as is.

Now that the Portal is closed, what does CBK and staff's recruiting efforts/Spring ball prep look like over the next few weeks?

KQ- Starting on January 6th the contact period begins for all of January except for 12-15th all the way through February 1st. The staff will be on the road recruiting for the 2026 class and still hosting portal targets as well. There are some guys sticking around to get spring film as well that I expect will leave Georgia Tech in the spring portal window. Winter workouts start soon as well.

How many more transfers from GT expected after spring which may allow some to leave as grad transfer? Any new updates for potential visits or additions before school starts? What is thoughts on DE Grace that you have us listed as getting a visit? His head coach just took the Washington State job, correct?

KQ- MiQuise Grace would be a potential replacement for Sylvain Yondjouen at DE, he had 8.5 sacks at South Dakota this year. He is a ballplayer. He will visit Jan 6th.

As far as who is leaving, we have four more stories ready after Patrick Screws for guys who are supposed to announce this week or will simply show up in the portal. They are pretty obvious ones like Screws, guys buried in the depth chart. There will be a second wave of guys who leave as well. I think Georgia Tech will end up around 90-95 scholarship players and 10 or so walk-ons.

What do you think are the biggest problems for the men's basketball team right now? Do you think Coach Stoudamire will get at least one more year to right the ship?

KQ- I do not see Damon Stoudamire getting fired after this year. They are 1/3 of the season and the fans have completely written off the team despite the ACC being a dumpster fire and GT having played two of the best five teams in that bad league so far. Folks got to chill a little bit with this stuff. Damon might leave to go back to the NBA before GT fires him if it is not working out, but they've had a shit ton of injuries this season so far and the two sophomores haven't played great. There is plenty of time left to salvage the season and build momentum for next year.

Do I think Damon is the guy? I don't know, he stepped into an awful situation last year and did okay I thought. This year the player development piece with Baye Ndongo and Nait George has me a little troubled but I thought they are doing okay. I don't love the NBA offense, but that is why I stopped watching NBA basketball. I like it more than the Princeton though.

What will be the next big event to get us fans out of the winter doldrums?

KQ- Go watch the women's team play hoops at McCamish. They are pretty good. The next football type thing will the spring game in April some time.

I don’t know if a three spot is allowed, but here it goes…

1) You agreed with a post earlier in the weekend that officials should at least have to be accountable to the media with the way officiating is going. They should not be “untouchable.” Do you see post-game media sessions with officials becoming a regular thing? What else can college football do to prove to players, coaches, fans and all other parties that officiating will improve, will be held accountable, and that there is no systemic lack of integrity or fixes in the game?

KQ- I think it would cut a lot of the bullshit out if they had to answer questions about bad decisions or at least it would force the leagues to come up with a better solution to phantom calls or no-calls or missed calls. I think that is the actual solution to the problem.

2) Do you agree with the prominent voices calling for a commissioner of college football (the popular choice is Coach Saban)? Would a new governing organization have to be instituted in order for that to happen and would CFB have to officially separate from the NCAA?

KQ- I think that is an interesting idea on paper. I kind of agree it would push it more toward having the separate breakoff football piece which I think is bad for CFB. Do I think Nick Saban is the man for the job? I don't know, but I think having things more organized and doing away with all the underground bullshit that goes on would be a great start.

3) What does Brent need to improve on most as a head coach before we kick off in Boulder?

KQ- Ironically the football team suffers from the same issue the men's basketball team does, they open halves of games very stagnant much of the time and struggle to get going out of the box. The men's basketball team is better defensively out of the box, but the football team just seems to start really slow each half of most games. I think that is where Key and his staff have to get things figured out faster. They get behind the sticks on both sides and then are either losing the game early or are playing behind in field position early. The games where they started faster generally go much better but those are not happening early enough. That comes from having a great script and game plan going in. That is something CPJ was really good at on offense. Having that wrinkle that works and being able to execute it at a high level. I've thought Buster has had some nice wrinkles at times to start games, but they can't seem to execute it correctly either blocking or skills guys and the QB.

Defensively they've got to get after the QB early. That has killed them all year.

Look for about 5-6 players to enter the portal over the next 48 hours as they are processed by the school. The deadline to send in the request is coming up, but the school has 48 hours from that to actually enter them into the portal.

Like him or not, this is the end of an era - I loved reading sports columnists back in the day. He is the last real "columnist" working at the AJC. I disagreed with him a lot, but always respected his opinion.
He was a huge CPJ fan early on.

The Jackets (14-0 overall, 2-0 ACC) host Syracuse for another ACC matchup on Thursday at 7 p.m.

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I was going to estimate that GT outnumbered the Vandy crowd 2-1. I feel confident in that estimate. At 10:00 AM CT yesterday, I was checking SeatGeek & StubHub for 2 tickets in the club section. Not only were there not two tickets for sale in club, there weren’t 2 tickets for sale together anywhere from Endzone to endzone on the Tech side. I wish I had screen shotted it on my phone. Plenty of available seats in all the Vandy sections, but none in the Tech sections. Good job by our fanbase showing up.

I thought Bailey Stockton and Isiah Canion looked great. Bailey also looked good at kick return. Coupling them up with Malik and the new receivers we will be deep at WR.

This was according to PFF Georgia Tech's worst overall performance with a 56.6 PFF overall grade. Only Louisville (61.7) and Notre Dame (62.7) were below 64.3 overall this season. It was the worst PFF performance since the 2023 Clemson game (55.9) and third lowest under Key overall behind that Clemson game in 2023 and 2022 FSU game (54.3).

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