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BASEBALL Starting pitchers for this weekend’s critical UVA series

Full preview to come..

Weekend starters for #GaTech and #UVA in their pivotal series-

THU: RHP Luke Schmolke (6-3, 7.42 ERA) vs. RHP Nick Parker (5-0, 4.32 ERA)

FRI: RHP Aeden Finateri (2-3, 4.07 ERA) vs. LHP Connelly Early (10-1, 2.70 ERA)

SAT: RHP Jackson Finley (2-4, 5.63 ERA) vs. UVA TBA

BASEBALL Finley Named Olerud Two-Way Player of the Year Semifinalist



Jackson Finley lauded for performance on mound, at plate



THE FLATS – Georgia Tech baseball redshirt sophomore Jackson Finley (Richmond Hill, Ga./Richmond Hill) was named to the 2023 John Olerud Two-Way Player of the Year Award semifinalist list, the College Baseball Foundation announced this week.



Finley joins the 12 semifinalists as one of two representatives from the Atlantic Coast Conference, having a stellar year both on the mound and at the plate this season.



Finley has been electric at the plate, hitting .311 through 48 games played this season, recording 55 hits, 16 doubles and a team-leading 17 home runs for 59 RBI. Finley tied the program record this year when he hit three home runs in a single game – including two in the same inning. In the ACC, he ranks fourth in RBI, fifth in home runs, eighth in doubles and 10th in total bases.



On the mound, the Richmond Hill native has been Tech’s usual Sunday starter. Through 12 starts, Finley has worked to a 5.63 ERA and two wins. In 46.1 innings of work, he’s struck out 41 batters and issued just 15 walks.



The award is named for the former Washington State University standout who achieved success both as a first baseman and left-handed pitcher during the late 1980s and was inducted into the National College Baseball Hall of Fame in 2007. The award will be presented by the College Baseball Foundation later this year. The five finalists for the John Olerud Two-Way Player of the Year Award will be announced on May 30.



Finley and Georgia Tech finish up their regular season at home when they host No. 21 Virginia in a huge ACC finale on May 18-20. First pitch for Thursday is set for 6 p.m. and will be broadcast live on ACC Network Extra.

OT: A fun question - What to donate?

So, Spencer Hall is doing his annual fundraiser for New American Pathways and donors (Tech is 10th in the race so far) are often making donations in memory of various alma mater related things. Like a Michigan fan might donate $45.23 for the score of the Michigan-Ohio State game this last year.

What would you donate/pledge to a favorite cause in salute to your Georgia Tech Sports fandom. I'm looking for inspiration. And don't say $222.00. I don't have that kind of bread.
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Official Launch of The Tech Way

Apologies for starting a new thread, but we wanted to share updates with you that weren’t buried in a thread.

I hope you’re all aware of The Tech Way, which officially launched last week. We have been working behind the scenes for many months, and we’ve had numerous discussions with J Batt and his team to ensure all pertinent rules are followed. We also worked with folks at Swarm the ATL to consolidate to avoid confusion.

J Batt sent out an email discussing NIL and The Tech Way last week: https://bit.ly/3IHQZIS

Here’s an article from On3 about our launch:

https://www.on3.com/nil/news/georgi...us-to-newly-launched-the-tech-way-collective/

So far, we’ve signed 25+ Georgia Tech student-athletes to NIL deals, spanning three sports (football, men’s and women’s basketball), thanks to the generosity of our passionate contributors.

The success of The Tech Way will depend on fans like you supporting the cause and signing up for one-time contributions, monthly subscriptions ($10-500) or business sponsorships. Contributions can be designated to a specific sport or a student-athlete, if you’d like.

Stay tuned for more media coverage and announcements of ambassadors. If you have questions, I can answer them here or feel free to email: arryana@studentathletenil.com

BASEBALL Five Jackets Named Academic All-District



Program record number of Yellow Jackets honored for work in classroom



THE FLATS – Recognized as part of the nation’s top student-athletes for their combined performance on the field and in the classroom, Georgia Tech baseball featured five student-athletes on the 2023 Academic All-District Team, the College Sports Communicators (CSC) announced Tuesday.



The Yellow Jackets receiving recognitions are:



  • Jake Deleo, Business Administration
  • Angelo Dispigna, Business Administration
  • John Giesler, Business Administration
  • Ben King, Biology
  • Jack Rubenstein, Real Estate Development (Master’s)



To be named academic all-district, a student-athlete must maintain a career GPA of 3.5 or higher, while holding on-field status as a starter or important reserve. The five Yellow Jackets selected mark the highest number ever selected to all-district, earning multiple selections for the fourth time since 2012 (2012, 2020, 2022) and the sixth time overall since 1979.



Academic all-district honorees advance to the academic all-American ballot. First-, second- and third-team (when selected) academic all-America selections will be announced in June.

The Athletic: Tampering Confidential (Must Read)

If you have access to The Athletic, this is a highly necessary read. I'm not encouraged at all, but at least this story lays out the situation plainly. I sincerely hope GT is not one of the lower tier P5 schools the article references, and if we are I hope we're on our way to the next tier up, but I don't want to have to cheat and tamper to get there. Is there any other way?

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FOOTBALL RECRUITING Confirmed two four-star official visitors..

Clay-Chalkville (Ala.) LB DJ Barber will visit Georgia Tech the weekend of June 9th, per an interview for the Alabama site.
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I am currently anticipating the amount of four-star official visitors this summer to be in the double digits.

P.S. don’t be surprised if his teammate joins him..
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FOOTBALL RECRUITING Analysis: Sky is the limit for new Georgia Tech commit Depaepe, says Clint Cosgrove

Following the commitment of mid-western DE William Depaepe on Monday afternoon, JOL spent some time with National Analyst Clint Cosgrove, (@Clint Cosgrove)
Login to view embedded media "The longer he was out there.. 6-foot-6 defensive ends don't exactly grow on trees. If he were to have made it to camps, gone on visits, and had more eyes on him and his tools,, the more of a battle that they would have had on their hands. Defensive ends with that length and raw athleticism become a premium position the closer it gets to signing day."

Comparing William to his brother, a former four-star DL now at Michigan State:
Login to view embedded media "He isn't as physically developed as his brother was, but I see a similar level of upside. The biggest difference between him and his brother is his brother was stronger and a little bit more polished as a football player. His straight-line speed and length are better than what his brother's were at this stage of his recruitment."

Overall thoughts and report:

"The things you love about him are his frame, athleticism, and his motor. He's a bit raw right now, but he flashes a ton of upside with his 6-foot-6 frame. He is just starting to scratch the surface for what he can be as a player. The sky is really the limit for him, this is a great get for Georgia Tech. Especially getting in on him early, and making him feel like a priority. He checks every box you're looking for in a future impact player at the next level."

Tech Golf in 5th Place at NCAA Salem Regional



No. 11 Yellow Jackets post 10-under 278; Steelman, Tai each shoot 68



Tech Schedule and Results | NCAA Golf Website | Pairings and scoring via Golfstat

Salem, S.C. – Ross Steelman and Hiroshi Tai each fired 4-under-par 68s Monday, and Georgia Tech posted a 10-under-par 278 to occupy fifth place after the opening round of the NCAA Salem (S.C.) Regional.

The No. 2-seed Yellow Jackets find themselves on the cutline after 18 holes, one stroke ahead of sixth place and 12 shots behind leader Arkansas, the sixth seed. Eight other teams are within six strokes of Tech entering round two, which begins at 8 a.m. Tuesday. The top five teams in each regional qualifier advance to the NCAA Championship.

The Jackets tee off the 10th hole at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, paired with Georgia Southern and Northern Illinois.

Tech has advanced to the NCAA Championship finals in seven of the past 10 years, including each of the last three, finishing fourth in 2019 (Pullman, Wash.), third in 2021 (Tallahassee, Fla.) and first last year (Columbus, Ohio). Four of the five Tech starters from 2022 are back for this season.

The Yellow Jackets are playing in an NCAA regional for the 25th straight year and for the 32nd time in the 34 years the NCAA has used a regional qualifying format for its championship (the NCAA Championship and regionals were not conducted in 2020 due to COVID-19).

TECH LINEUP – Tech, the nation’s 11th-ranked team, counted the 68s from Steelman and Tai, while Christo Lamprecht, Connor Howe and Bartley Forrester each shot 1-under-par 71. The Jackets rallied to shoot 8-under-par on the back nine at The Cliffs at Keowee Falls, making eight birdies on the three par-5 holes and posting no bogeys from the 14th to the 18th holes.

Tai, a freshman from Singapore who was the individual runner-up at the ACC Championship last month, played a bogey-free round Monday, making one birdie on the front nine and three on the back. Steelman, who made the All-ACC team announced last week, overcame two bogeys in his first four holes by birdieing five holes on the front and two more on the back. Both players are tied for 13th place individually.

Lamprecht, Howe and Forrester are tied for 33rd place in the 75-player field.

TEAM LEADERBOARD – Arkansas, the sixth seed, piled up 26 birdies and two eagles at The Cliffs Monday, led by 65s from Segundo Pinto and Wil Gibson, to post a 22-under-par total of 266 Monday and grab a six-shot lead over No. 7-seed New Mexico (272, -16).

North Carolina, the top seed and ranked No. 2 in the nation, is in third place at 273 (-15), followed by Northern Illinois (275, -13) in fourth and the Yellow Jackets (278, -10) in fifth.

Georgia Southern (279, -9), Texas A&M (281, -7), Clemson (282, -6) are close behind the Jackets, with Furman, Purdue and Middle Tennessee State all tied for ninth at 5-under-par 283.

INDIVIDUAL LEADERBOARD – North Carolina’s Ryan Burnett fired a 9-under-par 63, including an eagle at the closing 18th hole, to take a one-shot lead over Scott Jordan of Longwood (8-under-par 64). Furman’s Sam Lape matched Arkansas’ Pinto and Gibson with a 7-under-par 65 and for a three-way tie for third place.

Michael Barnard of Middle Tennessee State and Carson Herron of New Mexico are tied for sixth place at 6-under-par 66. Five players, led by Arkansas’ Manuel Lozada and North Carolina’s Austin Greaser, are tied for eighth at 5-under 67.

TOURNAMENT INFORMATION – Eighty-one teams and 45 individuals are competing for spots in the NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Championship finals in six regional qualifying tournaments. The top five teams and one individual from each regional will advance to the finals (30 teams and six individuals total), which will be conducted May 26-31 at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Each NCAA regional is a 54-hole, stroke-play event with 13 teams and 10 individuals, or 14 teams and five individuals, competing. Tech is part of a regional field that includes 14 teams and five individuals. The top seeds in each regional are top-ranked Vanderbilt in Auburn, Ala., No. 2 North Carolina in Salem, No. 3 Illinois in East Lansing, Mich., No. 4 Arizona State in Las Vegas, Nev., No. 5 Texas Tech in Norman, Okla., and No. 6 Pepperdine in Morgan Hill, Calif.

The Cliffs at Keowee Falls, which serves as the venue for the Salem Regional, plays to a par of 72 and measures 7,126 yards, and was designed by Jack Nicklaus. Water comes into play in 12 of the 18 holes.

Competition begins at 8 a.m. Eastern time each day of the tournament from the No. 1 and 10 tees.

Old Man Doesn't Graduate After (nearly) Seven Years of College.

So I don't know if this is just news to me...but apparently, Stetson Bennett did not even get his undergraduate degree from UGA after being the oldest MF known to mankind in cfb. How is this possible?? How was he eligible?? Take garbage classes to jack up the GPA and say **** my major's requirements? This is crazy.

JOL Mailbag 5/15 Sponsored by Auto-Owners Insurance

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Are we in a good place with Jaiden Glover?

KQ- Meh, it is still kind of early there. Ohio State just offered him this week so I'm sure that will scatter things for a minute.

Aiden sorry and what is your take on the Williams deal.

KQ- Not sure what you are asking my friend. I explained what happened with Jahkari in the decommitment thread as much as we are willing to dive into it. I'd expect him to drop pretty significantly in our next rankings update.

Do you have a strategy on how you can get a good relationship going with CDS?

KQ- Yeah, I have strategies I use. I've been at this for a very long time. Somehow even Paul Hewitt liked me which was sort of shocking. Damon knows what's up. I also know he has his hands full right now dealing with the portal and trying to put together a team so I'm not going to blow him up. He is trying to do all of that and raise NIL money. That is a lot to handle. Folks have to just let things settle down a bit and I think things will get going with hoops info.

Do you have a whisperer at Tech that can tell CDS how many Tech fans you can influence?

KQ- He is aware of what the deal is. I'm not concerned about that.

We all know that the two big revenue sports (football & basketball) drive the numbers (i.e. money) for college athletics. My question is how much does success in one help the other? I mean, if we have success in football, does that help the money flow to the basketball program, or vice versa? Or are they completely unrelated?

I would think that a lot of donors want success in both. So, one succeeding would help the other - a rising tide lifts all boats.


KQ- Yes, but football can prop up other sports at GT the most. It would take a return to probably the Bobby Cremins era to get hoops in a position to be able to carry weight for football. Football is very expensive and that is why so many schools don't opt to go to FBS that have strong basketball programs or can it all together for various reasons like Wichita State for example. The bigger issue is you want as many sports as possible to be revenue neutral and you want hoops and football to make their projected budgets. If that is happening then GT is in a good spot. The shortfalls are what screw things up and low attendance or low season ticket sales. Those two things I would say led to the last two changes in men's basketball leadership. There were even a few people wanting to wait to fire Collins but I think the economics of making changes in both sports pushed J Batt to pull the plug on Josh after Cabrera iced ADTS and Collins.

I guess this is a long way of saying, they have some influence, but I can tell you that having a bad football team or bad attendance impacts golf recruiting and baseball recruiting for example. Both those coaches use those games as events to bring recruits in and it is a problem if the crowd sucks when they are comparing it to other programs with better football. Same thing with football using hoops games to recruit. I remember they used to bring tons of JR Day kids in for basketball games, but when the arena is 2/3 empty or worse like 50/50 home/opposing fans you can't do that.

Both being good is great for the bottom line and one being good is okay. Both being bad puts you in the spot GT is in and with hoops the good season they had was covid capped so you never even got a bounce off that. Football has had almost nothing positive since 2016 ended.

Your thoughts on Butker's speech?

I'll hang up and listen. Love your show.


KQ- I'll be honest and say I didn't listen to it yet. I've been up to my neck in stuff lately so it just got pushed to the side. I'm glad you all enjoyed it.

The basketball team made progress towards the end of the year, granted it was winning against bad teams, do you think the new coach will be able to capitalize on that

KQ- Maybe, Damon Stoudamire will need a better schedule than GT had last year. It was so front-loaded you couldn't build any real momentum. They played the entire top half of the league and then one other game before playing anyone else in the bottom five or six. I've never seen that happen before with the schedule. Confidence is big in basketball and you saw a great example of that last year. I have no idea what he can build upon other than having some guys with experience, but when they hit the court as of today, they'll have four guys who have played in an ACC regular season if Miles Kelly comes back. That learning curve (how well players adapt and succeed) and the quality of his recruiting and player development piece this offseason will determine a lot more than any momentum. It will be different systems so it is like hiring a new OC and DC in football.

Any update on Baye Ndongo.

KQ- It is interesting to me this isn't done yet. I'll do some more digging. Ndongo had told people he was completely reopening his recruitment when he decommitted from Rutgers.

Asked this last week but you didn’t answer so I will try again.
Can a player transfer without going through the Portal. If so any restrictions. Thanks.


KQ- My understanding is only if they are a graduate student and that was info from like two years ago when it first started up. You can enter the portal at any time, by the way, you just lose your eligibility for the upcoming season if you are not a grad transfer. Grad transfers still can move freely as I understand it.

I recall a concern during the prior regime was the apparent lack of a prototype QB that reflected a “system”. Now I am reading that we need to recruit QBs that have different skill sets to avoid redundancy. How should we reconcile these points?

KQ- I think isn't a huge difference in the guys they are currently recruiting other than Graham Knowles who you are gambling turns into a Davis Mills/Mike Glennon/Joe Flacco as his body fills out. The rest of them can run well enough and are very similar to Zach Pyron and Haynes King. The three other guys with offers right now including the commit are all pretty similar in size 6'2-6'3" 180-190 range. I'm guessing this is coming from something Russell said in a Q&A or elsewhere on here, but there isn't a huge difference between the QBs other than some mobility things. There is a huge difference between Pyron/King and Gibson for example or Jeff Sims and Zach Gibson or Jeff Sims and Jordan Yates or Tucker Gleason or Chayden Peery who can't even find an FCS school to take him as a transfer. Chayden Peery was like 6' and wasn't a strong runner. That is a problem. That is what I'm talking about. When you have Sims and Gibson is your two, it is pretty hard to game plan for both of them because they are so radically different. Pyron isn't Sims running the ball, but he is mobile and a smart runner same with King. Again there is a huge difference between that and having James Graham or Jeff Sims as your QB and Gibson or Pyron as #2. If they were planning to build an offense around a Sims-type QB you should never take Gibson or Pyron for example. That gets back to Collins putting the offense into the hands of a guy who had historically at Temple struggled to figure out a pretty obvious QB situation and that same nonsense carried over here. Have a plan and recruit to the plan. Other than being quarterbacks what are the similarities between Sims/Gleason/Peery/Pyron. Gleason and Pyron are the only two of those guys who sort of are similar. I will say that Buster and Weinke actually have a plan they are recruiting to and that factored into them parting ways with Jahkari the other day. The QBs are mostly all very similar they've targeted and all fit within that framework better than the patchy quilt of QBs that Collins and company inherited and then proceeded to make even more divergent.

The prime example, I remember for like 8 months Pnode telling me how amazing Gleason was and this and that while downplaying Sims. He was really sharp for a few days in spring ball and then it clicked for Sims and he was clearly the guy right before everything shut down for covid. Another one is how they ended up with Zach Pyron after screwing up with multiple very different types of QBs in that class and then getting very lucky that it worked out to get Pyron. The plan was just poor from a recruiting and execution standpoint.

One other thing to keep in mind, player development can loom large in all of this and that is where they struggled a lot with Sims until really Chip/Weinke got there and started to develop him more. He was pretty much the same guy from year one to year two with fewer insane turnovers by being loose with the football being the only noticeable change. If you can develop guys that can ease some of the pains of having some variety in skillsets.

Right now this is the closest they've been IMO to having multiple QBs who can run the same thing because I think you wouldn't have to wholesale change the plan even if you got down to Gibson having to play again. The leap from Sims to Gibson was the issue. They are not going after guys like Sims now, just regular spread QBs.
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