Tech punter named first-team All-America by ESPN; one of three finalists for national punter of the year
THE FLATS – Georgia Tech punter Pressley Harvin III (Alcolu, S.C./Sumter) added two more prestigious honors to a growing list of accolades on Tuesday when he was named first-team all-America by ESPN and one of three finalists for the Ray Guy Award, which is presented annually to the nation’s top punter.
Harvin is Georgia Tech’s first all-American since offensive lineman Shaq Mason received first-team honors from USA Today in 2014. He is only the second Ray Guy Award finalist in Tech history, joining Durant Brooks, who won the award in 2007 and was a finalist in 2006.
Harvin leads the nation with a 48.0-yard punting average this season. To put his whopping 48.0-yard average into perspective, the margin between Harvin’s average and the third-best average in the nation (46.7 – Washington State’s Oscar Draguicevich) is the same as the margin between Draguicevich and the nation’s ninth-best average (45.4 – San Diego State’s Tanner Kuljian).
In addition to the 48.0-yard average, 49% of Harvin’s 45 punts this season have traveled 50 or more yards, 47% were fair caught, 40% were downed inside the opponent’s 20 yard line and only 17% were returned. Thanks in large part to those gaudy numbers, Georgia Tech ranks second nationally as a team in net punting (44.6-yard average).
Harvin averaged at least 51 yards per punt three times in nine games this season (51.2 vs. UCF on Sept. 19, 51.0 at Boston College on Oct. 24 and 51.0 vs. Pitt on Dec. 10). He was named the Ray Guy Award National Punter of the Week twice and one of the award’s “Ray’s 4” recipients (honoring the nation’s four best punters each week) five times. Since the beginning of the 2019 season, he is the only punter in the nation that has had a net punting average of 50 yards in three different games (min. four punts), including twice this season – vs. UCF and at Boston College.
Harvin also currently holds a new ACC single-season record for punting average (prev.: 47.8 – North Carolina’s Brian Schmitz, 1999). His 48.0-yard average shattered Georgia Tech’s single-season school record of 45.6 yards, previously set by Rodney Williams in 1997.
Earlier on Tuesday, Harvin was a landslide selection for first-team all-ACC honors, receiving 161 total points in balloting by a voting pool that included the conference’s head coaches and selected media. Only three student-athletes in the entire league received more points than Harvin – Clemson quarterback and ACC Player of the Year Trevor Lawrence, Clemson wide receiver Amari Rodgers and North Carolina wide receiver Dyami Brown.
Harvin’s 161 total points in all-ACC voting were 66 more than second-team punter Lou Hedley of Miami (Fla.), who is also one of the three finalists for the 2020 Ray Guy Award. Georgia’s Jake Camarda rounds out the three finalists.
The three Ray Guy Award finalists were chosen by a national selection committee of media members, school communications personnel and previous winners. The same pool will also vote for the winner, which will be announced during The Home Depot College Football Awards Show on Jan. 7 on ESPN.
Fans can also be a part of the selection process by submitting their vote at rayguyaward.com between now and January 1. The winner of the fan vote is equivalent to one national selection committee member’s vote.
