Pastner previews Wake Forest
Georgia Tech has an opportunity to improve NCAA Tournament seeding and put a cap on a historically good ACC season on Friday when they travel to face Wake Forest in Winston-Salem. Pastner spoke about the Deacs and gave his thoughts on the state of the Jackets' program headed into the postseason next week.
On Wake Forest:
First of all, Wake Forest. They're a good basketball team. I know they've been hit early with that with the COVID pause early in December, beginning January type timeframe. What Coach Forbes has done at East Tennessee State and Northwest Florida prior to that, he's one of the best coaches in the country. I think they're very well-coached, they play hard. I think Wake Forest runs just really good actions offensively. They defend the heck out of you. They're good basketball team and we're gonna have to be really good if we want to have a chance to win the game tomorrow night, and we'll have to play one of our best if not our best game all year long, if we want to have a chance to win.
Winning in the ACC is so darn hard. And then winning on the road is even harder. So we're gonna have to come with an A-plus game."
On the level of confidence heading into the WF game
"Obviously, our guys have confidence, and we've had some great wins. And have done some good things, but, but I also recognize that every game is unique, every game is different and our guys have to be ready to go. I've used the analogy, you're only as good as your last game and that's really what it is. We had a great win on Tuesday. You can enjoy it, you celebrate it, you enjoyed it and now you got to move to Wake Forest and that's where we're at.
We've shifted our gears to Wake Forest and we're gonna need to play really well and have in play at a high level on both ends of the ball for 40 minutes if we would have a chance to win the game."
On the team managing praise just as well as when they managed criticism
"If you digest the praise is just as poisonous as digesting the negativity. Either way, it can be poisonous to you. I believe in transparency and to over-communicate, and there's no denying that. I mean, people can go on social media, and you can find good or, and, or bad what someone says about you. And so, I mean, it's there, but you're just going to have to, and we should be able to celebrate, I mean, we won a big-time game on Tuesday against a tremendous opponent, I mean, you want to be able to enjoy that. But you can enjoy it at that time period. And then when you get back to practice the next day, you've got move on from that and get ready to go.
You are still dealing with 18 to 22-year-olds who are human beings. So there's going to be there's just naturally motion and momentum involved in all that. So our guys will be ready. That's one thing with an older group with a group that's, you know, a veteran group, they understand that what we're playing for, and we've got to be ready to go. You know, we gotta be ready to go."
On the team's improvement after moving Khalid Moore into the starting lineup
"He's done a nice job. I think we have six starters because you can Baba Parham's a starter in my viewpoint as well, too. Khalid did a great job very proud of Khalid and he plays hard, man plays hard. He really defends, and he embodies what we're about, and what's important to me. He gets on the court and, and does it through defense through 50/50 balls through just working as hard as you can."
On what it would mean to be the fourth seed in the ACC Tournament
"Well I could go off and give you a bunch of stats, I'd like for you to tweet right now if you want me to, but I'll just I'll keep to an answer to your question. For us to finish fourth, we have, first of all, we have to win the game and that's hard enough. I mean, it is winning is hard. I mean, I've explained, winning is hard. Winning is really hard in the ACC. And winning is really, really, really hard on the road in the ACC.
So first and foremost, we don't even have a chance at that if we don't take care of business tomorrow night. Then secondly, you need a little help because you got to have Virginia beat Louisville. If those two things happen, Georgia Tech has to win and Virginia has to win.
I think and and and would be a big accomplishment. I felt even going back-to-back years of winning records in the ACC was important for our program. Because we did it last year and I thought we needed to back it up this year to have back-to-back years of winning records in the ACC.
We've had things you know where it's never happened before and back-to-back double-digit wins, for the first time since 2005 to have a bye (in the ACC Tournament) and you know and also It'd be great if we were fortunate to win regardless if we got the fourth.
Your goal is to you want to win the league but you know at least you're in the upper echelon if you can you know continue to win and put yourself in that position so and the but the best thing about the double buys can besides that where you finish but you also have an extra day of rest and less games you have to win to try to win the ACC tournament."