In a game that could determine which team gets left out of next month’s Atlantic Coast Conference tournament, Georgia Tech visits Notre Dame in a meeting between a pair of basement dwellers on Saturday afternoon in South Bend, Ind.
Georgia Tech (11-14, 2-10 ACC) has dropped six in a row while Notre Dame (11-14, 2-10) is riding a five-game losing streak.
The struggling teams are in a three-way tie with Pittsburgh for last place in the ACC. If the season ended today, all three teams would miss out on the conference tournament in Charlotte in the second week of March.
Fortunately for the Yellow Jackets and Fighting Irish, each side has six games remaining to try and turn things around.
Georgia Tech is coming off a pair of losses to Stanford and Wake Forest by a combined 39 points. For third-year head coach Damon Stoudamire and company, the clock is ticking, and a win on Saturday is desperately needed.
“First and foremost, we need to win. I think that we all understand that,” Stoudamire said. “We’ve got to be better at dealing with adversity. I just don’t think that collectively we’re great at dealing with adversity. When times get tough, we don’t stick together all the time. To me, that is hurting us more than anything at the end of the day.”
Kowacie Reeves Jr. leads the struggling Yellow Jackets with 15.2 points per game, while Baye Ndongo averages 12.4 points and 8.1 rebounds per contest.
Notre Dame’s season outlook changed in December when its best player, Markus Burton, sustained a season-ending broken ankle. Since the calendar flipped to 2026, the Fighting Irish are 1-10, with the lone victory a four-point home win over Boston College.
With center Kebba Njie also out for the season with a knee injury, Notre Dame has had to rely heavily on its guard play.
“We really only have one true post player,” head coach Micah Shrewsberry said. “We play smaller and see if we can spread it out a little bit more. I feel like that’s one of the ways we can try and get more threes is to have more ball handlers, have more shooting out there, have more guys that can attack.”
Freshman Jalen Haralson paces Notre Dame with 15.5 ppg, followed by Braeden Shrewsberry’s 12.
–Field Level Media
