Stoudamire has high hopes for his GT team going into Year 3

After showing progress in his second year at Georgia Tech with the team earning an NIT berth, Jackets’ head coach Damon Stoudamire returns for his third year with a much different roster make-up following transfer several portal departures and additions as well as a large recruiting class for the 2025 cycle.

With preseason practice on the horizon, Stoudamire met with the media on Tuesday to discuss the outlook for the 2025-26 season and what he expects from a relatively new, but talented, collection of players the Jackets will put out on the floor in the coming months as the program aims for its first NCAA Tournament berth since the 2020-21 campaign.

Here are some of the notable quotes from Stoudamire during Tuesday’s presser:

Positive words for Brent Key and the football program…

“First and foremost, we just saw Brent (Key). I just want to congratulate him up to this point. As a coach that’s trying to do different things, I know how hard it is. It didn’t start with that win on Saturday. I didn’t go to the locker room. I wasn’t in the locker room after the game or anything, but I heard his speech. Not only did I hear the speech, I heard what the players said afterwards. To me that’s the process of it. It’s always exciting to see the trajectory. When we got here he was just here, what a year before me or what not, when he takes over in the interim. So we’ve essentially been here together. To see where they started, and you know the process of how it goes because it’s not easy. Just happy for him and continued success. You know things are going in the right direction because he’s got them going in the right direction. Now the biggest thing is go make something up and be mad at them this week. Everybody’s patting them on the back so you’ve got to get them back on their toes and on their heels and get them to understand that we’ve done what we were supposed to do, and if we want to be the program that we want to be just like I try to instill in our guys, we can’t be happy about these things. We’ve got to take advantage of them and keep the momentum going. I just wanted to say that.”

On how much he’s relying on the returnees as leaders (Kowacie Reeves, Jaeden Mustaf, Baye Ndongo)…

“It’s going to be on them to talk to the guys about the expectations, and I think that’s been the best thing so far. When you have Baye, when you have Jaeden, when you have Wacie, even Dyllan (Thompson) because he was here last year…they know what the standard is. Each and every day it makes it easier when as a coach and the staff you’re trying to create your culture and fighting for your culture. When you have people in the locker room that understands the culture, going into Year 3 I have two guys that have been with me from Day 1…Baye and Wacie. Jaeden, he got significant minutes as a freshman, looking for him to take a jump. So really excited about that group of guys.”

On transfer guard Lamar Washington and what he brings to the table for the team…

“Leadership and stability. That’s what I love about him. I’ve known him for a very long time. He’s from Portland, Oregon. It’s crazy most people don’t know this, Lamar was highly-recruited in football. He was a really good linebacker, so sought after early on…he had offers from USC and Oregon. He just loved basketball during COVID. Then he left and went to Jefferson High School. He played football for my uncle who was the head coach at Jeff. Then he played basketball for one of my best friends who I was teammates with an won a state championship with, growing up in Portland. So the leadership part, the stability, grown man, coming in from Texas Tech he knows what it looks like. He’s played with first-round picks. He had a chance to go to Pacific and play, and he really evolved there. He was All-Conference. And I’m looking for him to, although he hasn’t been here, to be a big part of that nucleus of guys that I talked about (as leaders).”

On where his program is right now in the process of establishing consistent success…

“I think we’re right on point to where we need to be. It’s continuing to move the needle. I think we have a team that’s full of depth. We’ve got numbers. We’ve got competition. And I think collectively we’ve got a group that likes each other, and I think those are the biggest ingredients to having a good team. As a coach, you know you love the competition. As a player what I used to say is and I go back to when I played at Arizona, the least talented team I played on went to the Final Four. The most talented team I played on, we lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. So the excitement for me is moreso the cohesion that we have amongst the group. Since I’ve been here, I haven’t had a group that has hung out together. We’ve got to kick them out of the gym. They go back to the locker room, they hang with each other in the locker room. They go out together. They’re at the football game last week. For me that’s a joy because that’s half of the battle. Now, we haven’t handed out any minutes or any of those things yet, but the process started beginning of the summer and it’s just continued up to this point.”

On if freshman class can make immediate impact or gradually be worked into the rotation…

“I’m going to segway into the question, but I told Baye last year after the season was over ‘I’m not going to protect you any more from the standpoint of you have to talk to the media. They’ve got to know who you are. You’re going to ACC Media Day.’ And so in saying that, I have a freshman class that is elite. I think that they will contribute. All of them will contribute over the course of time. I think we have some special ones in this class starting with Mouhamed Sylla. I think that for me he’ll be one of the best freshman in the country. I think people should enjoy watching him while they can. He’s a joy to be around, and he does things that freshmen don’t do. I’m excited to coach him. We have Akai Fleming, a local kid, and I think that he biggest thing is nobody has seen him in about a year and a half because he hasn’t been healthy. But he’s healthy. He’s athletic. He brings a different dimension than what we’ve had. We’ve got Cole Kirouac, who is one of my favorite players. He’s one of the smartest players I’ve ever coached as a freshman. He’s a seven-footer. He’s only going to get better. He’s a local kid, obviously played last year at OTE. We have Eric Chatfield, and I think over his time here he will be really good. I think that as a small guard he has a chance to be special. What does that look like? I don’t know. Most people always say ‘well, you were a little guard. What does that look like?’ But I don’t like to compare what I did to any small guard because what I did was special. But I think that he has a chance to be really good. We got Davi Remagen from Germany. And Davi is really good. He just turned 18. He’s been a pro I think since he was like 14 or 15. He has a man’s body right now, and I’m excited about him as well. So I think our freshman class…oh yeah, I’m sorry. I can’t forget Brandon Stores. Brandon Stores has the biggest personality on this team. Bronx kid. Really, really high IQ, but what I love about him, and you guys will fall in love with, he has one of the most contagious personalities that you’ll ever see in a kid. He’s always talking, and his teammates love him. He knows how to keep the energy in the room. It’s a breath of fresh air to have a group like that. So different personalities but all the same, a group that’s going to help us both on the floor and off.”

On shot creation and playmaking ability at point guard…

“Well obviously we lost our point guard (Nait George), and it’s no problem. One thing about coaching, and I’ve learned this, you’ve just got to change a little bit. You’ve got to tweak it. You’ll see more people handling the ball. The way we’ve played in the past and explaining the way we’ve played in the past, obviously it was a style that I brought with me. But we didn’t have multiple ball handlers. We’ve got way more people that can make plays. We’ll play out of the post a little more. We have really good bigs like I said. One guy I haven’t talked about, and I think it’s crazy to say that he is probably one of the best passers on our team is Peyton Marshall, transfer from Missouri. ‘P’ can really pass the ball. For me he reminds me a lot and where I’ve always been attracted to when I recruit them out of high school, is I played with Oliver Miller. For those that remember, Oliver has since passed away, but he went to Arkansas, and I played with him in Toronto. And Peyton is a really good passer. There is just a lot of different dynamics that we have that we just didn’t have in the past. We’ve got versatility. So the ball will be distributed evenly. It won’t be a dominant ball-handler, but it will be a lot of people that I feel like can make plays.”

On having more quality big man depth and allowing Ndongo to play the 4 more instead of the 5…

“I’ve even told the staff that there’s some things we have to get comfortable with and have to live with. Sometimes the spacing might not be ideal and different things of that nature because we’ll be playing with a lot of two-big lineups. But the biggest thing is that Baye not playing the 5…him being predominantly at the 4, accepting small-ball situations…I think it will help them. The past couple years he just hasn’t had a lot of people that can take pressure off of him. It’s either he gets the rebound or we don’t get the rebound. By the time the game’s wore on, they were putting two or three guys on him to box him out. To his credit he was still a monster and did a whole lot of good things, but having him at the 4, expanding his game, he’ll have to guard perimeters. There are things that with him we’ve talked about, and he has to get comfortable especially moving on from Tech when he leaves Tech.”

On the role of Kowacie Reeves and transfer Kam Craft…

“Make shots. They’ve got to keep the court spaced obviously. Wacie, he never got on track last year early, and then when he got injured, obviously we shut him down or what not. So I look for him to have a bounce-back year. To me Wacie has the potential to do a lot more. We’re going to play him some at the 4 in small-ball lineups because he can create opportunities there as well. He’s going to play a big role in this. And then in Kam I think we got one of the best shooters in the country. He had a 40-point game last year at Miami-Ohio. I just think that in terms of shooting we haven’t had that since I’ve been here…the way he can shoot. He can make spot-ups, he can come off picks. And he’s an evolving playmaker from the standpoint he’s not going to bring the ball down and do different things, but just trying get him to make the next read, make pocket passes coming off ball screens and things of that nature. Both of those guys are going to have to make shots. We really truly need four to five 3s between both of them a game with our bigs so they can play in spacing.”

On schedule, being at home more and filling two more games late…

“It wasn’t bad at all. We have a schedule that to me if we handle our business is favorable. I think that we do have a lot of home games early, which is big for us. I think the biggest thing with this team, and I’ve been preaching this to our team, I’ve been preaching this to our staff and we’ve done a lot of things differently the first two years over the summer than what I did in the past. I practiced, I’ve actually been practicing, been implementing, putting things in with all the new faces that we have. But the biggest thing is we’ve shown the ability that we can beat top-25 teams. We can beat top-5 teams. We’ve got to beat the teams we’re supposed to beat. That makes the season. You’ve got to win the games that you’re supposed to win. And if we can build our momentum going into ACC play…to me we have a favorable schedule going into ACC play. We play a lot of home games. We just have to take one practice, one game at a time. But I love our schedule. It wasn’t a bad thing in terms of going from 20 to 18 because it gave us a little more flexibility. So again, we have an opportunity. We’ve just got to take it one practice, one game at a time, and I think we’ll be fine.”

On Peyton Marshall working himself into shape and more playing time…

“‘P’ was going to play anyway. ‘Big P’ was going to play but ‘Slim P’ is going to play too. So it didn’t matter. He was going to play regardless. The thing about ‘P’ is that again he has a big personality as well. I mess with him at times. I said on your Instagram page, you’re doing all this modeling and stuff. He’s really in tune with a lot of things, but what gets lost in that is his play. I think that the biggest thing for him is being able to stay out of foul trouble. I think that ‘P’ is a big, strong kid, and I think that he just has to figure out how to stay on the floor. We have to help him in those areas, but he moves well for a big guy. And the beauty of our team, and it’s not just with ‘P’ when I say this, but it’s with everybody, I’m not giving out any free minutes. We don’t have free minutes. We’ve got enough bodies to where you play as hard as you can, you come out the game, but I don’t have free minutes this year. Last year I had a lot of free minutes due to injury. I don’t have free minutes this year. But ‘P’ I look forward to him playing a big role in this program this season.”

Georgia Tech opens the season on Nov. 3 at home against Maryland-Eastern Shore at McCamish Pavilion to begin a three-game homestand before a trip to play at rival Georgia on Nov. 14.