The Yellow Jackets take on Northwestern tonight at 7 p.m. on ESPN2. And apparently, they don't stand a chance.
ESPN's panel of experts on the game tonight:
Bilas: Northwestern -- The Wildcats will spread the Jackets out and keep them on a string between open 3s and backdoor cuts.
Brennan: Northwestern -- Facing its first real "test" of the season, Northwestern's matchup zone and tricky Princeton offense will give Georgia Tech fits.
Fraschilla: Northwestern -- Sadly, even a win over the Yellow Jackets won't mean much in March. Too much John Shurna in this one.
Gottlieb: Northwestern -- Tech played well this weekend, but the travel and Juice Thompson will be too much.
Katz: Northwestern -- If we're going to take the Wildcats seriously they have to win a game like this at home against the inferior Yellow Jackets.
Leung: Northwestern -- The Wildcats should stay undefeated playing on their homecourt and with John Shurna playing well.
Lunardi: Northwestern -- A solid win over Creighton sets the Wildcats up nicely for another victory.
O'Neil: Northwestern -- John Shurna has been terrific all season for a Wildcat team dreaming of -- gasp! -- an NCAA bid.
Williams: Northwestern -- This is the year Northwestern makes the NCAA tournament because of Shurna and Thompson.
From Northwestern's perspective, this game just hurts their strength of schedule (granted, this was written two weeks ago):
Specifically, the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. As the biggest name on the Wildcats' non-conference schedule, we hoped that game might be a chance to pick up a much-need quality win. Sure, the Jackets were picked near the bottom of the ACC, but they returned some talented guards and we hoped that maybe Paul Hewitt could at least make them into a bubble team.
Two games into the season, it's clear Georgia Tech is terrible. We're talking lost to Kennesaw State by 17 points terrible.
But as Virginia showed last night, there are no guarantees in the ACC-Big 10 Challenge. The Jackets are coming off of two of their better performances of the season, beating a veteran UTEP team and losing to a top ten Syracuse team by four points. The games saw breakout performances from two sophomore guards in Glen Rice Jr. and Brian Oliver.
Northwestern has never made the NCAA tournament, the only school in one of the big six conferences to not do so.
This is the first ever meeting between the two schools, and Northwestern is the only Big-10 team Tech has yet to face. Paul Hewitt, however, has faced the Wildcats before. Hewitt took Siena to Chicago and beat Northwestern to earn his first career coaching victory. The Jackets are 4-6 in the history of the challenge.
The game is at 7:00 p.m. tonight. The game can be seen on ESPN2, and heard on 790 the Zone or 106.7 FM.