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ATLANTA — GEORGIA TECH football coach Brent Key’s office looks out onto Bobby Dodd Stadium, with part of the Atlanta skyline in view as well. One of the buildings visible is the old Equitable building, now owned and operated by Georgia’s Own Credit Union, which has a 174-foot long digital sign around the top.

With that as the backdrop, Key was asked recently if the success of two-time defending national champion Georgia gives him extra motivation to right the ship for the Yellow Jackets.

“Kirby [Smart has] done an unbelievable job,” Key said of Georgia’s head coach. “He’s done a great job. I give him all the credit in the world. But we’ve known each other since college. And I respect him as a coach, I respect him as a man, and I respect the job he’s done. For me to worry about what goes on down there, I got way too much to do here to worry about that.”

He continued, “Now, when I walked in this office building [in January] of last year, and it was dark out, Georgia’s Own building right there said, ‘Congrats, Go Dawgs!’ Did that piss me off? Damn right it did.

“Did I call [strength coach] A.J. Artis up on the phone and tell him I want every single kid on our football team, when they’re done with workouts to come outside and do stadiums to the very top of the stadium and stare at it? You damn right I did.

“But to worry about what’s going on over there? I don’t have time to do that.”


THIS IS THE job Key has always wanted. When he was bumped up from offensive line coach to interim head coach after Geoff Collins’ firing four games into last season, Key told ESPN he wasn’t acting like it was a temporary seat at the table. His instincts were correct, and the interim tag was removed after the Yellow Jackets went 4-4 to close the campaign.

While Key, who played at Georgia Tech from 1997 to 2000, might have wanted the job, it clearly has its challenges. Tech hasn’t made a bowl game since 2018, its longest drought since 1992-1996. Collins, who was hired to replace Paul Johnson, never won more than three games during his three-plus-year tenure. In trying to attract talent, the school contends with some potential roadblocks, including higher academic standards than many big-time programs and an urban campus.

Meanwhile, the Yellow Jackets’ in-state rival roughly 80 miles to the east is aiming to become the first team to pull off a national title three-peat in almost 90 years and has won 18 of the past 21 meetings between the teams, including the last three by a combined score of 134-21.

After his playing days, Key was a graduate assistant at Tech for two years before a stop at Western Carolina, then a decade at UCF with his old head coach, George O’Leary. He spent 2016 through 2018 at Alabama before he returned to Atlanta as an assistant in 2019. He’s fully aware of the perceived complications of the job, and said he doesn’t buy into them.

“People say, ‘[The] school is hard, you have to take calculus.’ Look, I graduated but I never took one calc class in my life. So I’m like, what are you talking about? I didn’t take calculus.

“Now, I failed the hell out of chemistry.

“Other people talk about being in Atlanta — look, Atlanta made me who I am. Atlanta is an unbelievable city, the culture, the diversity, the things you learn, it creates a little bit of an edge to you.”

One of Key’s biggest priorities in trying to turn things around is to make sure his team has an identity. He has a spreadsheet mapping out every hour of every day from the start of camp to the Georgia game on Nov. 25 in Atlanta.

For every day through camp, the top of every sheet had a goal of establishing the identity of the team.

“That’s what this camp has been about,” he said. “And people talk about playing to a standard and our standard. We have no standard. There’s none. We have to create it. Nick Saban didn’t have a standard in 2006 at Alabama, he had his personal standard. You have to create those things.

“So what is our identity? We will be disciplined, we’re going to be tough as hell. This team is committed to themselves, number one, and they’re committed to this football team. And then when the number is called, we’ve got to execute.

“You got to expect good things to happen as opposed to bad things. It’s one thing to say, ‘Well, if you believe it, you say it, we’re gonna talk it into reality.’ Yeah, you got to believe, but you got to work your ass off in between. … That’s what I want our team to be. They say that there’s no greater compliment than a football team to take on the identity of the head football coach. That’s what I want.”


KEY ISN’T THE only new coach trying to restore old glory at Georgia Tech. Damon Stoudamire was hired in March to shape the men’s basketball program, and his mission — and approach — is similar to his football counterpart’s.

Stoudamire played at Arizona under the legendary Lute Olson and went on to play 13 seasons in the NBA, most notably with the Portland Trail Blazers. He came to Atlanta after being an assistant coach with the Boston Celtics. This is his second gig as a college head coach, having been at Pacific from 2016 until 2021.

Georgia Tech had a basketball team for many years, but Bobby Cremins turned it into a program in the 1980s and accumulated 354 wins over 19 seasons in Atlanta. The success continued to some degree under Paul Hewitt, who took the Yellow Jackets to a Final Four in 2004.

But since Hewitt’s departure, Tech has made just one NCAA tournament appearance after a surprising ACC tournament championship in 2021.

Like Key, Stoudamire talked about wanting to build a standard, which he said begins with toughness.

“I want to be the physically and mentally tougher team,” Stoudamire said. “I just think that wins games. We could talk about X’s and O’s and all those different things. But those two things there, and then the relationship part of it. I’m big on customer service, that’s what I like to call it. I just think that if you don’t have relationships with your players, you don’t have relationships in the workspace and different things, you can’t win.

“I’ve never really wanted to look at coaching from a coaching standpoint because I’m big on the relationship part of it, and I think if a player feels good, he plays good.

“So what does that mean? If a guy misses three in a row and he looks over, and the bench is like, ‘Keep shooting, keep shooting.’ I don’t react, I try not to at least, because I don’t want anybody to play on how they see me react. I want them to understand that Coach is calm, poised and staying in the moment.”

As far as reenergizing the fan base, Stoudamire believes in the only solution known to work anywhere and everywhere.

“I just think you got to win,” Stoudamire said. “We can get gimmicky, we can do different things, but I think you got to win. And I think people buy in. I just think it’s pretty simple.”


THE CHANGES AT Georgia Tech aren’t limited to the football and men’s basketball coaches. On the south end of Bobby Dodd Stadium is the Wardlaw Center, which itself is representative of the athletic department’s fresh start.

Georgia Tech’s athletic staff is moving into the building, which despite being part of the stadium for decades was occupied by the Institute Development and Institute Communications departments.

Settling into a new office is athletic director J. Batt, himself only about 10 months into the job. He replaced Todd Stansbury, who was AD from 2016 until his firing in 2022.

There are still some frames that need to go up on the walls in Batt’s office, which overlooks the field at Bobby Dodd Stadium. His most prized one, given to him by Homer Rice, lists the original qualifications of the award named for Rice, given annually to an athletic director who has made a significant impact on their profession and intercollegiate athletics.

Batt came to Atlanta from Alabama, where he had been since 2017, establishing himself as one of the country’s top fundraisers as executive deputy director of athletics, chief operating officer and chief revenue officer. But he’s familiar with ACC athletics. He grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia, and was a goalie for the North Carolina soccer team, helping win a national title in 2001. He also worked at Maryland as the school transitioned from the ACC to the Big Ten.

Georgia Tech is Batt’s first swing as an AD, and returning to the ACC was an immediate draw for him. But Batt saw the potential for success because of institutional alignment, the history of Georgia Tech, “and then a group of alums and fans that care.”

“[President Angel Cabrera] stepped forward and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to make athletics as good as the academics of this institution.’ And that was truly a huge part of it for me,” Batt said. “This brand, this program — four national championships, I mean, who else has Coach of the Year Bobby Dodd, Assistant of the Year [Frank] Broyles, AD of the Year [Homer] Rice, Player of the Year [John] Heisman,” referencing the namesakes of national awards who have Georgia Tech ties. “There’s no other program with that incredible tradition.”

But the opportunity boils down to a top-down commitment to athletics, which appears to give Batt — who has seen college programs run at the highest level in Tuscaloosa — a sense that he can be the one to fix Georgia Tech.

“This guy’s walking the walk,” Batt said of Cabrera. “He is literally providing resources, he’s providing access. I mean, look at this building. This is a building that’s been in the football stadium for 30 years, athletics has never occupied it. Truly taking a step forward, and prioritizing athletics. Moving us forward with our $85 million Student-Athlete Performance Center. That project is on a fast track to get done as soon as we possibly can.”

The need for a fresh start, both on his team and in the athletic department as a whole, and the importance of the financial commitment was echoed by Key.

“That’s no different than the offensive line room needing an O-line coach that was completely different than I was,” he said. “So that the line walked in every day and it was new, it was different.

“Because when the interim has become the head coach, I’m sure there’s that fear of, ‘Well, what if some of it is the same? What is going to be different?’ … Thankfully, the alignment with J and Dr. Cabrera has allowed a lot of these things to take place, knowing that those things matter.”

One of those things is the revamped football facility.

“People have a vision of what Georgia Tech is,” Key said. “They think engineers and architects and numbers and all this nerdy stuff, and old, and the industrial age of all those things. I said, ‘Well, guess what?’

“Imagine the old locomotive going through the tunnel and it busts out the other side, and it’s one of those bullet trains coming out going the speed of sound. That’s my vision of what Georgia Tech was and is. People walk in here, I don’t want to think the old things. I want it to look like an Apple store.”

Along with the new performance center and increased revenue through business partnerships, Batt had two critical hires to make in his first six months on the job.

“We’re looking for partners,” he said. “You know, stepping in as the new AD to Georgia Tech, the president stepped forward and linked arms with me and said, ‘Hey, we’re building this back.’ I think it had us looking for people that were going to build it with us.

“Brent and Damon, no strangers to hard work, right? These guys are tremendous competitors with tremendous passion to build it back. And so I was looking for a partner and both of those coaching hires, and certainly found it in both.”

With the new beginnings, there’s a sense around Atlanta that better days are ahead. Rather than worry about what has gone wrong, the focus is on what can be done right given everything Batt, Key and Stoudamire believe Georgia Tech has to offer.

“Since I’ve been here, we talked about alignment,” Stoudamire said. “I’ve always preached that. I think football, basketball, with the president and AD, I think all that aligns. I’ve always had a saying when one thing wins, everybody wins. And I think with football and basketball, what a tremendous opportunity that we all have here.”

Key has a notebook that he started back in 2009 in which he wrote down everything he wanted as a head coach. “One thing I never would have planned on was having a boss like J. Batt,” Key said. “He’s amazing.”

“To have a guy that’s just as driven, to have a guy that does his job like football coaches do their job. It could be 9 or 9:30 at night, and you’re here doing work, and to have an administrator just pop in and say, ‘Hey,’ because they’re working, too.

“To know what that position looks like at the most successful program in the history of college football, and they know what the most successful coach looks like, and how he goes about his business, but also to be able to allow those things to occur, and then give the resources and to help those things. And if the resources aren’t there, he gets out on the street and gets things done.

“A lot of people come up with a lot of ideas and sayings and all this kind of crap. He gets things done. He works. And when your boss is working that hard, it keeps you rolling now.

“You know everyone’s on the same page.”

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Source: USC flips Ducks’ Topui, No. 3 DT in 2026

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Source: USC flips Ducks' Topui, No. 3 DT in 2026

USC secured the commitment of former Oregon defensive tackle pledge Tomuhini Topui on Tuesday, a source told ESPN, handing the Trojans their latest recruiting victory in the 2026 cycle over the Big Ten rival Ducks.

Topui, ESPN’s No. 3 defensive tackle and No. 72 overall recruit in the 2026 class, spent five and half months committed to Oregon before pulling his pledge from the program on March 27. Topui attended USC’s initial spring camp practice that afternoon, and seven days later the 6-foot-4, 295-pound defender gave the Trojans his pledge to become the sixth ESPN 300 defender in the program’s 2026 class.

Topui’s commitment gives USC its 10th ESPN 300 pledge this cycle — more than any other program nationally — and pulls a fourth top-100 recruit into the impressive defensive class the Trojans are building this spring. Alongside Topui, USC’s defensive class includes in-state cornerbacks R.J. Sermons (No. 26 in ESPN Junior 300) and Brandon Lockhart (No. 77); four-star outside linebacker Xavier Griffin (No. 27) out of Gainesville, Georgia; and two more defensive line pledges between Jaimeon Winfield (No. 143) and Simote Katoanga (No. 174).

The Trojans are working to reestablish their local recruiting presence in the 2026 class under newly hired general manager Chad Bowden. Topui not only gives the Trojans their 11th in-state commit in the cycle, but his pledge represents a potentially important step toward revamping the program’s pipeline to perennial local powerhouse Mater Dei High School, too.

Topui will enter his senior season this fall at Mater Dei, the program that has produced a long line of USC stars including Matt Leinart, Matt Barkley and Amon-Ra St. Brown. However, if Topui ultimately signs with the program later this year, he’ll mark the Trojans’ first Mater Dei signee since the 2022 cycle, when USC pulled three top-300 prospects — Domani Jackson, Raleek Brown and C.J. Williams — from the high school program based in Santa Ana, California.

Topui’s flip to the Trojans also adds another layer to a recruiting rivalry rekindling between USC and Oregon in the 2026 cycle.

Tuesday’s commitment comes less than two months after coach Lincoln Riley and the Trojans flipped four-star Oregon quarterback pledge Jonas Williams, ESPN’s No. 2 dual-threat quarterback in 2026. USC is expected to continue targeting several Ducks commits this spring, including four-star offensive tackle Kodi Greene, another top prospect out of Mater Dei.

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Sources: QB Pyne leaves Mizzou, seeks 4th team

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Sources: QB Pyne leaves Mizzou, seeks 4th team

Missouri quarterback Drew Pyne has entered the portal as a graduate transfer, sources told ESPN on Tuesday.

Pyne is looking to move to his fourth school after stints at Notre Dame, Arizona State and Missouri. He’ll be a sixth-year senior this fall.

Pyne joined Missouri last year as a backup for senior starter Brady Cook. He earned one start, leading the Tigers to a 30-23 comeback win over Oklahoma while Cook was sidelined by ankle and wrist injuries.

Missouri brought in former Penn State quarterback Beau Pribula via the transfer portal this offseason. He’ll compete with redshirt junior Sam Horn and true freshman Matt Zollers, the No. 86 overall recruit in the 2025 ESPN 300, for the opportunity to start this season.

Pyne, a former ESPN 300 recruit, began his career at Notre Dame and started 10 games for the Fighting Irish in 2022. He threw for 2,021 yards on 65% passing and scored 24 total touchdowns with six interceptions while winning eight of his starts.

After the Irish brought in grad transfer quarterback Sam Hartman, Pyne transferred to Arizona State but appeared in just two games with the Sun Devils before an injury forced him to sit out the rest of the season.

Pyne played 211 snaps over six appearances for the Tigers last season and threw for 391 yards on 60% passing with three touchdowns and three interceptions.

The NCAA’s spring transfer window opens April 16, but graduate transfers are permitted to put their name in the portal at any time. More than 160 FBS scholarship quarterbacks have already transferred this offseason.

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What’s going on with Rafael Devers? Putting his historic strikeout streak into context

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What's going on with Rafael Devers? Putting his historic strikeout streak into context

There are slow starts, there are slumps, and then there is whatever Rafael Devers is going through.

The 28-year-old three-time All-Star for the Boston Red Sox has been one of baseball’s best hitters since 2019, posting three 30-homer seasons, three 100-RBI seasons and a whole bunch of doubles.

His first five games of 2025 have been a nightmare. It’s the early-season equivalent of dealing Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. Johnny Pesky holding the ball. Bucky Dent. The ball rolling through Bill Buckner’s legs. Aaron Boone. Just to name a few Red Sox references. Here’s how those games unfolded for Devers:

Game 1: 0-for-4, three strikeouts
Game 2: 0-for-4, four strikeouts
Game 3: 0-for-4, three strikeouts, walk, RBI
Game 4: 0-for-4, two strikeouts, walk
Game 5: 0-for-3, three strikeouts, two walks

Along the way, Devers became the first player to strike out 10 times in a team’s first three games of a season — and that’s not all.

He became the first player to strike out 12 times in a team’s first four games. And, yes, with 15 strikeouts through five games he shattered the old record of 13, shared by Pat Burrell in 2001 and Byron Buxton in 2017. Going back to the end of 2024, when Devers fanned 11 times over his final four games, he became the fourth player with multiple strikeouts in nine straight games — and one of those was a pitcher (the other two were a rookie named Aaron Judge in 2016 and Michael A. Taylor in 2021).

With Devers struggling, the Red Sox have likewise stumbled out of the gate, going 1-4 after some lofty preseason expectations, including an 8-5 loss to the Baltimore Orioles in the home opener Monday. To be fair, it’s not all on Devers: Jarren Duran, Devers and Alex Bregman, the top three hitters in the lineup, are a combined 11-for-62 (.177) with no home runs.

But there is one question weighing heaviest on the minds of Red Sox Nation right now: What is really going on with Devers?

It’s easy to say his head simply isn’t in the right space. Devers made headlines early in spring training after the Red Sox signed Bregman, saying he didn’t want to move to DH and that “third base is my position.” He pointed out that when he signed his $331 million extension in January of 2023, the front office promised he would be the team’s third baseman.

That, however, was when a different regime was in charge. Bregman, a Gold Glove winner in 2024, is the better defensive third baseman, so it makes sense to play him there and move Devers — except many players don’t like to DH. Some analysts even build in a “DH penalty,” assuming a player will hit worse there than when he plays the field. While Devers eventually relented and said he’d do whatever will help the team, it was a rocky situation for a few weeks.

But maybe it’s something else. While Devers avoided surgery this offseason, he spent it trying to rebuild strength in both shoulders after dealing with soreness and inflammation throughout 2024. He didn’t play the field in spring training and had just 15 plate appearances. So maybe he is still rusty — or the shoulder(s) are bothering him.

Indeed, Statcast metrics show his average bat speed has dropped from 72.5 mph in 2024 to 70.3 mph so far in 2025 (and those are down from 73.4 mph in 2023). His “fast-swing rate” has dropped from 34.2% in 2023 to 27.9% to 12.2%. Obviously, we’re talking an extremely small sample size for this season, but it’s clear Devers isn’t generating the bat speed we’re used to seeing from him.

That, however, doesn’t explain the complete inability to make contact. Red Sox manager Alex Cora told reporters after the series in Texas that Devers had made alterations with his foot placement — but was having trouble catching up to fastballs. Following Monday’s game, Devers told reporters (via his interpreter) that, “Obviously this is not a position that I’ve done in the past. So I need to get used to it. But I feel good, I feel good.”

Which leads to this question: Does this historic bad start mean anything? Since the DH began in 1973, three DHs began the season with a longer hitless streak than Devers’ 0-for-19 mark, so let’s dig into how the rest of their seasons played out:

  • Don Baylor with the 1982 Angels (0-for-20). Baylor ended up with a pretty typical season for him: .263/.329/.424, 24 home runs.

  • Evan Gattis of the 2015 Astros (0-for-23). Gattis hit .246 with 27 home runs — not as good as he hit in 2014 or 2016, but in line with his career numbers.

  • Curtis Terry with the Rangers in 2021 (0-for-20). Terry was a rookie who ended up playing just 13 games in the majors.

Expanding beyond just the DH position, I searched Baseball-Reference for players in the wild-card era (since 1995) who started a season hitless in at least 20 plate appearances through five games. That gave us a list of … just seven players, including Evan Carter (0-for-22) and Anthony Rendon (0-for-20) last season. Both ended up with injury-plagued seasons. The list also includes Hall of Famer Craig Biggio, who was 0-for-24 for the Houston Astros in 1995. He was fine: He hit .302/.406/.483 that season, made the All-Star team and finished 10th in the MVP voting. J.D. Drew started 0-for-25 through five games with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2005; he hit .286/.412/.520, although an injury limited him to 72 games.

But none of those hitters struck out nearly as often as Devers has.

So let’s focus on the strikeouts and expand our search to most strikeouts through the 15 first games of a season. Given his already astronomical total, Devers is likely to rank high on such a list even if he starts making more contact. Seventeen players struck out at least 25 times through 15 games, topped by Yoan Moncada and Miguel Sano with 29, both in 2018. Not surprisingly, all these seasons have come since 2006 and 12 since 2018.

How did that group fare?

They were actually OK, averaging a .767 OPS and 20 home runs. The best of the group was Matt Olson in 2023, who struck out 25 times in 15 games, but was also hitting well with a .317/.423/.650 line. He went on to hit 53 home runs. The next best season belongs to Giancarlo Stanton in 2018, his first with the Yankees. He finished with 38 home runs and an .852 OPS — but that was a big drop from his MVP season in 2017, when he mashed 59 home runs. His strikeout rate increased from 23.6% in 2017 to 29.9% — and he’s never been as good.

Indeed, that’s the worrisome thing for Devers: Of the 16 players who played the season before (Trevor Story was a rookie in 2016 when he struck out 25 times in 15 games, albeit with eight home runs), 13 had a higher OPS the previous season, many significantly so.

As Cora argued Monday, it’s a small sample size. “You know, this happens in July or August, we’d not even be talking about it,” he said.

That doesn’t really sound quite forthright. A slump, even a five-game slump, with this many strikeouts would absolutely be a topic of discussion. Still, that’s all the Red Sox and Devers have to go on right now: It’s just a few games, nothing one big game won’t fix. They just hope it comes soon.

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