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Georgia Tech Basketball 2020 Player Preview: No.2 F/C Saba Gigiberia

By Dylan Callaghan-Croley

ATLANTA, GEORGIA - JANUARY 19: Overall of the sold out Hank McCamish Pavilion as the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets take on the Louisville Cardinals on January 19, 2019 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Logan Riely/Getty Images)
ATLANTA, GEORGIA - JANUARY 19: Overall of the sold out Hank McCamish Pavilion as the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets take on the Louisville Cardinals on January 19, 2019 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Logan Riely/Getty Images) /
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Up in today’s player spotlight is freshman big man Saba Gigiberia, a 7-foot-0, 250-pound forward/center out of the country, Georgia.

The native of Tbilisi, Georgia is still a rather raw basketball player only playing the sport for about a handful of years or so, picking up the sport at the age of 12 per his Georgia Tech official profile. He has enjoyed early success in his career and made the move to the United States a few years ago for his high school basketball career.

As a prospect, Gigiberia was a three-star prospect and a top-200 prospect in the country as part of the 2020 recrutiing class. He was also ranked by 247Sports as the 35th ranked center in the country and the 22nd ranked player coming out of the state of California. He earned multiple scholarship offers coming out of high school with Boise State, Illinois, Seton Hall, TCU, UNLV, USC, Vanderbilt, and Washington State all showing significant interest in him.

In terms of his role with the team in 2020, it will be interesting to see which route the Yellow Jackets decide to go. On their roster, Gigiberia is the only true center and is also the tallest player by quite a bit, the next tallest player on the roster is Moses Wright at 6-foot-9. If the Yellow Jackets do want to put a center out there at all times, Gigiberia would be in line for significant playing time in the 2020-21 season. If the Jackets want to go with a smaller lineup, they have plenty of options as they can play three-guards and two-forwards; potential combinations such as; Alvarado-Devoe-Usher-Moore-Wright. That remains to be seen and it’s an answer that we’ll find out sooner than later for Josh Pastner’s squad this season.

Either way, Gigiberia is a recruit that Pastner has seemed to very high on and is a player that he appears to have big plans for in the future. It will be interesting to see how he develops during his time with the program as the Jackets have had a strong run of centers in recent times under Pastner including Ben Lammers and James Banks.