There’s a line between being a discerning member of the new media and evaluating (and even nitpicking) a performance, and just being a fan and reveling in some of the cooler parts first. Forgive me, but when we summon the kind of defensive performance that leaves our opponent dazed and bewildered with 28 points, I’m going to revel in it before we get to the rough parts.
We all knew that the Yellow Jackets were going to have a hard time scoring — their game plan plays right into our hands — but whoa, boy, did they ever. Georgia Tech scored 16 in the first half, then added 12 in the second to finish with 28 — a number that is the lowest by an ACC team in the shot clock era, and the fifth-lowest ever.
They missed all 12 of their three-point tries, and threes made up almost a third of their shots, which is way more than they usually take, indicating that they weren’t comfortable in their offense. There seemed to be a very good chance that the Jackets would make less than 10 baskets in the game for most of the second half, but they finally made their 10th with three minutes left and finished with 12. They managed a meager two assists on those 12 baskets, and turned the ball over 10 times.
Charles Mitchell (3-4) seemed to be OK, but they couldn’t get it to him, and leading scorer Marcus Georges-Hunt was a mess (3-9, 7 points, only two attempts from the line). This was the Pack Line at its Pack Liniest — Georgia Tech couldn’t get into the lane (or get the ball to their bigs in it), and resorted to 15-18 foot jumpers and threes, because they didn’t have anywhere else to go. It was a scattering, a smothering, and a covering.
Georgia Tech’s final efficiency mark was 0.54 points per possession, which is… get ready for it… only our third-best showing this season.
Offensively, we were just alright. There were things I liked (Malcolm getting to the rim and anywhere else he wanted on a 6-8 night, Marial Shayok cutting his way to six points, Isaiah Wilkins providing a jolt, and Evan nailing consecutive shots in garbage time) and things I didn’t (the bigs struggling to finish around the rim and combining to make five of 17 shots and Justin and AG relying a little too much on trying to draw fouls, a theatric approach that looks great when it works and like they don’t know how basketball is played when it doesn’t). For the evening, we logged our second-worst efficiency rate (109.6) of conference play, and our second-lowest assist percentage (54.2), which are both good numbers for most teams, but not great ones for us.
I was most concerned about keeping Georgia Tech off the glass, and while we didn’t win the backboard battle (23.3% OREB, 74.4% DREB to 25.6% OREB and 76.7% DREB), we did keep a team that had previously been grabbing more than 40% of their own misses way under their average. Sometimes, containment is good enough.
18-0. VT on Sunday.
