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Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Tech demonstrates it can, will compete
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
East Lansing, Mich. — Much good should come of this. Georgia Tech came to the snowy North and had a shot — a clean, if hurried, look — to beat one of the nation’s most gifted teams on its floor. To say the Jackets deserved to win would be incorrect, but if they play the way they played for roughly 30 of these 40 minutes they’ll deserve to win 20 or so times this season.
In losing 88-86, the Jackets learned they have the scorers to run with anybody. Still at issue is whether they have the urge to guard somebody. This game was lost in the first half, when Michigan State was allowed to make 58.6 percent of its shots. To its credit, Tech scored enough — 54 points in the second on 64.7 percent shooting — to keep the game within reach of a last-gasp rally, and sure enough the rally arrived and Zam Fredrick hoisted a trey to steal it at the end, but he back-rimmed the thing.
No matter. The important thing here wasn’t to win, though that would have been nice, but simply to progress. When you lose to a bad Illinois-Chicago team by 22 points at your place, you have cause to question everything. Asked what Wednesday’s margin would have been had the Jackets given a similar non-effort, Paul Hewitt said, “40 or 50.” And then: “I had a dream the other night that it was 42-2 at half.” And it wasn’t State with the deuce.
For four minutes, this game seemed en route to something lopsided. The Spartans flew to leads of 12-3 and 15-5. Then Tech decided to play, and when Tech decides to play it can still be rather good. As has been suspected, some of these sophomores — Ra’Sean Dickey, Anthony Morrow, Jeremis Smith — are greater talents than the seniors they replaced. Shrugging off the taunts from the idiots in the Izzone (as the MSU student section is known), the three mustered an aggregate 61 points.
“When we play for each other, instead of playing young, we’re a very good team,” Hewitt said. The Jackets played for each other for the majority of these 40 minutes, but a simple majority wasn’t enough to carry the night. There’s a lesson in that, too.
Hewitt: “It simply comes down to, ‘Did you come here to play, or did you come here to win a championship?’ You win championships with defense and rebounding. I told the guys in the first four minutes of the second half [after State’s Paul Davis got himself going], ‘You’ve given up.’?”
The Jackets hadn’t really. They never trailed by more than 12 points, and they have enough shooters — as opposed to last season’s team after B.J. Elder got hurt at Kansas on New Year’s Day — to give themselves a chance. Ask the Spartans, who led by 10 points with 1:27 to play and were reduced to praying that Fredrick’s last shot clanged.
Scoring won’t be the issue with these guys, but Tech didn’t rise to the 2004 NCAA championship game on the backs of scorers. It got there because a bunch of role players dedicated themselves to the greater good, defending like demons and playing every possession as if lives were at stake. When you have success like that, you invariably start signing bigger-name recruits, and almost no heralded recruit made his name defending.
Will these Jackets make such a commitment? It’s far too early to know, but much of Wednesday’s game struck a positive chord. Tech outrebounded the nation’s best rebounding team and left the esteemed Tom Izzo wondering about the work ethic of his own guys. “If you don’t check [meaning defend], you don’t win big games,” Izzo said. “If you don’t check, you don’t win championships.”
Michigan State could well win a national championship four months hence. If these Tech sophomores learn from their tutorials this winter, they’ll be in the chase come 2007 and 2008.
Permalink | Comments (26) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
Pursuing Pierre would behoove Braves
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Juan Pierre. He’s exceptional. He’s available. He’s exactly what the Braves need to push their consecutive streak of division titles to 15. Not only that, he’s capable of doing enough with his bat, glove, legs and heart to end their annoying habit of vanishing each October.
We’re talking about a guy who arrives at the ballpark five hours before most of his teammates. Prior to games on the road, he fires balls against the outfield walls to make sure that he knows all of the possible ricochets. He even spends time rolling balls from home plate toward first and third base, just to see how far to place his bunt attempts down the lines.
Here’s the biggest thing: He’s the ultimate winner. In fact, it was Pierre’s considerable energy that did the most to propel the Florida Marlins to a world championship for the 2003 season. In other words, if the Braves take my advice about Pierre, the choppers and the chanters needn’t worry about those gathering storms. You have the suddenly potent Mets, for instance, but this is only a mirage. They are doing what they always do after imploding in a New York minute, and that is, they are throwing a bunch of pennies at folks and praying that it works. They got Carlos Delgado to smash the ball, and they got Billy Wagner to keep hitters from doing so.
This isn’t a mirage: Rafael Furcal is going, going, almost gone. All that he did during his six years with the Braves was provide a wonderful spark as a leadoff hitter and own a solid glove at shortstop that nearly was golden last season.
I mean, didn’t he? And isn’t it time to wonder if the Braves will vanish earlier next season than normal?
Jack McKeon chuckled over the phone on Wednesday from his home in Elon, N.C., between chomping on one of his eternal cigars. He’s a baseball lifer who most recently managed the Marlins before retiring after last season. He chuckled, because the Mets and Furcal notwithstanding, he can’t fathom how anybody can believe that the Braves will stop winning the National League East as long as John Schuerholz is general manager and Bobby Cox is manager.
“Listen. Everybody thought we were going to walk away with the thing last year after we picked up one guy, and that one guy was Carlos Delgado,” said McKeon, still chuckling, whose Marlins finished seven games behind the Braves. “You know, I like Furcal, but there is nobody who is not replaceable. Look at how the Braves brought in all of those young kids [18 rookies] last year, and they just took off. It’s getting the right players, and that’s the knack that Bobby and John have. They’re always able to get somebody who fits in and can pick them up.”
Did I mention Juan Pierre? He’s the Marlins’ center fielder. With a phone call to those operating the latest fire sale for this sorry Florida franchise, Pierre is the Braves’ left fielder (some guy named Andruw Jones already is in center).
Yes, Pierre slumped to .276 last season, but that still was just eight points lower than Furcal’s batting average during what was considered a superlative year for the Braves’ catalyst. And Pierre’s lifetime mark is .305 as the leadoff guy that the Braves would have with a Furcal departure. He steals bases, and he rarely is caught (267 out of 363 attempts). He makes contact more often than not (never more than 52 strikeouts in a season). Mostly, since the Braves are traditionally a finesse team, they need as much grit as they can get, and Pierre is the grittiest player in the game. He never wants to leave the field.
Since Pierre’s first full year in the majors with the Colorado Rockies in 2001, he hasn’t played less than 152 games in a season. He has spent each of his three seasons with the Marlins playing every game, including every inning during the 2004 season.
“In all of the decades I’ve been in the game, I’ve only had two workaholics — Tony Gwynn and Juan Pierre,” said McKeon, still employed by the Marlins. As a result, he couldn’t say how he thought Pierre would fit with the Braves. Then again, he didn’t have to.
Permalink | Comments (105) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
BCS is A-OK with me
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
God bless the BCS.
I’m for anything that will keep big-time college football from that absolutely naïve idea called a playoff system.
Maybe you’ve recalled that I’ve mentioned the significant flaws of a playoff system in the past, and they range from more time for student-athletes away from academics to greater controversy than now over who gets in and who goes where.
We’ll revisit all of that another day. As for this one, the Bowl Championship Series is doing just fine, thank you. It might need tweaking each year, but the BCS is about the best solution you can have for selecting a national champion each year.
That is, if you want ONE national champion. I haven’t a problem with the polls and the computers providing multiple national champions. It gives more folks a chance to claim that they are the best (see 1990 with Georgia Tech and Colorado).
Anyway, Southern Cal and Texas clearly are the nation’s two premier teams this season. And guess what? Barring unlikely upsets this weekend (Southern Cal against UCLA and Texas against Colorado), the BCS will have both of those teams playing in the Rose Bowl for the national title.
End of BCS controversy. Well, not that there ever should have been one.
Permalink | Comments (22) | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
