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Friday, December 22, 2006
Jackets evolve at Bulldogs’ expense
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Early returns had been mixed, but that’s what happens when a team’s two best players are freshmen. Georgia Tech beat Purdue and Memphis, two pretty good squads, but lost to Miami — which just was felled by mighty Binghamton — and Vanderbilt. Six weeks into the season, it was hard to know what to make of the Jackets.
We know somewhat more today. We know Tech has enough skill and enough of a developing mesh to handle a solid Georgia team in a way nobody had. We know also that the Bulldogs, for all their upgrades, still lack the sort of transcendent player Tech has in Thaddeus Young. Admittedly, that isn’t the greatest of sins. There aren’t many Thaddeus Youngs anywhere, not even in the NBA.
Some guys score because they shoot a lot. Young, who had 24 points Friday, scores because scoring is second nature. He has every sort of shot — he opened the game with a dunk and essentially ended it with a 3-pointer inside the final five minutes — and all the moves an 18-year-old could hope to have. Young hasn’t been the focal point of Tech’s offense to date, but he will be come March.
“He’s really good,” said Paul Hewitt, speaking of Young, “but he hasn’t even scratched the surface.”
For Tech, that’s a reason to be cheerful. Here’s another: The Jackets’ prized rookies — Young and point guard Javaris Crittenton — are beginning to grasp what Division I basketball requires. “It’s a big difference,” Young said. “[In high school] it was easy because I was so much bigger than everybody else.”
The trouble with young and gifted players is that they enter college having only a passing acquaintance with defense. The losses to Miami and Vandy smacked the Jackets upside the noggin: If you don’t guard somebody, you can’t win as big as your assets suggest you should. Tech defended for long stretches Friday with a ferocity unseen since the Final Four run of 2004. That’s progress.
True, the Bulldogs were without Sundiata Gaines, their clever point guard, and that diminished them at both ends. Without Gaines to pressure the ball, Tech was free to run its halfcourt sets, and rarely has it run them better than it did this night. The Jackets either scored off backdoor cuts or got fouled — Tech took 15 first-half free throws to Georgia’s four — and the capacity to score easy points ultimately wore the Bulldogs to a frazzle.
Said Young: “We watched them on film and saw they don’t even look at the ball. They look at the man. We expected [the backdoors] to work the first couple of times before they picked up on it, but they never did.”
Georgia, meanwhile, was getting nothing easy. Gaines’ absence forced Mike Mercer, the Bulldogs’ leading scorer, to move from the wing to the point, and Mercer is far better at receiving than distributing. He had a nightmare game — seven turnovers, no baskets — and Georgia was lucky to be within four at halftime. Soon its luck was gone. Tech embarked on an 18-4 run, Young scoring eight of the 18, and that was that.
As encouraging as winning was — “Great for the alums,” Hewitt said — the victory still fell short of being a watershed. The game featured nearly as many turnovers (36) as baskets (42).
Even after Tech had established its superiority, its sloppiness kept the Bulldogs within theoretical reach. A night like this hinted at what the Jackets can do if they apply themselves; at issue is whether they’ll apply themselves as a matter of course.
If they do, they’ll be playing in the NCAA tournament, playing beyond the first weekend, maybe beyond the second. Georgia is likely a Big Dance invitee itself, and Georgia had no answers for Tech’s talent. This was a needed first step for the Jackets, who collectively have only begun to scratch the surface.
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