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Sunday, February 11, 2007
Things coming together for Jackets
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Georgia Tech is primed to break upward. That wretched road losing streak, spanning almost two calendar years, needs to go away, and it should soon enough. The Jackets are getting a sense of themselves. These past three victories — all in Atlanta, the latest over Connecticut in the Georgia Dome — bore the look of a corner having been turned.
Here was Jim Calhoun, UConn’s Hall of Fame coach, on the Jackets’ defense Sunday: “Quite frankly, we couldn’t make a basket … They locked us up and didn’t let us run stuff … For a team that gives us 48 percent [in field-goal percentage defense against ACC opponents], they didn’t play like that.”
March Madness in Atlanta:
Check out the AJC’s Final Four pageThe Huskies didn’t make their ninth basket until the game’s 28th minute, by which time they were 17 points in arrears. This was a game both teams needed for NCAA resume-building — “Whoever won was going to benefit,” Calhoun said — and Tech seized it.
Calhoun on his team’s youth and why it’s no excuse for losing: “No. 1 [for Tech] — and I know his name — he made plays, and he’s a freshman. The young guy from Tennessee, he made plays.”
UConn recruited both Javaris Crittenton, No. 1 in your program, and Thaddeus Young, who’s from Memphis. They signed with Tech, and there was your difference Sunday. Those two are so gifted that, on their good days, they lift everyone around them. The Huskies, who a year ago had so much talent they didn’t know what to do, now conspicuously lack a Crittenton or a Young.
Tech has both, and bit by bit the Jackets are grasping how to blend youth with seasoning, stars with role players, offense with defense. “It depends on the night you catch us,” coach Paul Hewitt said. “Some nights we look like a great team, and sometimes you think, ‘Are they even being coached?’ “
Clearly, these guys are. After losing at woeful Wake Forest, Hewitt found two bench guys - D’Andre Bell and Alade Aminu — willing to hustle and make plays. Bell scored six of Tech’s first nine points Sunday, and Aminu had three first-half assists. Hewitt also promoted Anthony Morrow to the starting five, and suddenly Mr. Catch-and-Shoot shows signs of becoming an offensive player of some versatility.
Morrow scored 10 points in 2 1/2 minutes to break open the game before halftime. The first six were standard-issue — he hit a trey from the corner off a curl and made three free throws after being fouled by Jerome Dyson — but the final two baskets were revelatory. Morrow drove the baseline and shot off the dribble and then, on the next possession, scored off a post-up move.
“I felt like I had to be aggressive in every way possible,” Morrow said, and his assertiveness stood in stark contrast to the stagnant way the Jackets lost to Virginia Tech and Wake two weeks ago. Even without Lewis Clinch, there are a slew of good players on this roster. Even with freshmen as their leading scorers, the Jackets still have everything they need to play in the NCAA tournament.
Everything except a road victory, and that’s about to come. The Jackets play at Florida State on Tuesday and then at Duke five days later. (And the Dookies have already lost three times at home.) Tech seems poised to take either or both.
Said Crittenton: “We’re putting the pieces of the puzzle together. We know we haven’t gotten a road win in a good minute.”
Hearing, Hewitt laughed. “That’s slang — ‘good minute.’ He [the questioner, who in this instance was me] isn’t that young. He might not understand.”
Actually, the point was rather clear. After four consecutive losses, each more egregious than the last, Tech has gone to work. And now it needs 40 good minutes in Tallahassee or Durham and it will be positioned to make something big happen come March.
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