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Friday, March 16, 2007
Jackets’ skill, effort can’t meet when it matters
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Chicago — The talent didn’t fit, so this is the obit. Georgia Tech had enough good players to go a long way this month, but it was always a mismatched set. And as the Yellow Jackets were being outfought by UNLV at the end Friday, it was clear Paul Hewitt had developed, not by design but by necessity, a two-platoon system.
He had his “skill” guys, and he had his “effort” guys. But not enough of the latter guys were skilled enough, and not enough of the former could be counted on to give a consistent effort. In Hewitt’s incisive post-mortem, he conceded his Jackets had become exactly what he didn’t want them to be — “a feel-good team.”
Feel-good teams look great when they’re making shots and running free, but when the feeling fades (and it always does) such assemblages get frustrated and let the details slide. “When you’re scouting, you like to sniff out teams that exhibit some of that ‘feel-good,’ ” Hewitt said, “and we had some of that in the first half — the bickering. I’m disappointed. I thought we had gotten past it.”
But then he looked up and it was 11-3 and 22-10 and 29-15, and now Tech was chasing yet another game and Hewitt was having to deploy exotic combinations — for long stretches he had starting guards Javaris Crittenton and Anthony Morrow sit while Mario West and D’Andre Bell, two willing defenders, dragged the Jackets back — and such was the force of the Jackets’ rally that it seemed they were going to pull this one out. Only they couldn’t.
The same offensive rebounds that fueled Tech’s comeback undid the Jackets in the final two minutes. (The Rebels had five on the game’s two decisive possessions.) Said Jeremis Smith: “Rebounding is all about will, and they had a little more will.”
Said Morrow: “We got out-toughed. They showed a lot of toughness at the end. We’ve got to come up with those rebounds.”
Said West: “In a very close game that was going back and forth, it was little things — boxing out, coming up with loose balls, being disciplined on defense — that cost us the game.”
That’s the trouble with talent, young talent especially. Attention to detail suffers because talented young guys always figure they’ll override a lack of fundamentals with their surplus of aptitude. Alas, the two most talented young Jackets — Crittenton and Thaddeus Young — took 23 shots between them Friday and managed only 16 points, and UNLV was allowed to take a lasting lead with 71 seconds left on, of all things, a layup off an inbounds pass.
“We didn’t do what we should have done [this season],” Morrow said. “This is a life lesson. We lost this game … with all we could have done.”
Said Young: “We lost games we weren’t supposed to lose. Good teams don’t lose games they aren’t supposed to lose.”
For all their assets, these Jackets will be remembered as being closer to mediocre than to good. They were gifted enough to beat North Carolina and Memphis but so unsound they lost a dozen games. Three years ago Tech played for the national championship because Hewitt had a bunch of effort guys who were just skilled enough. This time there was no happy medium. This time they couldn’t even get past an opponent that made only 31.7 percent of its shots in Round 1.
“We had a lot of talent,” Crittenton said, “but sometimes we just didn’t listen to the coaching staff. We didn’t do everything in our power.”
In the grand scheme, they didn’t come all that close. One-and-done in the ACC tournament, and now one-and-done in the Big Dance. Assuming Crittenton and Young return — and there’s no good reason to think they won’t — big things will be expected next season. But teams that do big things must first master the little things, and these Jackets never quite could. Thus does the feel-good team come home feeling bad.
“It wasn’t fun,” Crittenton said. “Any time you lose, it’s never fun.”
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