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Monday, May 21, 2007
Hewitt’s forced to wait and see
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Either or both of Georgia Tech’s two best players may or may not play for the Jackets next season. Paul Hewitt, who coaches Tech, is like everyone else: He won’t know anything for a while. In the interim, doesn’t he formulate all manner of plans for 2007-2008?
One with Javaris Crittenton and Thaddeus Young.
Another without either.
A third with Crittenton but without Young.
A fourth with Young but without Crittenton.
Actually, Hewitt chooses still another option: None of the above. “I wait until August,” he says, “and I see who’s there.”
Crittenton and Young have entered their names in the NBA draft but have until June 18 to withdraw them and return to Tech. What happens in tonight’s lottery might have a swaying effect on either or both. Then again, it might not.
A coach can go crazy if he sweats every permutation. Hewitt tries not to sweat any of them. Toward that end, he falls back on his own object lesson:
“We’d beaten Iowa in the [2003] NIT, and we had to fly back to Atlanta before we flew back out to play Texas Tech. I sat in the front of the plane with [his assistants] and we looked at the roster we had coming back and how much depth we’d have. And then, the day after we got back from Lubbock, Chris Bosh walked into my office and said he was putting his name in the draft.
“Now maybe I could have seen that one coming, even though Bosh had been telling people he wasn’t leaving. But I didn’t think for one second that Ed Nelson would be transferring, and he came in the day after Bosh and said he was going to Connecticut.”
So much for returning depth. (Two ACC rookies of the year gone in 24 hours!) So much for looking ahead. Says Hewitt: “Ever since then, I never anticipate. I literally just wait until August.”
What’s the alternative? Hewitt couldn’t go recruit seniors of similar stature because most McDonald’s All-Americans commit in November, and the late signing period ended last week. He couldn’t do the quick fix because Tech almost never takes a JUCO transfer. He can’t, in good conscience, try to re-recruit Crittenton and/or Young because they’d see it as disingenuous. (“Of course he wants me to stay. It’ll help him win more games.”)
So Hewitt does nothing. He tries not to handicap the draft because it defies handicapping. (For what it’s worth, Young has inched up NBAdraft.net’s mock matrix from No. 17 to No. 14, and Crittenton, who wasn’t even listed when he declared, is now No. 20, two spots ahead of where Jarrett Jack was taken in 2005.) Hewitt thinks there’s a chance both could be back; if they aren’t, he says, “I hope we put them in position to have long careers.”
If he never coaches either again, he won’t regret their season together. Even though Tech won only one road game and lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament, Hewitt says his rookies “did great. Javaris had a great freshman year, and Thaddeus was outstanding. … I’m not sure how much better they could have been.”
Maybe they’ll become sophomores. If not, Hewitt says, “We have to make the most of the team we have. That’s one of the reasons we work so hard on individual instruction, to be able to absorb [personnel] losses.”
Should Crittenton and Young leave, the temptation will be great to bemoan this early manpower drain as another missed Tech opportunity. Before the hand-wringing begins, here’s another object lesson: Bosh and Nelson exited in the spring of 2003. Less than a year later, the Jackets played for the national championship. Some absorption rate, huh?
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