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Saturday, March 15, 2008
Felton’s Dogs defy all logic
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
There weren’t many Georgia fans in the building, and some of those carried a tuba. But if anything, that probably made this team feel right at home.
Anonymity seems to work for the Bulldogs. So, apparently, do nonsensical story lines, natural disasters and blind, spinning 3-point shots by backup freshman guards.
Functioning on guts and running on fumes, the Bulldogs swept a basketball doubleheader Saturday. They have won more games in 72 hours of this borderline freakish SEC tournament (three) than they did in the final seven weeks of the regular season (two).
“We made history,” said guard Sundiata Gaines.
Yes. And they’re defying logic in the process. They upset Kentucky in overtime 60-56. They returned hours later to dump Mississippi State 64-60. They have landed in the SEC championship game for the first time since 1997, with a chance to go to the NCAA tournament.
I’m not sure what the odds are on today’s game against Arkansas.
Does it matter?
The Bulldogs did more at the Alexander Memorial Coliseum than merely create the college basketball oddity: the day-night doubleheader. They reaffirmed that the program — battered this season by suspensions, injuries, defections and rumors of a head coach possibly being nudged off a cliff by his athletics director — isn’t nearly the mess that many believed.
They have eight scholarship players. Somehow, this formula is working — even among only 100 fans in the first game and 200 in the second. (Wow. They’re getting a following.)
You know what else works for Georgia? Dennis Felton.
If this guy isn’t given a warm embrace by his athletics director, his university and the student body after what has happened in the past few days, then there’s something really funky in the air in Athens.
“He’s been great,” said Georgia senior Dave Bliss. “He’s believed in us the whole time.”
The day started with the win over Kentucky. The less than 100 Georgia fans in attendance were outnumbered by the some 500 blue-clad Kentucky fans, prompting former Auburn coach Sonny Smith to crack: “Kentucky’s known for horse-breeding, but I didn’t know they could get this many family members in a 24-hour period.”
It was announced that the general public would not be allowed into the game. But Kentucky fans don’t take rejection well. Outside the arena, a female security guard surveyed fans trying to talk their way into the Coliseum and said, “There’s going to be a fight out here soon.”
And then: “You know, somebody already offered me $5,000 for my [yellow] jacket [as a disguise to get in].”
Inside the arena, Kentucky fan Gary Riley, who is white, said, “Ramel’s my brother.” The Wildcats’ Ramel Bradley is African- American.
As it turned out, each school was given 400 tickets to distribute as it pleased. The idea was that they would go only to school officials and the like. But the Wildcats made certain their entire allotment was distributed.
What of Georgia’s allotment? Athletics director Damon Evans said only, “My understanding is everybody got the same. But it looked like they had more. Hey, it is what it is.”
It didn’t seem to affect the team.
You expected the Dogs to drag their limbs onto the court for game two. Felton seemed either to be conceding defeat or trying to anger and fire up his own players when he ripped the format following the morning win, saying, in part: “I think everybody understands that this tournament is our only chance to make it to the [NCAA] tournament. I can’t help but feel that when that decision was made, they made it knowing well that they were basically eliminating our chances of winning the [SEC] tournament. …”
Whatever his motives, the Dogs didn’t look dead. They jumped out to a 15-4 lead before Mississippi State realized this wouldn’t be easy and rallied to tie it before the half, 33-all.
The Dogs hung around for most of the second half. Gaines fouled out with 7:18 left for the second time of the day.
But a jumper by Billy Humphrey with a minute remaining gave them a 61-60 lead — and they never fell behind again.
Against Kentucky, Georgia trailed 56-54 with 8.8 seconds left. Following a timeout, backup guard Zac Swansey — who entered the game after Gaines fouled out in regulation — dribbled to the front court, then turned, spun and fired a trey over Kentucky’s best perimeter defender, Ramon Harris, with 1.2 seconds left.
During a timeout, the pubic-address announcer reminded fans not to storm the court. It was kind of funny.
Swansey was supposed to pass to Humphrey, but he thought better of it.
He said later, “It wasn’t a typical SEC tournament game.”
I’m still not sure which of the 97 possibilities he was referring to.
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‘Psycho T’ all about effort all the time
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Charlotte — Even before you knew who’d get the ball, you knew who’d get the ball. Even before you could sort out exactly what was happening on the right baseline in the tied game’s final moments, you knew how this would end: Tyler Hansbrough was going to will the ball into the basket, and North Carolina was going to win.
And that’s what happened. The best player in the country made the biggest shot of his collegiate life, and the nation’s No. 1 team danced merrily away.
Actually, the dancing was done by Hansbrough himself. Pyscho T, as he’s known, made the winning shot with eighth-tenths of a second remaining, and he spent the next 15 seconds flailing his arms and kicking his legs and scaring the wits out of his teammates. Said Wayne Ellington: “I was going to give him a high five, but he kept going [with the manic dance], and I started backing up.”
Some people don’t like the way Tyler Hansbrough plays. There’s a word for such people. That word is, “moronic.”
If everybody played like Hansbrough, the basketball world would be a better place. It would be a place where effort is a greater determinant than talent, a place where the best player isn’t the guy who jumps the highest but the one who tries the hardest.
Asked Saturday what makes Hansbrough so good, Roy Williams said: “His heart — I’ve had players more gifted, but I’ve never had a player who wants it more. That jump shot [the game-winner from the baseline after Hansbrough ran down Ty Lawson’s miss] — he’s made that jump shot a lot of times. He’s out there before practice every day, working on his shooting.”
Fighting to gain entry to the NCAA tournament, Virginia Tech outplayed the mighty Heels in a not-exactly-neutral setting. As Seth Greenberg, the Hokies’ distraught coach, said afterward: “The game played out the way we wanted … We basically controlled the game for 39 minutes and 59 seconds.”
That final second was the difference. Tech could have seized Lawson’s rebound. “We had a good chance of grabbing it,” said Tech’s A.D. Vassallo, but so long as Hansbrough is on the floor nobody else has the best chance. He pursues everything, grabs everything and holds on. He has the best hands, the keenest instincts, the biggest heart.
“The ball had a pretty good roll out to me,” Hansbrough said, understating his part hugely. “I picked it up and let it fly. I was pretty glad it went in.”
That one play beat Virginia Tech, but without a dozen early Hansbrough plays the Heels wouldn’t have been within 10. He scored 26 points and took nine rebounds. He followed a missed Wayne Ellington free throw to tie the score inside the final three minutes. He tipped away Malcolm Delaney’s dribble on what could have been the go-ahead fast break inside the last minute.
Williams again: “I’d be the best dadgum coach who ever lived if I could put that heart in all my players, but I’m the luckiest coach who ever lived because I have one like that.”
Until Saturday afternoon, Hansbrough’s younger brother had been involved in the weekend’s wildest doings. Ben Hansbrough plays for Mississippi State and was on the floor when the storm lashed the Georgia Dome. Asked if he’d spoken to his sibling since the SEC tournament was halted and then moved, Tyler Hansbrough said: “I’ve called him four times and sent him a text, but he hasn’t answered. But I know he’s all right because I’ve talked to my dad. He’s down there.”
At this stage in Ben Hansbrough’s life,
it would be hard to imagine him being fazed by anything wind-related. He did, after all, grow up in the same household as Psycho T, the human cyclone.
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Slow greens? Just stroke it a little harder
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Orlando — Going into the locker room at Bay Hill Golf Club on Saturday afternoon, Tiger Woods happened into the host, Arnold (himself) Palmer. “And what did he say to you?” somebody asked Tiger.
“He said ‘Get off your butt and play a good round today,’ ” Tiger said, and he grinned amiably, with visions of the 66 he had just posted rolling around in his mind.
After the first two rounds of Arnie’s Invitational, Woods was somewhat less than sociable. It was the greens. Woods just doesn’t go taking his game around to any old tournament, like the Pods, or the Wyndham, or even Sugarloaf. But he never misses one of Palmer’s shindigs. It’s the least a guy can do for the man who says, “Don’t call me ‘The King.’ “
For the first four years of the 2000s, Bay Hill belonged to Woods. He won them back to back to back to back. Hasn’t won since. Last year he stormed out of the gate with a 64, but never broke par the rest of the week — and polished it off with a roaring 76.
After the first two rounds this week, he was only 2 under par, grinding and growling. It was the greens. Some kind of bug had made a feast of the old greens, and Bay Hill agronomists had overseeded, to the displeasure of several contestants, especially Woods, who was not particularly diplomatic about it.
Problem was, the greens were slow, and no two greens were alike, as he saw it. “Is the practice green like the greens on the course?” he was asked.
“No,” he said.
“No correlation?” He answered, “Zero. It [the practice green] is the best green on the property.”
Saturday, Woods had found a solution to his case against the greens: hit the ball closer to the hole, then hit the putts a lick harder. There you had it, and under the sun’s lowering rays, he left Bay Hill in a much more sociable mood and hovering in a cluster around the top of the leaderboard, 6 under the most popular number.
Vijay Singh lost his lead with a double bogey on the 6th hole. Nick Watney filled the gap with an eagle on the 12th, then threw it right back when he hit his tee shot out of bounds on the evil 16th. Bubba Watson, the left-handed rustic from Panhandle Florida, aroused a colony of excited guests at the end, but all he had to do was post a series of six birdies in a row finishing up. Singh chipped in the 15th and saved his place among the leaders.
At the end of the day, though, Sean O’Hair led the choir. He was also 6 under par, but he had to shoot 63 to make it, lowest round of the week, and so you had O’Hair, Tiger and three other guys breaking from the inside post at 6 under, Singh, Watson and Bart Bryant — not to be taken lightly. Remember, Bart is the Bryant who took Tiger to the cleaners in the final round of the Tour Championship by six strokes in 2005.
So, after three days the grumping about the greens had subsided somewhat, which indicated that just about everybody had decided they should hit their putts harder. And straighter, and get off Arnie’s back.
After all, it’s his tournament, his course, and if they don’t like it, all they have to do is stay home, or take it to “The King.” Sorry, your highness.
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Braves miss their cockiness
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Lake Buena Vista, Fla. — The key to the Braves’ season isn’t whether John Smoltz, Tim Hudson and Tom Glavine pitch in the vicinity of Cy Smoltz, Cy Glavine and Cy Maddux. It isn’t whether Chipper Jones keeps his bruises to a minimum. It isn’t whether Rafael Soriano is the definitive closer, or whether the Phillies and the Mets are more vulnerable than they seem, or whether Andruw Jones left some of his magic in center field.
It is all of those things, along with the following: whether the Braves can get their swagger back.
The Braves did have a swagger, by the way. It wasn’t one of those loud and gaudy things, exemplified by the storied likes of Jack Tatum’s Raiders, Patrick Ewing’s Hoyas or any given edition of the old Yankees. It was quiet, subtle, dignified, but it was there. You’ve probably forgotten about it since the Braves finished third in the National League East the past two seasons after 14 straight division titles.
Glavine hasn’t forgotten. He helped invent that Braves’ swagger during his 16 years with the franchise through the 2002 season. Afterward, he spent five years with the Mets watching that swagger evolve from something potent to nothing worth mentioning. “From being on the other side, it wasn’t there last year,” said Glavine, now back at Disney’s Wide World of Sports this spring to help resurrect it with his presence along with his Hall of Fame arm.
Added Glavine, “Looking at that [Braves] team last year, for the first time that I can remember, it wasn’t there. Even in 2006 as a Met, when we won our division and we were ahead by how many games, I can remember coming into Atlanta, and they were pretty far out of the lead on Labor Day weekend. But there was still that feeling in the back of your mind that these guys are still dangerous.”
Swagger does that.
Swagger makes you appear more deadly than you really are, because swagger gets into the psyche of your opponents.
Swagger also gives you a sense of entitlement, no matter what.
The thing is, swagger can disappear in a flash when you go from a mostly established roster to one that has been a haven for youth and inexperience during the past three seasons. There was the fluke of 2005, when the Braves won their last division title despite using 18 rookies. It’s just that the Braves’ swagger was destined to vanish in the aftermath for a significant reason: No Cy Smoltz, Cy Glavine and Cy Maddux. That’s in the vintage sense and the literal sense, with Glavine in New York until this year and Greg Maddux bolting after the 2003 season for the Chicago Cubs.
“You know, it’s easy to have that swagger when you’ve got three or four guys going out there on the mound and just dominating,” said Jeff Francoeur, who hasn’t experienced as much during his two seasons as the Braves right fielder with a prolific offense and just flashes of the Braves’ past in the starting rotation. “If we can keep our pitchers healthy, I think we can get that swagger back knowing that, hey, all we have to do is score three or four runs and play good defense, and we can win 100 games. I think that’s what those Braves teams had in the past.”
That’s definitely what those Braves teams had through the 1990s and into the early part of this century. They also had Bobby Cox as their highly capable manager, and he hasn’t left. So you have to figure that he remembers how the swagger looked, felt and smelled, and he has an idea of how to get it back.
Said Cox, after a quick smile, “Well, to be honest, we’ve never had a lot of swagger, but there’s always been that feeling of dominance. I mean, for 14 straight years, we dominated. So you lose that a little bit.” Then Cox paused, before easing back into a smile and adding, “We’d like to get dominance back on our résumé.”
If so, the Braves will have another word back on their résumé: “Champions,” of their division, if nothing else.
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Felton has UGA on track
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
There were fewer than 100 Georgia fans in the building, which if nothing else probably made this team feel right at home.
Anonymity seems to work for the Bulldogs. So, apparently, do nonsensical storylines, natural disasters and blind, spinning three-point attempts by backup freshman guards.
You know what else works for Georgia? Dennis Felton.
If this guy isn’t given a warm embrace by his athletic director, his university and the student body after what has happened in the last few days, then there’s something really funky in the air in Athens.
The Bulldogs’ 60-56, overtime win over Kentucky on Saturday in the SEC tournament in the eerie surroundings of mostly empty Alexander Memorial Coliseum did more than merely create the college basketball oddity: the day-night doubleheader.
It reaffirmed that the program — battered this season by suspensions, injuries, defections and rumors of a head coach possibly being nudged off a cliff by his athletic director — isn’t nearly the mess that many believed.
The Bulldogs’ scheduled evening semifinal against Mississippi State — while significant for a potentially and previously implausible NCAA tournament bid — almost seemed trivial by comparison to what had already happened. Georgia hadn’t won two games in the SEC tournament since 1997 (when it lost in the finals) — and this didn’t look like a team that would even win one.
After Friday’s tornado forced the postponement of the Kentucky game, the Bulldogs board their team bus after midnight, only to find the streets to their downtown hotel blocked.
“We had to actually walk part of the way, right smack through the Kentucky hotel because the police wouldn’t allow our bus to get close enough to the hotel to drop us off on the curb,” said coach Dennis Felton. “It was 1:30 by the time we got back.”
Things got only stranger. Saturday’s game was advertised as being open to only players’ families, cheerleaders, bands and the media. But there was more than 500 blue-clad Kentucky fans in the building, prompting former Auburn coach Sonny Smith to crack: “Kentucky’s known for horse-breeding. But I didn’t know they could get this many family members in a 24-hour period.”
Smith added: “It would take the National Guard to keep Kentucky fans out of here. The Georgia fans must be up in Kentucky hunting chickens.”
Outside the arena, a female security guard surveyed the Kentucky fans trying to talk their way into the Coliseum and said, “There’s going to be a fight out here soon.”
And then: “You know, somebody already offered me $5,000 for my [yellow] jacket [as a disguise to get in].”
Inside the arena, Kentucky fan Gary Riley, who is white, said, “Ramel’s my brother.” The Wildcats’ Ramel Bradley is African American.
He said he was approached by a woman outside the arena. “She gave us eight tickets and told us not to ask any questions.”
As it turned out, each school was given 400 tickets to distribute as it pleased. The idea was that they would go only to school officials and the like. But the Wildcats made certain their entire allotment was distributed.
What of Georgia’s allotment? Either nobody tried or nobody cared. Feel free to pick a conspiracy theory. It’s about the only thing this program hasn’t had this year.
The spinning three-point shot?
Cross that one off the list.
Georgia trailed, 56-54, with 8.8 seconds left. Following a timeout, backup guard Zac Swansey — who was replacing senior Sundiata Gaines, who had fouled out in regulation — dribbled to the front court, then turned, spun and fired a trey over Kentucky’s best perimeter defender, Ramon Harris, with 1.2 seconds left.
Swansey, who was supposed to pass off to teammate Billy Humphrey but thought better of it, said later: “It wasn’t a typical SEC tournament game.”
I’m still not sure which of the 97 possibilities he was referring to.
How about another conspiracy theory? Felton said he “objected vehemently” to the post-tornado format that would have his team play again a few hours later. He would’ve preferred a three-game Sunday, with both semis being played earlier in the morning.
“I think everybody understands that this is our only chance to make it to the [NCAA],” he said, “and I can’t help but feel that when that decision was made, they did it knowing well they were basically eliminating our chances of winning the [SEC].”
But suddenly, nothing seemed impossible.
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Predicting the Field of 65
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
A conference tournament is supposed to be the forum for an iffy team to make its case.
This year has seen a slew of major-conference teams pleading, “Nolo contendre.”
Thursday was one of the stranger days in college basketball annals. Almost every team presumed to be on the proverbial bubble contrived to lose. Ole Miss lost to Georgia. Maryland lost to Boston College. Baylor lost to Colorado. Arizona, Oregon and Arizona State lost in the Pac-10.
On Saturday, Virginia Tech lost to North Carolina on a Tyler Hansbrough jumper with 0.8 seconds left. Of his Hokies, coach Seth Greenberg said: “If somebody watched that game and thinks we’re not one of the 65 best teams in the country, they’re certifiably insane.”
Some years a field of 65 doesn’t seem big enough. This isn’t one of those. This is a year where the field could shrink by 10 and not omit anyone of consequence.
But it won’t, which is where we invoke the First Rule of Bracketing: Those 65 teams, however flawed, must come from somewhere. Here’s one guess as to their identities:
East Regional matchups
1. North Carolina
16. SWAC champ/Mt. St. Mary’s
8. Marquette
9. Kansas State
5. Washington State
12. Ohio State
4. Butler
13. Oral Roberts
6. BYU
11. Arizona
3. Xavier
14. American
7. Michigan State
10. Baylor
2. Georgetown
15. Belmont
—————-
West Regional
1. UCLA
15. Maryland-Baltimore County
8. Miami
9. Arkansas
5. Pitt
12. Western Kentucky
4. Indiana
13. George Mason
5. UNLV
11. Virginia Tech
3. Drake
14. WAC champ
7. Mississippi State
10. St. Mary’s
2. Texas
15. Portland State
—————-
South Regional
1. Tennessee
16. MEAC champ
8. Gonzaga
9. Texas A&M
5. Purdue
12. Temple/Massachusetts
4. Louisville
13. Cornell
6. Notre Dame
11. Illinois State
3. Stanford
14. Winthrop
7. Oklahoma
10. South Alabama
2. Duke
15. Austin Peay
—————-
Midwest Regional
1. Memphis
16. Southland champ
8. Davidson
9. Kentucky
5. Connecticut
12. St. Joseph’s
4. Vanderbilt
13. Siena
6. Clemson
11. West Virginia
3. Wisconsin
14. Big West champ
7. Southern Cal
10. Kent State
2. Kansas
15. San Diego
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Just another jolt in Dogs’ crazy season
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Most figured it was going to take some cataclysmic event for Georgia to make it through the SEC basketball tournament this weekend.
You just assumed it would be something relatively pedestrian, like Kentucky and Tennessee losing.
Instead, the Georgia Dome almost blew over.
What next?
“I was in the coach’s locker room,” coach Dennis Felton said. “It was just myself and my assistant, Mike Jones. The only thing I heard was the sound of sand falling down between the walls. I just looked at him and chuckled and said, ‘Those are the rats.’ “
Injuries. Suspensions. Tornado.
Georgia will make it through this basketball season one day, hopefully intact. Needing a miracle, it got bad weather. At 9:40 p.m., when the Bulldogs were still in the locker room waiting for their quarterfinal game against Kentucky, play during the overtime game between Mississippi State and Alabama stopped.
Bands stopped.
Fans got quiet.
The only noise: It sounded like an airplane was landing on the roof of the Georgia Dome. Rafters swayed. Pieces of insulation floated from the ceiling down to the floor. A tarp covering one wall tore off the wall. A bolt fell into the stands. A washer fell to press row. Fans in the temporary bleachers began to scatter. Players and cheerleaders cleared the floor.
And you thought just Georgia’s season was a mess. You should’ve seen it outside.
I’ve spent too many nights at this intersection of sports and the bizarre. I sat in Candlestick Park in San Francisco the night the World Series was interrupted by an earthquake. I sat ringside in an outdoor stadium in Las Vegas when a paraglider crashed the Evander Holyfield-Riddick Bowe heavyweight championship.
The night worked out OK for Holyfield. He was a heavy underdog, but regained the title.
Maybe divine intervention will help Georgia. The Dogs have already suffered through a season of the bizarre, so it can’t possibly hurt.
Hey, what’s one more thing?
“Yeah,” said Felton, smiling.
Their game was postponed. Time, site and weather conditions were pending.
Outside the Dome late Friday, chunks of insulation, steel and broken glass covered the ground. There was debris and turned-over trashcans everywhere. Lightposts in the plaza between the Dome and the Georgia World Congress Center were bent over. A concrete parking sign along Northside Drive was pulled out of the ground.
As play in the Mississippi State-Alabama game finally resumed one hour and four minutes later — with 2:11 left in overtime — loud claps of thunder could still be heard inside. With every sound, several fans in the temporary bleachers turned and looked up at the ceiling, as if worrying that something was going to fall.
Things were no less settled on the court. Just before play was suspended, Mississippi State guard Ben Hansbrough turned to Alabama’s Mykal Riley and remarked on the noise.
“He mentioned to me after they shot a free throw, and we were coming down the court, he was like, ‘Sounds like a tornado,’ ” Riley said. “I was agreeing with him, and then all of a sudden everything started moving and everybody started running.”
I know SEC officials are constantly fighting this battle for attention with the ACC during tournament time. But is this the best they could come up with?
Mississippi State’s Charles Rhodes, with a flare for the understatement, said: “It’s got to be one of the worst environments I’ve ever been in as a player. You know, to see stuff falling from the roof, it really scared me. Last time I’ve been in something like that was when there was a bat in the gym [in Starkville]. So this really tops that one.”
We’ll take his word for it.
Georgia athletics director Damon Evans had been looking for a bolt to strike the team and the fan base. This likely isn’t what he had in mind.
Kentucky fans seemed to outnumber Georgia fans 5-to-1, which would be depressing enough for the Bulldogs even if the game wasn’t held in Atlanta. But that speaks to the fan apathy currently surrounding the program. It’s the residual of a team losing 11 of its final 13 regular-season games and going 4-12 in the conference.
The Dogs managed a mini-jolt at about 12:30 a.m. Friday, when Dave Bliss’ short left-handed bank shot in the final seconds gave them a 97-95 overtime win over Mississippi.
Of course, the next jolt came at 9:40 p.m. But the Bulldogs have needed some divine intervention. At this point, they would assume anything to be a good sign.
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Tech saved best for last, but it still wasn’t enough
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Charlotte — For all of one night and part of another, we saw what could have been. We saw a Georgia Tech team capable of playing at the highest level in the most prestigious conference in the land. We saw a team that should have been working to enhance its NCAA seeding, not simply to stave off statistical elimination.
Credit the Jackets for playing their best basketball at season’s end. Fault them for waiting so long.
The Tech team that routed Virginia on Thursday was such a revelation that even those who’d watched the Jackets all season were saying, “Where’d that come from?” Here’s where: From a fusion of talent and effort, from an understanding of how the game should be played at both ends … from, in other words, a place these Jackets had scarcely even visited.
On Friday we were given a case study as to why the Jackets are 15-17 as opposed to 22-10. They were played off their feet by a Duke team that isn’t all that gifted but is, as ever, furiously focused. The Devils’ manic pressure appeared to catch Tech by surprise, which shouldn’t have happened given that the two had met in Durham 16 days ago. It was 22-10 at the second TV timeout and 33-16 at the third, and the guy who’d written he could see the Jackets winning was on the horn to his optometrist.
But then …
Tech stopped acting as if it didn’t belong on the same court and began to run those lordly Dookies into the floorboards. Down 20 in the first half and 15 at the break, the Jackets outscored the nation’s No. 7 team 19-2 over five dizzying minutes, and suddenly the crowd — passionately anti-Devils, an ACC tournament tradition — was in a lather and Tech was within two.
“We had them on their heels,” said Anthony Morrow, and the Jackets did. Mike Krzyzewski, who hates calling timeout, called one, but it made no difference. Tech still kept coming, limiting Duke to three points on nine possessions, and then Gerald Henderson shot an air ball, and Jeremis Smith took the rebound and tried to throw long for Moe Miller, but Kyle Singler intercepted and fed DeMarcus Nelson for a transforming trey.
Just like that, the great wave was broken. Duke gathered itself and won handily if not easily, and there we had Tech’s season in miniature — some really nice moments that added up to 17 big fat losses.
“We definitely fought,” said Morrow, a senior who might have played his last collegiate game. “This season could have gotten a lot worse.”
That’s true. The Jackets could have quit on themselves and finished 10-21, but they didn’t. That said, the season should have been much better. Even with all those early losses — six before New Year’s — Tech had its chances. But it lost close home games to Maryland and Miami and Virginia, blunting any real momentum until there weren’t enough games left for momentum to matter.
“I’ve said I did a really poor job my third year here [the season with Chris Bosh that ended in the NIT],” Paul Hewitt said Friday. “But we made steady progress [this season]. The mistake we made was before the season, when we scheduled [road games] at Indiana and Connecticut and Vanderbilt. Confidence is very important, especially with a freshman point guard.”
But it wasn’t so much a lack of confidence that undid the Jackets as an absence of application. This talented team didn’t defend well enough soon enough, and that’s always a failure of coaching. If this wasn’t the botch the Bosh season was, neither is it one Hewitt will highlight in yellow on his résumé.
“A couple of balls didn’t roll our way,” said Morrow, singing yet another verse of the same old song. “This game didn’t go our way.”
Thus did a season come apart. To their credit, the Jackets nearly pulled it together at the end. To their lasting chagrin, they ran out of games.
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