AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2008 > March > 15 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USTech 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.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Post your comment | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
Comments
By Jim
March 15, 2008 1:18 AM | Link to this
Coulda, woulda, shoulda…yadda, yadda, yadda. So much for Tech beating Duke!
By JJay
March 15, 2008 2:13 AM | Link to this
I’m trying to figure out just who you have in your mind is so wonderfully talented on this Tech team.
Your theme all season has been that the Jackets are an athletically gifted team that somehow can’t translate that talent into victories.
How many All-ACC performers do they have? Zero.
Duke has eight McDonalds All-Americans on their roster yet in your view they are “not all that gifted.”
Sometimes I wonder about your criteria for judging talent.
By L Dawg
March 15, 2008 3:19 AM | Link to this
If you must use a belittling nicname in your “column,” it’s “Dukies” not “Dookies.” Friggin’ dumb@zz
By L Dawg
March 15, 2008 3:19 AM | Link to this
If you must use a belittling nickname in your “column,” it’s “Dukies” not “Dookies.” Friggin’ dumb@zz
By Gordon
March 15, 2008 6:57 AM | Link to this
The two key words in this column are “furiously focused.” Why can’t Tech be “furiously focused” more of the time?
I’m bothered that Hewitt is blaming scheduling. That may be part of it, but it means he doesn’t think anything is wrong with his coaching methods or his staff. He must do something different next year, or we can expect more of the same.
By yellowblood
March 15, 2008 10:51 AM | Link to this
The Tickle Pile last night wasn’t much either.
By reasonablefan
March 15, 2008 10:55 AM | Link to this
Like I said yesterday, I am appaled at the lack of knowledge that Mark Bradley and Matt Wink,etc have about basketball. That or else they just want to pimp for Tech. They beat two last place teams,BC and Vir and a weak Clemson team at home and they thinks the team has turned the corner. If you notice Duke beat them this time the same spread they did during the latter part of the season. Nothing changed. Where do these AJC guys get off trying to tell us Tech got better. Its sickening.
By Techater
March 15, 2008 10:58 AM | Link to this
Well, Well, Well, I see all those “Bosses” who graduate from the Trade Institute can’t pony up enough money to build but half a practice facility for basketball. You should be embarrassed. Or maybe you don’t make as much as you say. Or you spend it all on mirrors and pictures of yourselves. HA HA
By stings to lose
March 15, 2008 1:48 PM | Link to this
Since the schedule was the problem, next year surely will be better. Right!
and ldog, it is dook. dogs playing in AMC..that is dook!
By Dan
March 15, 2008 6:36 PM | Link to this
Bradley,
I can’t believe you referred to the Devils as the “Dookies”. I thought that way reserved for drunken Terrapin fans. Way to be a professional and way to blow yet another prediction.
Too bad Kentucky lost today, man…bet you’re hot about that one too.
By Teddy
March 15, 2008 6:39 PM | Link to this
Bradley, you once again have proven that you are an idiot. Way to blow another prediction and take another low blow at Duke. “Dookies?”. Real professional, dude.
Oh and too bad Kentucky lost today…bet you’re hot about that one too.