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Sunday, January 7, 2007
Next game is huge for Jackets
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Back from Clemson, watching Sportscenter, where I see my first-ever favorite team, the Cowboys, choked.
Tech didn’t choke the game away this afternoon. The Jackets, though, gagged the final play, which some might say is enough to call it all a choke. Not me.
Any time, and I mean ANY TIME, a team loses a close game, it’s piece of cake to go back and analyze several possessions and look at what didn’t go right.
Just enough things, and I mean just barely enough, happened for Tech to lose. Javaris Crittenton, who has more to do than any player or coach in changing the culture around this Tech team from last year, hit his first eight free throws, and played a whale of a game. But he missed his ninth free throw, the front end of a one-and-one, with 59 seconds left. That hurt.
He and Jeremis Smith, an average free throw shooter, each made a pair down the stretch, and Tech hit 13 of 16 from the line. These are examples of differences between last season’s team and this one.
But Clemson hit 19 of 26, and in a game where the Jackets sorely missed the outside shot of Lewis Clinch (Tech hit just 3 of 9 3-pointers, none in the first half), the Jackets still had a very good chance against the only undefeated team in the nation.
Tech won on the boards, by one, but Clemson had 26 offensive rebounds and had an edge in the second half overall (Dickey had seven in the first half, none in the second, when the Jackets’ big men were handicapped by fouls and Zach Peacock was ejected for elbowing fellow freshman Trevor Booker - who tape review will reveal to be a dirty player). The offensive rebound edge was big, but misleading. Clemson missed 41 of 66 shots, after all, so there were a bunch of offensive rebounds to get (Tech had 25 defensive rebounds). Still, that hurt Tech. A 14-1 run up to halftime, though, led to a 34-29 lead.
But when foul trouble and the ejection of Peacock (why not give Alade Aminu a few minutes down the stretch; he wouldn’t have to be tenuous?), Paul Hewitt started calling zones. The Jackets rarely play zone, are not comfortable playing it, and that’s a big reason Clemson hit 50 percent from the field in the second half after hitting just 28.9 percent in the first.
Still, the Techsters were right there, rallying from a four-point deficit in the waning moments. This NEVER happened last year, especially not on the road. Tech’s down double digits in the first half last year in this game, and everybody’s playing garbage time the last four minutes by the end.
That said, two first-year players slacked on the game’s final play.
Whether or not you agree with the decision to defend the in-bounder with 6.5 seconds left (remember, Clemson called a timeout to set up a final play; Hewitt had none left for his after the Jackets called two in the first half from the bench when ball handlers were trapped, and one in the second half rather than fail to inbound in five seconds), the greater breakdowns came behind that.
James Mays received that pass at half court too easily. If Mouhammad Faye can’t get a hand on that ball (likely tipping it away to end the game), then he probably should’ve retreated to limit Mays’ drive opportunities.
He was fairly close to Mays, though. Worse, although Mays turned left, to his weak hand, Faye retreated then, rather than hedging up on Mays, or defending, and at a poor angle.
Mays blew right to the basket.
Faye caught up enough to hack Mays, but didn’t. Jeremis Smith was close enough to foul, too. And Crittenton was in a spot - arms down in standard take-a-charge position — to take a charge on the low left block. So, you say, he’s not going to get a charge call there (on the road)? Maybe, maybe not (it looked to me like Crittenton was in position to get crushed, and if he was to get leveled like I think he would’ve, it seems to me it would have been hard not to call a charge).
Crittenton had, by my figuring, five options: stay put and try to get a charge call; put his hands up and defend; slide step and try to block the shot from the side (very low percentage chance for success; hammer Mays (best chance? as Mays is a 53.3 percent free throw shooter); or get out of the way (the worst option).
It looked like he merged Nos. 1 and 5. He didn’t exactly bail out, but he leaned or slid just enough to his right to give Mays more of a lane. “I didn’t want to take the chance of not [getting] a charge [call against Mays], and he hit the layup, and then get a foul shot,” he first told me.
Then, “I was there, he just moved.”
The second comment may have been revisionist, although Mays did kind of wiggle the other direction. I think this was a youngster being young upon being questioned. Crittenton was really, really, really upset afterward. He’d just finished talking to Hewitt, who was pep-talking him left and right, already talking about Wednesday’s game with Duke.
This season’s far from over, but Tech’s up against it. After Duke, the Jackets face a much-improved Florida State team and then go to North Carolina and Maryland.
For my two cents, while Crittenton’s obviously going to have his hands on every possession down the stretch, Thaddeus Young was not involved enough late, and I say that even though he hit a huge 3-pointer from a tough angle in the corner with the shot clock running down. The ball needs to go through him in crunch time. Not only is he a ridiculously gifted (although sometimes tentative) scorer, he can pass big-time.
One possession. That’s life in the ACC. Last season, it was usually over when there were dozens of possessions left. Saturday, the Jackets were on the road playing one of two undefeated teams in the nation, in a ridiculously loud arena, and were right there. Yes, they made mistakes. But they have enough talent, and heart, to make noise this season. It’s more mental than usual for the next couple weeks.
This time of year, you see a lot of good teams, and some really, really good teams, go play their first true road games of the season (Tech’s not one of those teams), or their first road game against a good team, and get smoked (Alabama, Notre Dame come to mind) because it’s such a culture shock to be in an arena where you’re like a lamb in a coliseum of fans looking for blood at the hands of the home team. The Clemson environment was that way today, and the Jackets didn’t flinch. They just didn’t make the last critical play of the game.
Nonetheless, while every Duke game is big, the next one is huge.
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