AJC > Sports > Tech > Blog > Archives > 2007 > January > 23
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Jackets need sharper play
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If Tech is finally going to win on the road Wednesday at Maryland, the Yellow Jackets need to play with more alacrity, be more alert.
They were like statues at North Carolina, and point guard Javaris Crittenton didn’t help by trying to prove himself against two fellow phenomenal freshmen whom he’s played against in the past.
“What happened was they were trapping me with Brandan Wright and Tywon Lawson, but at the same time, when they do that, it’s two-on-one and that means somebody’s open,” he said. “When they’re over-playing our wings because most of our offense is wing entries, we’ve got to cut back-door, and back screen, something to get open.”
It would help if somebody moved to get open, or get closer to Crittenton when he was in trouble to bail him out. Instead, the Jackets stood around, especially in the first half.
“Exactly. I talked to my teammates, even during the game I was trying to get my wings to get open, and to move a little bit,” Crittenton said. “It was everybody. It wasn’t just the wings. It was the post, myself; after I passed the ball I should have unlocked the floor. We needed to do a lot more moving to get open.”
Coach Paul Hewitt said, “We can help by screening and getting guys open.”
Well, yeah.
Again, it didn’t help that, “It was probably the first time [Crittenton] played like a freshman since the Vanderbilt game,” Hewitt said, but everybody else needs to DO SOMETHING! “Standing on the block, calling for the ball, waiting for an impossible pass to be made into the post from an impossible angle, that’s just not good basketball,” the coach said. “I can’t explain it. I was very confident, perhaps overconfident, going into that game. I didn’t have us ready.”
That first half, when Tech scored just 23 points, was terrible, and Maryland’s going to try some of the same things, knowing Tech has problems against the trap, has difficulty in-bounding the ball, has, well, just problems. The most maddening thing is, they’re not omnipresent; they pop up and don’t go away for a while, and then in another game those problems are all but gone. It must be said, though, that Roy Williams and North Carolina forced Tech into difficulty.
Yet the Jackets did so little to extract themselves. “We just didn’t try to run our offense,” Hewitt said. “For whatever reason, I don’t know. We had one possession where we dribbled the ball 28 times. By my best liberal count, we set one and a half screens. One player, 28 dribbles. You always tell your players that you’re better moving the ball with a pass than the dribble. I always tell my players, there’s three times to dribble the ball (in the half-court). One, you’re improving your passing angle; two, to attack the basket; or three, to get out of trouble. Other than that, the ball should be passed or shot.”
The only player who was aggressive, other than Crittenton when he kept dribbling into trouble, was Thaddeus Young in the final 10 minutes or so. He finished with a team-high 22 points on 10 of 16 points. Imagine what he could do if he hadn’t had a fever for a few days before that, if he hadn’t had a root canal the day of the game?
Imagine if he played like that for 25 minutes a night, and had some teammates play the same way!
