Jackets fall to 0-6 in ACC

Clemson, S.C. — When Georgia Tech held its pre-game practice Sunday morning, coach Paul Hewitt gave his players a warning.

The message, he said, was that “it’s going to get physical at some point. You’ve got to weather that physical period of play.”

Sunday night at Littlejohn Coliseum, in front of throngs of full-throated Tigers fans, it happened just as Hewitt predicted.

But rather than manage the onslaught, the Jackets buckled.

Tech fell to 0-6 in the ACC and 9-10 overall in a 73-59 loss to No. 10 Clemson.

A few Georgia Tech turnovers, some Clemson dunks and three-pointers and an energized crowd were enough to bury the Jackets.

Ahead 37-34 at the break, the Tigers scored 19 of the first 23 points of the second half to secure a 56-38 advantage. Tech closed, but the damage had been done.

“We didn’t come out fighting the way we wanted to in the second half, and we ran out of gas at the end on the comeback,” said guard Iman Shumpert.

After managing the Tigers’ full-court press in the first half with relative effectiveness, the Jackets rushed and played into Clemson’s hands.

“The game of basketball versus the press, that’s their whole purpose — to speed you up,” said Tech guard Lewis Clinch. “They did a great job of speeding us up. We didn’t do a good job of staying calm and poised.”

On the Jackets’ first 15 possessions of the second half, they made only one basket, a three-pointer by guard Iman Shumpert. The remaining possessions were an assembly of blocked shots, errant field-goal attempts, turnovers, a foul and one free throw.

Said Clinch, “It’s like we were panicking. Really, we were only down six or eight points. (But) you don’t look at it like that in the flow of things.”

Hewitt chided his team for being impatient and loose with possessions.

“We just do some young things,” Hewitt said. “Instead of getting to the next play or making the next play, we just bail out, almost. ‘Let me just do this. The ball’s here. Let me just throw it up and see what happens.’”

That opening stretch of the second half followed a dreadful close of the first half, when Clemson rallied from a 32-29 deficit to take its 37-34 halftime edge.

“They had that one run. They put some distance between us,” Hewitt said. “Other than that, I thought we played pretty good. We had some opportunities to get back in the game, we just didn’t cash in.”

Tech has held late leads in four of the ACC losses and lost in overtime in three of them. The first half gave Tech hope that it could compete with the Tigers (17-2 overall, 3-2 in the ACC), but the second half did not.

“It’s probably just a mental thing with this team,” Shumpert said. “We’ve just got to break through it.”

Forward Gani Lawal led Tech with 14 points and 10 rebounds, his 12th double-double of the season.