Hewitt can’t explain Tech’s lack of toughness

Moe Miller had no idea why it happened.

Down by only three points at halftime against Clemson on Sunday, the Georgia Tech men’s basketball team came out of the locker room flat.

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Pouya Dianat/pdianat@ajc.com

Tech coach Paul Hewitt says ‘We go to run a play and an [opposing] guy just basically refuses to be screened and we’re not strong enough setting the screen.’

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Watching the game later on film, Miller, a Jackets guard, said he thought, “What was wrong with us? We just all looked out of sync.”

The Jackets recovered, but not before giving Clemson enough time to put away a 73-59 win. Tech has seen it too often.

Said coach Paul Hewitt, “We go to run a play and an [opposing] guy just basically refuses to be screened and we’re not strong enough setting the screen, or if we’re trying to go to the basket and a guy bodies up strong, instead of basically shoving back, we kind of get knocked off the ball, we travel, it’ll squirt free from us.”

The Jackets, in losing their first six ACC games and dropping to 9-10 overall, have been good enough to take late leads in four of their league games. In the other two, they held an eight-point first-half lead over Duke, now the No. 1 team in the country, and a seven-point first-half lead against the Tigers, now 12th.

But they’ve also been bad enough to give all of those games away, often due to stretches when the team has backed down.

“Bottom line, he’s talked to us about being tough,” forward Gani Lawal said. “In deciding moments of games, when the clock’s going down, we’re on defense, we’ve got to come up with the rebound.”

Against N.C. State, Tech led by 10 points with 4:40 remaining when the Wolfpack started to play more physically. The Jackets lost in overtime.

“We did not respond well to getting banged around,” Hewitt said. “We started flopping around.”

Hewitt can’t explain the lapses.

When the team began practice in the fall, Hewitt said he noticed in scrimmages that players were turning the ball over. However, he wasn’t sure it was attributable to poor ball security or if defenders, knowing the plays that were coming, were just anticipating well.

Now, though, six winless games into the ACC schedule, he has his answer. Players are turning the ball over in traffic and in double teams. When they make contact, he said, they have often looked for the foul rather than play through it.

Georgia Tech averages the most turnovers in the ACC, 17.1 per game.

Hewitt cited walk-on guard Nick Foreman as having the tenacious mentality about the ball that he wants other players to have.

“It’s just a matter of, Hey, I’m not giving this ball up,” Hewitt said. “If I do, I’m getting it back.”

The problem, Miller said, is “toughness, I guess. Just hold onto it. No particular way to do it, just hold onto it.”

To address the issue, Hewitt has scrimmaged more, run more one-on-one drills and put the team through more physical practices. Miller said that players have raised their intensity level in workouts.

“It comes down to just wanting it,” Lawal said. “Certain times, certain plays, we just haven’t come up with it.”