Georgia trailed by one point in a game it had to win to keep its infinitesimal hope of being an NCAA tournament at-large invitee alive. If you want to say that this last possession constituted a season on the line, feel free. Here’s how that final fling began: With 12 seconds remaining, Yante Maten rebounded a missed Texas A&M free throw and passed to point guard Teshaun Hightower.
The Bulldogs had all their timeouts remaining, meaning three. Mark Fox chose not to use one after Maten’s rebound. And let me be clear: Generally speaking, I’m OK with that.
If I'm the coach, I'd rather my team play against a retreating defense than one that has had time to align itself. North Carolina beat Kentucky in last year's South Regional final – given the tepid nature of the rest of the Final Four, it essentially was the national championship game – after the Wildcats tied the score with 7.2 seconds left. The Tar Heels won without calling a timeout. They might have won because they didn't call a timeout.
Here's your difference: North Carolina pushes the ball all the time. It's accustomed to playing fast. Georgia doesn't and isn't. The Bulldogs rank 329th among 351 Division I teams in adjusted tempo, per Ken Pomeroy, and that number is skewed by Saturday's 82-possession game against LSU; Georgia hadn't had even 70 possessions in regulation since Thanksgiving. It would have 69 this night.
The Bulldogs’ offense – the lowest-scoring in the 14-team SEC – is ponderous. Georgia tends to need at least 20 seconds to find a shot, largely because it can take that long for Maten to work free. He averages 19.4 points, which leads the conference. No other Bulldog averages more than 8.8.
The possibility of a drive-and-kick with Maten as the trailer existed Wednesday. If you watch the video, you'll see him just behind Hightower as the freshman nears midcourt. The drive-and-kick in full court, which would help North Carolina win the 2017 NCAA title, undid the Tar Heels in the 2016 title game. Villanova's Kris Jenkins inbounded to Ryan Arcidiacano, who pushed the ball and fanned it back to Jenkins, whose 3-pointer at the horn is the stuff of legend.
Fifty-one weeks later, Carolina inbounded after Malik Monk's tying trey. There were 7.2 seconds remaining. Theo Pinson, who's a guard but not a point guard, took the pass and headed up the right sideline. (Arcidiacano had started on the left.) Like Arcidiacano, Pinson swerved to the middle. Ducking into the lane, he found a trailing Luke Maye inside the arc. Maye's shot was as pure as Jenkins'.
Back to Georgia: Hightower dribbles up the right sideline and tries to cut, as he’s surely been taught to do, to the middle. The Aggies’ T.J. Starks intercedes and forces Hightower back to the right, even inducing a stumble. Now the Bulldogs are in trouble. There’s no drive-and-kick if you can’t get into the lane.
Hightower shovels the ball forward to Juwan Parker, who’s in an even worse position – closely guarded at the right sideline, with a second defender rushing to double-team. Whatever Georgia hoped to get off its spread-court action is gone. The decision to eschew calling timeout hasn’t wrong-footed A&M in the slightest.
But here’s the thing: There’s still time to call one. After the game, Fox noted to reporters that once the ball is in play, a timeout must be called by a player. (New rule this season.) But Hightower is standing three feet from his coach when he flips the ball to Parker, who’s smack in front of the Georgia bench. There are 4.7 seconds remaining when Parker is double-teamed.
Here’s where you stop the game. Here’s where you as a coach shout to your players, “Timeout! Timeout!” Fox appears to mouth something just as Parker rises to shoot, but the coach wouldn’t seem to be yelling and clearly isn’t gesturing.
With a third defender closing, a clearly frazzled Parker casts a no-chance 18 foot that travels 17 feet. Here we note: Three seconds remain when he releases.
Call timeout with 4.7 seconds left and you have a chance. (Villanova had that exactly much time against Carolina and had to go the length of the court.) Call one with three seconds left and you still have a chance. (Duke had 2.1 on Hill-to-Laettner.) In basketball, 12 seconds should be enough to explore both Plan A and Plan B. When Georgia's Plan A went awry, there was naught but chaos.
To recap: Georgia had its ballhandler go the wrong way, had him pass to a guy who was about to be trapped along the sideline and had the trapped player shoot while triple-teamed. In theory, Fox wasn’t wrong to let his Bulldogs keep going after the missed free throw, but a coach has to know his players. Should he have trusted the freshman Hightower, who has worked the ninth-most minutes among Bulldogs, the way Jay Wright did the senior Arcidiacano and Roy Williams did the junior Pinson?
A coach can’t put the ball in the basket for his players. A good coach can, however, figure a way to get them a decent shot. A game Georgia had to win ended on an air ball.
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