The season opened with the debut of McCamish Pavilion and a hope-inspiring victory. On Friday, in the final chapter of the season, Georgia Tech was run out of Greensboro Coliseum by Boston College.
Somewhere in between was the reality of the Yellow Jackets’ season, the second under coach Brian Gregory. The Jackets made progress from the 2011-12 season, but also tripped repeatedly, often over the same hurdles.
“You’d like to eliminate all the moments where you get hit in the head again, but in rebuilding, that’s not going to happen,” Gregory said.
The positives — Tech beat then-No. 6 Miami on its home court (its first road win over a top-10 team since 2004), beat Georgia back-to-back for the first time since a three-year run from 1992-94 and beat NCAA-hopeful Virginia at home. The Jackets were 3-6 on the road in the ACC, not eye-popping but noteworthy considering that they were 3-29 in conference road games in the four previous seasons. Tech’s assist-turnover ratio — a statistic Gregory often cites — improved from .76 to .99, improving from 11th in the ACC to eighth after Friday’s games.
The negatives — Tech’s field-goal percentage dropped from 42.7 percent last season to 41.9 percent this season, last in the ACC. The Jackets failed to win back-to-back ACC games for the second consecutive season. Aside from forward Kammeon Holsey, the bench did not provide much support. Focus wavered at times, leading to prolonged scoring droughts.
Some of that came to light again Thursday in the Jackets’ first-round game at the ACC tournament, when they built leads of 15-0 and 28-14 against Boston College before managing to give up the lead before halftime on the way to losing 84-64.
“Sometimes it happens when you have younger guys or older guys that haven’t had a lot of success, is the ability to maintain the focus and the level of concentration and competitiveness that you need to be successful,” Gregory said.
The record improved from 11-20 to 16-15. Seven games were decided on the final possession or went to overtime, with Tech winning two. Had the Jackets managed to win two more, they might be headed to the NIT, an achievement few could have foreseen this season.
Individually, freshmen Robert Carter, Marcus Georges-Hunt, Chris Bolden and Solomon Poole demonstrated the capacity to become upper-echelon ACC players. Carter dominated stretches of games, and Georges-Hunt emerged as Tech’s go-to player in crunch time. Bolden showed an ability to penetrate and make clutch 3-pointers. Poole has vision and passing touch. But all were predictably inconsistent, some more so than others.
“We’re going to come in this summer, work harder, we’ll learn from our mistakes, come out next year and play better,” Carter said.
Center Daniel Miller earned a spot on the ACC all-defensive team and continued to develop his game on offense. The only starting senior, point guard Mfon Udofia, did commendable work leading a young team on and off the court and tried to fit his game into Gregory’s pass-first template for the position.
Beyond wins and losses, statistical evidence points strongly at improvement. The website kenpom.com measures teams by an elementary metric — how many points a team scores or gives up per possession. By its analytics, Tech ranked 178th overall last season, with the offense rated 254th and its defense 108th.
On Saturday morning, Tech ranked 94th overall, with the 204th-most efficient offense but the 34th-most efficient defense, keeping company with NCAA tournament-bound teams such as North Carolina (30th), Arizona (37th) and Minnesota (40th).
The upshot — the Jackets have improved and defend at a near-elite level, but play offense like an also-ran. When Tech scored 78 points in a home win over Maryland, Gregory said it was “like a minor miracle.”
A considerable variable for next season is whether one of the projected three point guards on the roster — Poole, Corey Heyward (who redshirted this season with a torn ACL) or Travis Jorgenson (a Missouri high school senior who committed to Tech) can provide the stability that the offense needs.
One other is how Tech, even if it improves, will be able to compete in the ACC with Notre Dame, Pittsburgh and Syracuse joining the league from the Big East.
Said Gregory, “We have a lot of work to do.”
