Clemson coach Brad Brownell didn’t mean to encapsulate Georgia Tech’s season, but he did a commendable job following the Tigers’ overtime win over the Yellow Jackets at the ACC tournament late Thursday.
“They outcompeted us the first 20 minutes, really hurt us on the boards,” he said.
So it went with Tech, whose third season with coach Brian Gregory is complete after the ACC tournament loss. (The school decided against playing in the College Basketball Invitational, a tournament a notch below the NIT.) The Jackets proved themselves capable of competing — outcompeting even — with the better teams in the conference, but too often could not finish.
Besieged by injuries and sometimes by their own ineffective play, Tech’s season was one that offered both promise and frustration, often in the same half of a game.
“We did a lot of great things, and we have to learn from the bad things,” forward Marcus Georges-Hunt said.
The Jackets closed strong. For a second consecutive year, the Jackets earned a road win over a top-10 opponent, stunning then-No. 7 Syracuse on March 4, then won back-to-back ACC games for the first time in Gregory’s tenure by beating Virginia Tech in the final home game. Tech won a third consecutive ACC game with its first-round win over Boston College in overtime (another Gregory era first) and nearly earned a quarterfinal berth before losing to Clemson in overtime Thursday.
Center Daniel Miller earned third-team All-ACC, Tech’s first all-league honoree since Iman Shumpert in 2011, former coach Paul Hewitt’s final season. The Jackets responded well to injuries to forward Robert Carter and guard Trae Golden, nearly beating Clemson on Feb. 4 with seven available scholarship players. Two players, Golden and Georges-Hunt, earned ACC all-academic team.
The team’s assist/turnover ratio, a marker of an offense’s functionality, has improved in the ACC regular season from .79 in Gregory’s first season to .88 last year to 1.07 this season.
On the other hand, the overall record (16-17) and league record (6-12) failed to improve (16-15 and 6-12) from last year. From a shooting percentage standpoint in ACC play, the team was slightly better on offense (41.3 to 42.7) but worse on defense (42.5 to 44.7).
For better or worse, the 2013 team did not share the same puzzling trait that the 2014 team did — taking sizable leads only to squander them by going on prolonged scoring droughts that often were magnified by the opposition scoring in transition off of misses and turnovers.
Among the examples: In the first game against Notre Dame, Tech went up by 15 with 13:59 remaining before the Irish tied the score with an 18-3 run, at which point the Jackets recovered. The Jackets held an 18-point lead at Boston College with 18:06 left in the game and lost all but one point of the advantage before Golden pulled the game out. They led N.C. State by 11 with 15:56 to play and lost in overtime. They were up nine points over Clemson at home with 18:49 left and lost by eight.
On a slight variation, Tech played at a near-peak level for 30 minutes against eventual ACC regular-season champion Virginia, taking a 44-42 lead with 9:52 to go. However, the Cavaliers ended the game on a 22-1 run.
“They were physical, and they made it very hard,” Virginia coach Tony Bennett said following the game. “They ran good offense, they hit a couple tough shots, but they had us reeling a little bit early.”
Tech’s two tournament games were more of the same. Tech won in overtime against Boston College after giving up a 13-point lead with 8:17 to play and lost in overtime to Clemson after giving up a nine-point lead with 7:51 to play.
To some degree, it represents progress that Tech was capable of playing well enough to take significant leads against conference opponents. Former coach Bobby Cremins, who has been supportive of Gregory, sees hope.
“I feel like they’re making progress, absolutely,” he said.
Injuries undoubtedly were punitive. Carter, who was the team’s best player at the end of the season, missed 10 games with a torn meniscus. Golden was hobbled with a groin injury. Forward Jason Morris was counted on to bring versatility off the bench but played six games with foot injuries. Arguably, freshman point guard Travis Jorgenson’s season-ending ACL tear in the fourth game of the season was more costly, as the Jackets lost a player who showed the ability to create shots for teammates, an element they often direly needed.
A significant challenge going forward, though, is that Tech will lose its top scorer and assist man (Golden), its best defender (Miller) and its sixth man (Kammeon Holsey). The team may advance again in many aspects, but the record again may not.
“I’d like some more wins, but in every other aspect of the program, the process, I think is definitely (moving forward),” Gregory said. “I mean, you can’t look at this team in comparison to three years ago and … say the program’s not moving forward.”
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