About 40 hours after Georgia Tech walked off the McCamish Pavilion floor, after a loss to No. 2 Virginia on Thursday night, the Yellow Jackets will brace for an examination of a different sort Saturday afternoon in Chapel Hill, N.C.
After unsuccessfully engaging the slowest team in Division I (per KenPom) and one of the top defensive teams in the country in Virginia, the Jackets will try to find a solution for a North Carolina team that races up and down the floor with its array of blue-chip talent, hammers the offensive glass and rattles opponents with 3-pointers.
Further, the No. 15 Tar Heels last played Tuesday, giving them about 48 more hours of rest time than the Jackets.
What else? Against Virginia, freshman point guard Jose Alvarado played his third 40-minute game in the past six, guard Josh Okogie logged 36 minutes and center Ben Lammers played the first 35 minutes before being mercifully removed with the game well out of reach.
Tech’s loss to Virginia on Thursday counted as just one defeat, but the Jackets are in a position where the timing of the schedule and the next opponent’s identity don’t lend themselves to the likelihood of a spirited bounce back.
“That’s part of being in the ACC,” coach Josh Pastner said.
Games played on one day’s rest are part of the landscape in the ACC, a result of ESPN’s wanting to broadcast league games on as many days and nights as possible. Later on this season, North Carolina will play games on Feb. 8, 10 and 12.
Last season, ACC teams that played league games two days after their last league game when their opponents had more rest were 8-7. However, five of those wins were scored against Pittsburgh and Boston College (the Jackets accounted for one of them), who were a combined 6-30 in conference play. The other three wins were earned by Notre Dame and Duke. In other words, if you didn’t eventually reach the finals of the ACC Tournament or weren’t playing Pitt or Boston College, you were 0-7 in the situation Tech will find itself in Saturday.
Tech fans might remember the Jackets’ 71-69 loss to N.C. State in February, which followed two days after a spirited win over Syracuse. Tech looked slow, and Lammers, after playing 40 minutes against the Orange, wobbled through another 40 against the Wolfpack, shooting 1-for-9 from the field. The defeat ended N.C. State’s seven-game losing streak and was costly to Tech’s NCAA Tournament hopes.
Pastner planned a lighter practice for Friday, which, while preserving his team’s legs, would also limit the amount of game planning that his young team can do for the defending national champions.
“I’m not playing a lot of guys, so some guys (Thursday) played high 30 minutes, so you’ve just got to be smart about it,” Pastner said. “We’ve got to practice because we’ve got to get our work in, but we’ve also got to be smart and efficient with what we’re doing.”
Tech’s best hope against North Carolina will be to attempt to frustrate the swift-footed Tar Heels with its array of defenses and its patient offense. A common exhortation that Pastner gives his team is that teams don’t want to defend the Jackets’ cutting actions for the length of the shot clock.
Turnovers and missed shots by Tech will be green lights for the Tar Heels’ transition game, which could be all the more devastating given that the Jackets will be playing on legs heavier than normal.
“We’re 3-2 (in the ACC),” Pastner said. “We lost to the second-ranked team in the country. A couple things here and there, and maybe it’s a different game. We’re still a good team. We’ve gotten better. We played the first-place team, a team that’s in the driver’s seat to win the ACC right now. So there’s no panic button or anything like that. We’ve just got to continue to get better.”
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