On a Friday night in Littlejohn Coliseum, Georgia Tech finished its season with another high note. Two days after winning their final home game and four days after learning that their season would end without a postseason, the Yellow Jackets put the 2019-20 season to bed with a 65-62 win over Clemson.
“We had the lead the first half, they came storming back, and then we found a way late to be able to get a win,” coach Josh Pastner said. “The players saved me – I didn’t do a great job in that mid part of the second half with some of that playcalling, which is a credit to Clemson’s defense.”
Guard Michael Devoe’s shot in the lane with 15 seconds remaining broke a 62-all tie, capping a comeback in which the Jackets had trailed 59-50 with 5:15 to play. After a missed 3-point try by Clemson’s Tevin Mack, James Banks hit one of two free throws with 3.8 seconds for a three-point lead. Inbounding with 3.5 seconds left, a Clemson desperation 3-pointer was off the mark.
“Big-time players make big-time plays,” said Devoe, who finished with a game-high 20 points. “Just got the ball in my hands, felt like I could make the shot, so I just took the guy and got to my left-hand floater.”
Tech finished the game on a 15-3 run, holding the Tigers to 1-for-9 shooting in the final five minutes.
“Unfortunately, it was our last game, so we had that fire that we’re not going to give up and we’re not going to lay down,” Devoe said.
With the win, Tech added to an estimable list of accomplishments. At 17-14 overall and 11-9 in the ACC, the Jackets finished league play with a winning record for the first time since the 2003-04 season, when they played for the national championship. Tech will either finish alone or in a tie for fifth place in the conference, its highest finish since finishing in a tie for fourth in the 2004-05 season, when the conference was 11 teams, not 15.
“This team has really set a great tone, and from where we were at mid-year, we weren’t real good at mid-year,” Pastner said. “Now, we didn’t have (Jose) Alvarado, but we have gotten better. We’ve improved.”
Even winning at Littlejohn marked an achievement. It was Tech’s first win at Clemson since February 2005, ending a 14-game losing streak to the Tigers (15-15, 9-11). The Jackets swept Clemson for the first time since that same 2004-05 season.
In winning their sixth game out of the final seven, it was a happy, if premature, closing chapter. Earlier this week, after athletic director Todd Stansbury had made the decision to withdraw the school’s appeal of its postseason ban for NCAA recruiting violations and sit out the ACC tournament and forego any shot at the NCAA tournament or NIT, senior Banks likened it to “a blow to the gut.” Not only was Tech surrendering his last chance to play in the NCAA tournament, but he – and his teammates – believed that they had a chance to do some damage at the ACC tournament in Greensboro, N.C.
“I feel like we’ve really figured it out as a team,” Banks said Tuesday.
Instead, the Jackets had to settle for two more regular-season games and the opportunity to distinguish themselves as a high-achieving team out of the mostly mediocre units that had taken the floor in the past decade and a half.
It proved motivation enough. Tech fairly handled Pittsburgh on Wednesday night before traveling to Clemson for its season-ending victory. Pastner was unusually emotional after the game, breaking down in the locker room and again meeting with media.
“I love our guys to play that hard as they’ve done for me the whole year,” Pastner said, his voice cracking.
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