After he and his staff watched the video of their team’s Wednesday-night home loss to Notre Dame, Georgia Tech coach Josh Pastner left the session believing his team had played well.
“It was a good game,” Pastner said Friday. “Notre Dame’s good, and they made some tough shots.”
As he met with media to preview the Yellow Jackets’ game vs. Virginia on Saturday night at McCamish Pavilion, he offered the observation that “you can play really well and not win. But that’s part of this league.”
How well Tech played against Notre Dame is debatable. The Jackets did shoot 51.7 percent from the field – their third game above 50 percent from the field in the past four. And they suffered the misfortune of Notre Dame making a handful of tough shots that helped put the Fighting Irish over the top.
However, the Jackets also turned the ball over 13 times (lower than their season average, but still too many) and were ineffective on the offensive glass. It enabled Notre Dame to take 65 shots to Tech’s 58, which was difference making as Tech fell back to 8-9 overall and 3-4 in the ACC with the 78-74 loss.
On Saturday, Tech probably will need to rebound better on offense to have a chance against a team that defends as well as any team in the country.
Given that the defending national champions led Division I in field-goal percentage defense (34.7 percent) going into Friday’s games, chances are that Tech will have a lot of missed shots to go after Saturday.
That starts with Tech’s two big men, James Banks and Moses Wright, and wing player Jordan Usher. Pastner challenged them after they combined for three offensive rebounds against Notre Dame. The team had five of 28 available rebounds (17.9 percent).
“We definitely didn’t get to the glass as much as we wanted,” Banks said.
“They’ve got to be all about motor, and motor’s all about what you do on the offensive and defensive glass,” Pastner said after the game.
Banks and Wright had 11 offensive rebounds against then-No. 2 Duke as Tech pounded the backboards for 16 offensive rebounds in 39 opportunities (41 percent), helping the Jackets score 14 second-chance points to give the Jackets a chance before ultimately losing to the Blue Devils. They had eight in 30 opportunities in the road win over Boston College (26.7 percent) on Saturday. Across Division I, 30 percent is good, 35 percent is excellent.
Pastner said he wants to see the offensive-rebounding effort be more consistent.
“It’s got to be an every-time thing,” Pastner said.
A rather surprising development for Tech is that the Jackets are playing well on offense thus far in ACC play. Pastner pointed out that Tech ranks eighth in the ACC in offensive efficiency (KenPom) in league play after seven games. In his first three seasons, Tech finished 15th, 14th and 15th in that category. (On the other hand, Tech ranks 10th in defensive efficiency after finishing second, sixth and ninth in the past three years.)
But, to do more than play well in losses, the scoring or defense (or both) has to get better, and one way to get that done is on the offensive glass.
“I feel like we can dominate on the offensive glass at any time, especially when our guys are playing at a high motor,” Banks said. “It just comes down to our effort and our energy.”
For Tech’s NCAA tournament hopes to be legitimate, that effort and energy will need to be consistent. After his team has gone loss-win-loss-win-loss over the past two weeks, Banks knows that that can’t continue.
“We’re coming up towards the middle of ACC play,” he said. “We’ve got to start stringing wins together, beating good teams and becoming the team that we are. We don’t want to be an inconsistent team. We don’t want to be an up-and-down team. That’s when we were younger. That’s for last year.”
About the Author
