For Georgia Tech fans who made it through the Yellow Jackets' 65-47 home loss to Ball State on Wednesday, it might be some small solace that Tech coach Josh Pastner felt even worse about it than they did.
“I was sick to my stomach,” Pastner said Friday.
Pastner spoke by phone from Honolulu, where the Jackets will begin play Sunday in the Diamond Head Classic on Sunday against Boise State. Having some distance from the game, both geographic and chronological, did not tame his assessment of the game.
“It was bad all the way around,” he said. “It was unacceptable how we played on Wednesday. It was awful.”
Against the Cardinals, who were 5-4 coming into the game, the Jackets showed little cohesion, turned the ball over 24 times, shot 33.3 percent and were down 65-35 before Ball State mercifully removed its starters and regular backups.
The game followed a 97-63 home loss to Syracuse Dec. 7 and a 67-53 loss on the road to No. 6 Kentucky Dec.14. The margin of defeat in the Syracuse loss was Tech's largest at home since January 1981. Against the Wildcats, Tech played better, especially defensively, but thwarted itself by missing open jump shots and turning the ball over 17 times.
“We’re a better team than what we showed the last week and a half,” he said.
Pastner was particularly disappointed by the lack of energy that the team displayed in the losses to Syracuse and Ball State. Pastner takes pride in his teams playing with superior effort, and he said he had never had a team of his play with such a low energy level two times in that short a timeframe in his 11 seasons as a head coach.
“One time is enough, but to do it two times in three games is unacceptable,” Pastner said. “We may not ever win another game, but over my dead body can we ever let that happen again.”
Tech will play three games in Hawaii in the eight-team tournament, with second- and third-round matchups on Monday and Wednesday. Houston and Portland are on the same half of the bracket as Tech and Boise State. Ball State, Washington, UTEP and Hawaii are on the other.
The ideal, obviously, would be for Tech to play with energy, rediscover its offensive flow, win the event at 3-0 and head into the remaining 18 ACC games with point guard Jose Alvarado (out with an ankle injury) ready to go for the New Year’s Eve road game against Florida State. Pastner repeatedly positioned the three games as “a bad week and a half of basketball” and stated his confidence that “we are a good basketball team.”
It is true that Tech was playing much better, particularly on offense, in its first six games before the three-game slide against Syracuse, Kentucky and Ball State. The next three games figure to help further reveal the team's identity.
“It’s not about words, it’s about actions,” Pastner said. “We’re going to address the problems head on and try to have course correction and get it fixed.”
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