It wasn’t Georgia Tech’s best, but it was enough.
Coming back from a seven-point halftime deficit, the Yellow Jackets properly celebrated Senior Day with a 63-59 win over Pittsburgh in their final regular-season game of the season.
With the win, Tech (18-13, 8-10 ACC) secured the No. 10 seed for the ACC tournament and will play No. 7 seed Clemson at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Washington. The Jackets have won six of their past eight games, all of them by single-digit margins. Before that, dating to last season, Tech had been 2-20 in ACC regular-season games decided by fewer than 10 points.
On Saturday, Tech took the lead on an Adam Smith 3-pointer with 6:24 remaining and never relinquished it.
“You just stay poised and stick to what’s called,” guard Marcus Georges-Hunt said.
It was Tech’s first win over Pitt (20-10, 9-9) in four tries since the Panthers joined the ACC for the 2013-14 season.
Here are five observations from the game:
Smith bags more 3's. Smith delivered again with a flurry of 3-pointers in the second half. Smith was 4-for-4 from 3-point range in the second half, when he scored 16 of his team-high 23 points. He twice tied the score with 3-pointers and made a third that gave the Jackets the lead at 56-55 with 6:24 remaining, their first lead since late in the first half.
“Those were the game-changers right there,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said.
Said Smith, who scored 30 points in the teams’ first meeting in January and 26 last season when he was at Virginia Tech, “I thought they were going to be more keyed in on me this time, but they gave me some space, and I just took advantage of the opportunities.”
Tough matchup. Early on, Tech didn't have answers for Pitt forward Michael Young. At 6-foot-9, Young was guarded by the Jackets' post men, particularly forwards Charles Mitchell and Nick Jacobs. Young beat them off the dribble and rose for jumpers on his way to a game-high 24 points.
At hafltime, coaches challenged Jacobs to play Young more physically, and he helped limit him to six points in the second half, including only two in the final 17:26.
Jacobs also scored 19 points with 12 rebounds for his second double-double of the season in what coach Brian Gregory said was “probably his best overall game.”
Compare and contrast. Tech played far differently than it did than in its first meeting with Pitt, when the Panthers won 89-84, shot 49.2 percent from the field and took 30 free throws. On Saturday, the Panthers shot 39.3 percent from the field and took 13 free throws.
“With Hunt out there, they’ve probably got bigger bodies on the perimeter and (are) harder to score against, I would guess,” Dixon said. “To me, that seems like the best thing they’re doing.”
Pitt point guard James Robinson was defended ably by Smith and was limited to nine points and three assists. In the first game, he was not challenged and scored 18 points with eight assists.
Breaking tendencies. It's not their pattern, but the Jackets won with a strong second half, scoring 34 points after halftime compared with 29 in the first half. Tech followed its errant shooting in the first half (10-for-30) by shooting 46.2 percent (12-for-26) in the second half and outscored Pitt 34-23 in the second half.
Entering the game, Tech had scored 53 percent of its points in ACC games in the first half and had scored more points in the second half than the first just five times in the first 17 ACC games.
Alive for NIT. The win completed the best ACC regular season in Gregory's tenure by two games. The Jackets' 18 overall wins are the most since the 2009-10 season, when Tech won 23 games and reached the round of 32 in the NCAA tournament. The win improves the Jackets' candidacy to earn an at-large bid for the NIT. It would be Tech's first postseason berth since 2010.
Particularly because of Tech’s strength of schedule, Gregory has not given up hope that the Jackets can win an at-large NCAA tournament bid if they can make a run in the ACC tournament.
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