Georgia Tech’s offensive freefall extended to a fourth consecutive game.
Making ill-advised passes, passing up open shots and clanking shots from near and far, the Yellow Jackets lost their fourth consecutive game, absorbing a 65-42 drubbing from Clemson at McCamish Pavilion.
Point guard Jose Alvarado was way off his game again, shooting 1-for-10 from the field for three points after shooting 0-for-10 against Florida State on Saturday. His frustration bubbled over after the game.
“Personally, for myself, I suck right now, and I need to get out of it,” Alvarado said. “I don’t know what’s in my head. I need to play like Jose that came here.”
Tech shot below 40 percent from the field for the third game in a row and failed to reach 50 points for the second game in a row. It was the lowest-scoring game in coach Josh Pastner’s tenure at Tech and, in fact in Pastner’s entire career as a head coach.
“We just can’t keep scoring in the 40’s, and we’ve tried everything,” Pastner said. “Again, it falls on my shoulders because I’m the head coach. It’s on me. Iv’e got to find a way.”
Tech (11-12, 3-7 ACC) fell below .500 for the first time this season. Clemson (14-8, 4-5) won its eighth consecutive game over the Jackets, sweeping the season series. To illustrate the Jackets’ precipitous downturn in offensive production, Tech lost the first game at Littlejohn Coliseum January 16 in a game in which the Jackets were without forward Abdoulaye Gueye and sixth man Brandon Alston and lacked offensive punch. Yet in that game, the Jackets scored 18 more points than they did Wednesday night, this time with their full lineup available.
Tech failed to reach 30 points for the sixth consecutive game and failed to reach 55 by game’s end for the fourth consecutive game. The team’s stunningly errant 3-point shooting (29.1 percent for the season and 26.7 percent in ACC play) appears to have caused players to be apprehensive. Repeatedly, Tech players were in position to take open 3-point shots but passed them up to drive to the basket, often to ill effect.
“It’s probably seeped in the minds a little bit,” Pastner said. “This is big-boy basketball. We’ve got to figure it out and they’ve got to get through it.”
The Jackets may have been done as early as the first 10 minutes of the first half. Tech took an early 6-5 lead, even with a rare successful 3-pointer by Alvarado to start things off. However, after scoring the sixth point at the 17:15 mark, Tech did not score again until the 9:48 mark, at which point the Tigers led 14-8.
For this team, going scoreless for 19 percent of the game was too much to handle. Clemson’s lead was soon into double digits, seemingly beyond the Jackets’ capacity to overcome.
Alston was effective off the bench, scoring 11 points on 4-for-6 shooting from the field. But everything else was intermittent at best. Alvarado handed out four assists, including some deft drive-and-dish plays. But Tech’s leading scorer was not capable of getting points for the Jackets.
“I’m being selfish right now and worrying about stuff that’s in my head,” Alvarado said. “I need to come out and play.”
Banks was a solid 7-for-10 from the line, but was 3-for-9 from the field, including multiple misses from close range.
“I missed a lot of shots that I feel like were high percentage for me,” Banks said.
As a team, the Jackets shot 30.2 percent from the field and turned the ball over 16 times. Tech fans looking for any sort of bright spot might be (mildly) encouraged to know that the Jackets, when emboldened enough to take them, were 4-for-12 from 3-point range, which was their highest rate in the past six games.
Watching this team flail with the ball in its hand, it’s almost inconceivable that the same group scored 92 against Wake Forest and shot 59.5 percent from the field to upset Syracuse on the road.
“We’ve tried everything you can think of to try to get out of this scoring drought,” Pastner said. “But we’ve got to be able to find a way to score the ball. We’ve tried to play fast, we’ve tried to play slow, we’ve tried to play two post, we’ve tried to play small. We’ve got to find a way to get out of this scoring slump. It’s not just shooting, it’s scoring. We’ve got to find a way to score the ball.”
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