Georgia Tech found balance in Wednesday night’s 59-52 win over North Carolina A&T as Kellen McCormick, Tadric Jackson and Ben Lammers each scored 12 points. Really, though, there wasn’t much good to report for the Yellow Jackets in their last game before opening ACC action Saturday against North Carolina except …
1. McCormick saved the Jackets’ tails. The graduate transfer from Western Michigan scored five points – total – in Tech’s first 11 games, and played just 26 minutes. Were it not for him going 4-of-5 on 3-pointers in the second half against the Aggies (1-12), Tech would’ve been in dire straights. The rest of the Jackets (8-4) were 2-of-10 from distance, and 15-of-43 from the field. Head coach Josh Pastner has spoken of McCormick’s intelligence. Wednesday, his stroke saved the day (or night). “He’s a great shooter,” Lammers said. “It’s really more about opportunity; he just hasn’t had the shots at the basket.” Said Jackson: “He got his name called, and he was ready.”
2. Pastner has suggested there might be nights like this, where the Jackets struggle to score, and myriad statistics bear that out. But nobody could’ve predicted that Tech would miss its first seven shots, or 13-of-15 to open the game. Trailing 4-0, Pastner was so disgusted that he subbed all five starters out just 2:51 into the game. Out went Lammers, Jackson, Josh Okogie, Quinton Stephens and Josh Moore. In came McCormick, Corey Heyward, Sylvester Ogbonda and Christian Matthews. It didn’t help. The starters all subbed back in at the 14:37 mark, and the score was still 4-0. Lammers suggested that the Jackets lacked the requisite energy, and took the Aggies for granted. In Pastner’s view, “We avoided disaster. We found a way to win in the end. It wasn’t pretty … Kellen McCormick saved us, bottom line.”
3. Tech made five of its last eight shots in the first half to take a 26-23 lead, but Lammers struggled with foul trouble for the first time and that hurt. North Carolina A&T coach Jay Joyner figured that if his team attacked the Jackets’ leading scorer, rebounder and shot blocker, they might be able to discombobulate Tech. The Jackets were a mess, and when Lammers picked up his fourth foul with 10:04 left, Tech trailed 39-36 as A&T’s Ben Hunt scored 16 of his 20 points in the second half. “For 36 minutes, we went toe-to-toe with an ACC team,” Joyner said. “Our game plan was to take it to [Lammers] early.” That paid off. The Aggies outscored Tech 14-10 in the paint in the first half, and tied 22-22 for the game. They also outrebounded the Jackets 35-33 overall.
4. Jackson and McCormick warmed up, thankfully. North Carolina A&T led or was tied for 29:16 in this game, and the Jackets led for just 10:36. But they closed the game with an 18-7 run, the heart of that coming with a 9-0 stretch that turned a 45-41 deficit into a 50-45 lead on Jackson’s three-point play with 2:46 left in the game. Jackson, who scored 11 of his 12 after halftime, scored seven in that nine-point surge. When the Aggies closed to within 50-49, McCormick answered with his final trey at 1:29, good for a four-point lead. Tech sailed to the finish line, surely thankful that A&T’s second-leading scorer, Eliel Gonzalez, was held out by coach Joyner because he was late twice in the past two days, once to practice and once to a team bus.
5. Tech shot much better in the second half, making 12-of-25 and 5-of-10 3-pointers (1-of-5 in the first half). Still, if the Aggies had any shooting power left, the Jackets might have even more explaining to do. A&T shot just 32.1 percent for the game, and 3-of-17 from distance. “In the long term, the best way to improve shooting is recruiting and we understand what we need to do to attack that,” Pastner said. “In the short term, we’ve got to make sure that we find ways to score.” It didn’t help that Tech was 15-of-24 from the free throw line.
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