For 30 minutes, Georgia Tech was every bit the equal of the No. 20 team in the country. Virginia proved it was a far better team over 40 minutes.
Scoring 22 of the final 23 points of the game, the Cavaliers deflated the Yellow Jackets, taking a 64-45 win out of McCamish Pavilion on Saturday afternoon.
With a thin bench, its most proven scorer hobbled by a groin injury and struck by its propensity to stall at the wrong time, Tech was thwarted again.
“You have to play extremely well for 40 minutes and with great grit and toughness against that team,” coach Brian Gregory said. “We just weren’t able to finish it.”
By unofficial count, the Jackets averaged an even one point per possession on its first 44 possessions, taking a 44-42 lead with 9:52 to play on their 44th possession, a basket in transition by forward Kammeon Holsey and bonus free throw. Virginia outscored Tech 22-1 the rest of the way.
Over the final 15 possessions, only a Holsey free throw prevented Tech from being shut out. The possessions were squandered in various ways. A 3-point try by guard Chris Bolden, who had torched Virginia for 11 points in the first half, grazed the rim and slid out of bounds, one of nine missed field-goal attempts.
Forward Marcus Georges-Hunt pushed off on a drive to the basket, one of four turnovers in those last 15 possessions. Only one possession was extended by an offensive rebound, as Virginia outrebounded Tech 46-25. The Jackets made one of six free-throw tries. Guard Corey Heyward missed his first, got a reprieve after missing the second thanks to a Virginia lane violation, then missed again.
Tech (12-12 overall, 3-8 ACC) finished 3-for-13 from the line compared with 17-for-19 for Virginia (19-5, 10-1).
Virginia’s offense began to shred the Jackets, taking advantage of the turnovers and dissecting the defense with deft passing and movement for uncontested dunks.
“It’s really tough,” Miller said. “Tie game, and we think it’s going to go into the last two rounds of battle (meaning the final eight minutes), and then a couple turnovers, just a little mental lapse and they take over and the game’s over already.”
Virginia coach Tony Bennett credited Tech for frustrating the Cavaliers up until the closing surge. Despite Tech’s cluster of injuries, the Jackets defended Virginia well, he said, and Miller was cleaning up the middle, blocking six shots and altering many more.
“And they were physical, and they made it very hard,” Bennett said. “They ran good offense, they hit a couple tough shots, but they had us reeling a little bit.”
It was not a small achievement against Virginia, whose 10-1 ACC start is its best since the 1981-82 season. In eight of the Cavaliers’ first nine conference wins, they led by 21 or more points. Through Thursday’s games, Virginia ranked No. 2 in the country in scoring defense.
Playing before a crowd of 8,187, Tech hung in with Virginia for an extended period of play even though leading scorer Trae Golden, hobbled by a groin injury, was held scoreless in 18 minutes of action. Forward Robert Carter came off the bench for his first action since tearing the meniscus in his left knee Dec. 29 and played 16 minutes, scoring five points with two rebounds and showing obvious rust. Effort was not lacking on Tech’s part.
But in the end, as Bennett put it, “the thing just separated.”
For Virginia, Saturday was a joyful homecoming for guard Malcolm Brogdon, a Greater Atlanta Christian graduate. Brogdon scored a game-high 14 points, making all seven free-throw attempts, and tied his career high with 11 rebounds, also a game-high.
Tech likely will have to wait a couple weeks for Carter to return to form. Golden needs recovery time. Their health will provide the Jackets with more margin for error, but the lapses that continue to vex the Jackets likely will not be fixed by time alone.
Said Miller, “If we had eight more minutes left in us of mental toughness and just being tough, playing as a team, it could have been a whole different story.”
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