Georgia Tech pulled away from Clark Atlanta in the second half Wednesday at McCamish Pavilion to win an exhibition 91-75.
The Yellow Jackets, playing in front of a crowd of 3,244, were only up six points with 14:27 to go but asserted their will from there in the unofficial start to the Damon Stoudamire Era. Tech officially begins the 2023-24 season at 7:30 p.m. Monday against Georgia Southern at McCamish Pavilion.
“I was happy tonight because these games can always go in a different direction,” Stoudamire said. “But I got a lot of confidence in the guys.”
Kowacie Reeves, a transfer from Florida, led Tech with 19 points on 8 of 11 shooting. The junior guard from Macon also had eight rebounds and four assists, part of a 25-assist night for Tech as a team.
“We want to turn it over a little bit less, but like coach said, when we share the ball, we’re a really good team,” Reeves said. “I think that’s something that we try to emphasize because when we do that in spurts, like we saw tonight, we can be really good.”
Ole Miss transfer Amaree Abram added 18 and made four 3s. Freshman Ibrahima Sacko chipped in nine points to go along with eight rebounds and Kyle Sturdivant had 11 assists. Myles Kelly scored 12, but was just 4 of 13 from the floor and had three turnovers.
Tech was missing three players due to injury and another, starter Tafara Gapare, didn’t return in the second half after scoring nine in the first 20 minutes. Stoudamire said Gapare was held out the second half for precautionary reasons.
“Was really disappointed though in the amount of turnovers that we had. I do think that some of that was in part to guys playing too many minutes, but nonetheless I was still disappointed because we had three of our better ball handlers in there and we worked on it,” Stoudamire said. “Was really disappointed on giving up 20 offensive rebounds. The biggest guy on their team only had two. So for me it was more of size on size and we gotta get a little tougher when it comes to those things.”
Tech did not get off to the greatest starts Wednesday by missing an alley-oop and airballing a 3, but it then scored 12 straight to take a 12-4 lead thanks to a pair of Abram 3s and four points from Reeves. That lead ballooned to 17-4 while CAU went nearly four minutes without a point.
Clark Atlanta settled into the game and thus began to chip away at the deficit. A Jalen Williams 3 cut the score to 25-18 and Silas Mason’s jumper in the lane got the Panthers within 28-22.
Reeves restored order somewhat with a 3 on the left wing making it 35-24 that also broke a field goal drought of almost five minutes. Reeves hit another 3 from nearly the same spot 3 1/2 minutes later pushing the score to 40-26 and then Carter Murphy drained a left-corner 3 at the buzzer, thanks to a Kelly assist, allowing the Jackets to go into the locker room up 43-28.
Reeves and Abram combined for 11 in the first half and Tech shot 48.3% as a team. It also registered 10 assists on 14 made shots.
Clark Atlanta came out of break the much better team and was on a 14-5 run after Dez’Mond Perkins’ tip-in shrunk Tech’s lead to 48-42. But Reeves scored five of the next seven, including a right-corner 3, to extend the margin back out to 55-42 with 13 minutes to go.
That run stretched to 13-0 after a pair of Sacko dunks and an alley-oop from Sturdivant to Reeves that made it 61-42 with 11:44 remaining. Sacko’s triple from the right corner made it a 20-point game at 64-44 and Clark Atlanta didn’t have a run left in the tank.
Chris Martin scored 12, 10 of which came from the line, to lead the Panthers who begin their season Monday at Mercer.
“I was pleased with the effort for our first real dry run in front of fans, in front of people,” Stoudamire said. “I’m looking forward and I’m excited as we take (Thursday) off, have a couple days to get ready and then we’ll come back on Monday against Georgia Southern.”
Trio out with injury
Three Jackets did not play Wednesday. Senior forward Tyzhaun Claude, senior guard Lance Terry and freshman forward Baye Ndongo were held out of the exhibition due to injury.
Stoudamire said Claude and Ndongo will both be reevaluated this week and that Terry may not play until the second or third game of the season.
“When those guys come back my depth will be right and then I can get back to playing a lot more guys. I don’t look at it as an issue,” Stoudamire said. “I look at it as when you historically look at some of the teams that have had a lot of success, they’ve been able to keep fresh guys in the game. I think it’ll be no different for us.”
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