For 24 minutes, Georgia Tech hummed on offense.
Center Daniel Miller attacked the basket, hit jumpers and played at his peak. Backup forward Quinton Stephens sizzled from the perimeter. The Yellow Jackets outran N.C. State down the court for transition baskets.
Then, as has often been the case, the Yellow Jackets began to accumulate possessions that ended in turnovers or difficult shots. Jump shots began to clang or miss the rim altogether. The final agonizing result was an 80-78 overtime defeat at the hands of N.C. State Sunday afternoon at PNC Arena.
“We’ve just got to keep surging forward and keep working hard and hopefully start winning a couple of these games,” coach Brian Gregory said.
Tech (11-9 overall, 2-5 ACC) let slip away an opportunity to head into its Wednesday night home game against North Carolina with the momentum of back-to-back road wins. On top of the scoring woes, Tech was gouged defensively by the Wolfpack, who made 53.3 percent of their shots, their highest rate in ACC play.
Again, Tech revealed itself capable of standing up to an ACC opponent but not quite strong enough to knock it over.
“It’s a tough game, tough loss,” guard Trae Golden said.
Early, the Jackets presented N.C. State (13-7, 3-4) with some of the shot-making and ball movement that they had used to score a win Tuesday night at Boston College. Tech took a 52-41 lead with 15:56 to play in the second half on a jumper by Miller. To that point, Tech had scored on 25 of its 40 possessions.
After another possession in man to man, N.C. State coach Mark Gottfried switched to a zone defense, which has thwarted the Jackets by making it more difficult to post the ball to Miller and forcing Tech to rely more on perimeter shooting. Over the remainder of regulation, the Jackets scored on seven of their final 24 possessions.
Tech was forced into four turnovers in a seven-possession span during N.C. State’s rally, errors that led to six points for the Wolfpack. The Jackets combated the zone with powerful work on the offensive glass. In the second half, Miller and forward Kammeon Holsey grabbed a combined eight offensive rebounds as Tech scored 11 second-chance points to N.C. State’s three.
The slide revisited a theme for the Jackets, who allowed Boston College to make up all but one point of an 18-point second-half margin Tuesday night before they pulled out the win. In its win over Notre Dame, Tech also saw a 15-point second-half lead evaporate after scoring three points in a 7 ½-minute span.
Defense was as much at fault Sunday as the other end, if not more so. The Wolfpack repeatedly scored at the rim, collecting 40 of their 80 points in the paint. Two of the most painful were by guard Desmond Lee, who slipped in to the basket to score on a tip-in with 19 seconds to go in regulation to tie the game at 72 and forced overtime after Golden’s 3-point try at the buzzer missed the rim entirely.
N.C. State is the third ACC team to hit its field-goal percentage high in league play against Tech.
Tech is handicapped by the loss of Robert Carter, one of its best interior defenders and rebounders. Carter is reduced to
clapping and cheering his teammates (spiritedly so) as he has been out since the end of December with a torn meniscus in his knee.
“We needed to have 25 defensive rebounds instead of 24, and it would have been a different story,” Gregory said, referring to Lee’s tip-in. “But that is where we’re at. That’s kind of how close we are.”
The result rendered superior performances by Miller and Stephens to footnote status. Tying his career high with 14 shots, Miller scored a career-high 21 points and gathered 14 rebounds (seven offensive), one shy of his career best.
“He played amazing,” Golden said. “He was the reason we were in the game.”
Coming off the bench, Stephens made five of seven shots and finished with 13, his career high as well.
Tech had chances at the end besides Golden’s miss at the end of regulation. At the end of overtime, with Tech down two points, Golden raced upcourt but was called for a charge with 2.5 seconds left. After N.C. State’s Ralston Turner missed both free throws, Chris Bolden just missed a 3-pointer at the buzzer.
“We’ve got to have more wherewithal about a lot of stuff,” Golden said after the game. “We can’t have turnovers or miscues with the rebounds. We’ve just got to make sure, at the end of the game, we are there and we finish it off.”
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