By design, the nonconference schedule for Georgia Tech’s basketball team is a couple notches tougher than it was in coach Brian Gregory’s first two seasons.
“The fine line is to continue to build confidence and to continue to build within your system, but also play challenging games,” Gregory said Monday. “Hopefully we’ve found that balance, and it remains to be seen.”
After losing to Mississippi and St. John’s at the Barclays Center Classic in New York by a combined 21 points, the Yellow Jackets have another test Tuesday night at McCamish Pavilion. Tech will play Illinois as part of the Big Ten/ACC Challenge. The Illini are 7-0 and held a No. 18 RPI ranking as of Monday evening. A year ago, they beat the Jackets 75-62 in Champaign, Ill., which was also part of the ACC/Big Ten series. Tech has lost five Big Ten/ACC Challenge games in a row.
For better or worse, the trip to New York and the Jackets’ 82-72 loss to Dayton Nov. 20 at McCamish have given them plenty of homework. Tech shot 39.4 percent from the field in those three games and had two of their three highest turnover games, 19 against Dayton and 20 against St. John’s. In part because the turnovers led to transition opportunities, those three teams shot a healthy 45.1 percent.
In New York, “we just got frustrated,” forward Marcus Georges-Hunt said. “I think we got frustrated as a team. Passes weren’t caught, missing easy shots and bad turnovers. We just have to move on to the next play and put that last play behind us.”
There are a number of kinks to work out on the offensive end. Gregory said that about five players aren’t shooting as well as they can. Guard Chris Bolden, who last season shot 36.2 percent as a freshman but has dropped to 22.2 percent this season, would be chief among them. Gregory believes players have rushed shots.
He compared it to a baseball player “trying to hit a three-run homer with no one on base.”
But the greater flaw has been poor decision making with the ball.
“Sometimes it’s in the open court, in terms of our decision making, when to attack and when not to,” Gregory said. “Sometimes it’s on drives to the basket, when to kick it out as opposed to shooting the ball or whatever the case may be. And some of it is, when you’re on the wing, you have to be able to feed the post against some pressure, and that’s an area we need to get better at.”
As was also the case in Gregory’s first two seasons, sufficient touches and shots for center Daniel Miller and, to a lesser degree, forward Kammeon Holsey, have been an issue. Miller has often been a reluctant shooter, a problem compounded by perimeter players’ inability to get him the ball in the post. It runs counter to the inside-out style that Gregory preaches and fails to make better use of Miller, who is shooting 63.0 percent. Eight teammates have a higher shot-per-minute rate than Miller thus far this season.
“The guards need to feed the post understanding that it helps our offense,” Gregory said. “It also helps them because it eliminates the pressure, because now the (opposing) team’s got to go down and help down there. It also creates some shots from the perimeter.”
While there are other factors, it doesn’t help that the point guards primarily responsible for feeding the post are Trae Golden, a transfer from Tennessee, and Solomon Poole, a sophomore who joined the team in December and had a limited role last season. Further, the Jackets have not had much practice time to address problems as they played eight games in 23 days in November. With exams and the holiday break, Tech will only play five games in December.
Said Gregory, “As fast as I want them to get it, you have to have a little bit of a learning curve.”
Tech can expect Illinois to try to exploit its offensive frailties. Through Sunday’s games, the Illini were ranked 12th in the country in field-goal percentage defense.
Tech could get some help by Saturday’s game against East Tennessee State, when forward Jason Morris may make his season debut after preseason surgery to repair a stress fracture in his foot.
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