Georgia Tech has something cooking.
Baye Ndongo’s tip-in off a missed shot at the buzzer in overtime Saturday gave the Yellow Jackets a 90-88 victory over visiting California at McCamish Pavilion. The win was Tech’s fifth in seven games, and second in overtime during that span.
Tech (13-13, 7-8 ACC) moved into eighth place in the conference standings with five games remaining in the regular season, thanks in part to Ndongo’s heroics.
“I was just going to the glass, just doing the little things that my coaches told me to do,” Ndongo said. “I was just trying to help my team win. Just going to the glass, back side, ball there, I just tipped it.”
The Jackets looked dead to rights late Saturday in front of another small crowd of 4,648, trailing by five in overtime. But Nait George drained his fifth 3 of the game and then Lance Terry took a turnover the other direction for a layup to tie the game with two minutes to play.
Ndongo later tied the game at 88 with a jumper in the lane with 43 seconds to play. The Jackets then got a defensive stop and called timeout with 21 seconds left. The ball went into the hands of George who spun and juked at the top of the key before driving down the right side of the lane.
He ducked inside and threw up a shot which bounced off no good — but Ndongo was there for the rebound and the putback and the win. His teammates mobbed the sophomore center and the celebration bled all the way into the tunnel leading to Tech’s locker room.
“What a game. Man, it was pretty much start to finish, but our guys, they’re getting better. And tonight, it was the mental part of the game,” Tech coach Damon Stoudamire said. “We had moments where, especially late in the second half and even in the overtime, where in the past, we didn’t execute or we didn’t do things the right way. But those guys did it (tonight).”
Ndongo had 26 points and 13 rebounds (eight on the offensive end). George scored 26 and had eight assists while Duncan Powell added 19.
Tech is off until traveling to Boston College (10-15, 2-12 ACC) on Feb. 22.
“Excited. We gotta keep our foot on the pedal,” Stoudamire added. “We got a week off, and although the rest is good, it worries me because there’s two things during those bye weeks that you have to understand: You gotta stay paranoid as a player. You have to stay paranoid as a coach to get better, want more, get greedy. Then, we gotta go on the road where we’ve only won one game (this season).”
Rytis Petraitis had put Cal ahead 71-69 with a pair of free throws with 6:10 on the clock in regulation. The Jackets responded with a mini 6-2 run and were ahead 77-73 with 2:14 on the clock before four straight from Cal knotted the score at 77-all at the 1:18 mark.
Ndongo’s putback off George’s missed layup put Tech back in front 79-77 with 54 ticks to go, but Andrej Stojakovic made an easy layup on the other end tying the score at 79. Jeremiah Wilkinson missed a runner before the buzzer to end regulation, sending the game to overtime where Tech eventually prevailed.
Tech is 2-0 in overtime games this season, having beaten Clemson in triple overtime on Feb. 4.
“Shoot, we’ve been feeling good and we just feel like our trajectory just keeps going forward,” George said. “The joy and the energy, as long as we just have high energy, just high hopes, I feel like we can do anything. Playing with that confidence, we can accomplish anything.”
Tech trailed for much of the first half until Terry, who had missed Wednesday’s game with a sore wrist, drained a 3 from the left wing to give the Jackets a 14-11 lead. That sparked a 13-3 run for Tech that ended with a George 3 from the top of the key forcing a Cal timeout with 7:57 left in the period.
After the Bears (12-14, 5-10) cut the score to 22-20 on the heels to back-to-back Petraitis 3′s, Tech answered with an 8-2 burst capped by Ndongo’s turnaround jumper from the right block making it 30-22 with 4:12 on the clock.
The Jackets took a 39-34 lead into the break. Ndongo had 16 points through the first 20 minutes and Tech shot 53.6% in the first half. Cal hung around thanks to six 3-pointers.
Led by Wilkinson, a former McEachern High School standout, Cal had all the momentum in the first 4 1/2 minutes of the second half. The freshman scored all 12 of the Bears’ points to begin the period and had Cal within 47-46 after a layup at the 15:41 mark.
The Bears tied the game at 48-all on a DeJuan Campbell layup, then took a 54-52 lead on a fast break 3 from the left wing out of the hands of Stojakovic with 12:40 remaining.
There were six lead changes from that point. A seventh came with less than three minutes to play on a Powell dunk, and it then looked like Powell had iced the game with two free throws with 2:14 left to put the home squad ahead by four.
Cal fought back, and fought until the very last second, only to fall in excruciating fashion.
“You’re gonna spend a lot of time as a staff debating how to guard (Ndongo and George),” Cal coach Mark Madsen said. “And ball screens. We guarded things the way we guarded them out there tonight based on what we felt we could do with our personnel. And they’ve got counters. George is a phenomenal passer. His vision is high-level and his passing is high-level. Ndongo is long, he’s athletic, he’s tough, he’s quick. That’s a pretty great tandem.”
Wilkinson led the Bears with 25 points while Stojakovic added 22.
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