In a season that has been anything but smooth to this point, Georgia Tech won on the last day of 2024 and headed toward the new calendar year on a positive note thanks to a 86-75 victory over visiting Notre Dame on Tuesday at McCamish Pavilion in front of 4,914 fans.
The Yellow Jackets have climbed their way back to .500 after 14 games, and they broke a six-game losing streak to major conference opponents this season — they had been 0-6 in those games before Tuesday. Tech survived an offensive barrage by the Fighting Irish in the second half to improve to 7-7 and 1-2 in ACC play.
“We told ourselves before the game, we’re gonna go into this new year as a different team,” Tech forward Duncan Powell said. “A lot of people, they see the wins and losses in basketball and think too much of it early in the season. Teams like this, we got a good group of guys, a talented group of guys, a group of guys that play hard. I knew things like this would turn around. It’ll keep inclining with our performance.”
Powell scored 21 off the bench. He was matched by Javian McCollum who also scored 21 off the bench, while Lance Terry scored 14. Terry had two of the top plays of the night, forcing a steal that led to his own acrobatic layup at the 4:51 mark and following that play with a swished 3-point shot from the top of the key on the next possession.
Nait George scored 11 to go with six assists and five rebounds. Baye Ndongo, who had four fouls by 52 seconds into the second half, finished with 10 points and six rebounds before fouling out.
Tuesday’s victory was the second consecutive for Tech, giving the team only its second win streak of the season. The Jackets entered Tuesday’s game with a NET ranking of 158, a 0-6 record against Quad 1 opponents and only three games left against Quad 1 teams.
Stoudamire’s hope is that the victory over the Irish can set his squad on the right path heading into the new year.
“We just gotta keep getting better. There’s been a lot of work within,” said Stoudamire, who beat Notre Dame for the first time in four tries. “When I say within, I’m talking about in our locker room. We’ve all been disappointed at a lot of things. There’s an injury here, an injury there, there’s a whole bunch of things you can say, but I’m not into all that. I’m from the old school. You got what you got and we gotta figure it out.”
“For me, I knew that when we got to the (winter) break, we’ll have some practice time that’s gonna help us because I knew based on the injuries that we had, we were gonna have to play big, but then we were gonna have to play small as well. The practice time has helped.”
Tech began the day with a 7-1 run that forced an incensed Notre Dame coach Micah Shrewsberry to call a timeout three minutes into the game. The Irish had started 0-for-5 from the field, but made four of their next eight shots and edged ahead 12-11 at one point, while Tech went nearly 3-1/2 minutes without scoring.
The Jackets responded with a 15-2 run that was punctuated by Terry’s one-handed slam on the fast break and a McCollum pull-up 3 from the left wing. Tech made eight consecutive shots at one point en route to a 28-16 lead.
Stoudamire’s crew didn’t take the foot off the pedal from there, ending the half on a 9-2 run that Powell polished off with a 3-point shot from the left corner that made the score 43-24. Tech shot 60.7% from the floor, had 12 assists on 17 made shots and held the Irish to a 28.1% shooting clip.
“I would say, for me, that was the best first half we played since I’ve been here at Georgia Tech — on both sides of the ball,” Stoudamire said. “I just thought we were connected, we were intentional and we did a lot of good things. I was really happy and proud of the fellas.”
After a bit of a slow and sloppy start to the second half, Tech regrouped and built the lead back to 19 points at 55-36, thanks to a McCollum 3 in the left corner and a George fadeaway jumper from the right baseline.
Notre Dame, out of nowhere, poured in 11 consecutive points in 2:08 of game clock and suddenly was within 55-47 after back-to-back Braeden Shrewsberry 3′s. That flurry forced a Tech timeout with 12:29 to play.
That stoppage in play slowed the visitors briefly, but Notre Dame kept coming over time and made it a 67-62 game when Matt Allocco drained a 3 from the right wing with 7:50 to go. Allocco’s fallaway jumper in the paint about two minutes later got the Irish within 69-66, but that would be as close as they would get.
“I thought we did a better job of trying to be aggressive (in the second half),” Micah Shrewsberry said. “We were driving the ball. They picked up a bunch of fouls early in the second half because we were attacking the rim. They must have did a really good job late in the second half because those same fouls didn’t happen and we kept driving the rim. And that’s just disappointing to me. We attacked the rim the whole second half. To only shoot 14 free throws is crazy.”
Tae Davis scored 27 to lead the Irish (7-6, 1-1 ACC). The junior forward made 8 of 14 shots and 9 of 10 free throws.
The Jackets are back at home at noon Saturday to host Boston College (8-5, 0-2 ACC).
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