The Georgia Tech men’s basketball team is 0-3 in ACC games because, according to coach Josh Pastner, he and his staff haven’t yet figured out a way to stop the scoring droughts, or “drips” as he calls them.
North Carolina went on an 11-0 run in the final 3 minutes, 19 seconds of the first half to turn a two-point lead into a 13-point advantage. Tech was defeating Clemson 14-10 until the Tigers went on an 18-1 run over an 8:16 span in the first half. Tech trailed Virginia 27-25 with 1:58 remaining in the first half. The Yellow Jackets didn’t score again until there were 14:41 minutes remaining in the game. During that span, the Cavaliers went on a 23-0 run.
“That’s why we are 0-3,” said Pastner, whose team (7-6) will host Miami on Wednesday at McCamish Pavilion. “In those three games, we’ve had a stretch (in which) the water breaks, and there’s a flood. It spirals downward quickly.”
To try to stop the leaks from becoming floods against the No. 12 Hurricanes (13-1, 4-0), and the remaining conference games, Pastner said he is looking at four areas.
The first are the players on the court during those spans. The second is reducing the turnovers, which were a particular problem against Virginia, when Tech committed 23, which was the most for the Jackets under Pastner, the third is finding a go-to scoring play when there is a sense that drip is increasing in volume, and the fourth is for Pastner to do something that he doesn’t like to do, which is use as many timeouts as possible, no matter how much time is remaining, to try to stall the opponent’s momentum.
“All things are on the table,” he said. “We are dissecting it, looking at it, trying to make amends for it.”
Miami is, again, one of the better teams in the ACC. With an average amount of experience of 1.48 seasons, Tech vastly trails Miami, whose players average 2.83 seasons of experience.
With that experience comes better execution. Miami ranks third in the conference in points (77.9), first in field-goal percentage (48.3) and tied for seventh in turnovers per game (11.4). While its offense isn’t the model of efficiency, if Tech can’t either create stops on defense or find ways to improve its points per shot (1.17, 15th in the conference), it easily could fall to 0-4.
“I feel like we have to lock in even more on defense with them so versatile on offense,” Tech guard Deebo Coleman said.
Coleman said Tech’s players seem ready to try to improve their execution. He said the players met Monday to discuss if they were ready to “be real with ourselves.”
“Do we want this to be like the rest of the film that we have for the rest of season, or do we want to turn around and like make some noise in Atlanta?” he said.
