In a matchup few probably expected Georgia Tech to win, especially judging by the majority of red-colored shirts in the McCamish Pavilion crowd Saturday, the Yellow Jackets stunned No. 21 Louisville 77-70.
Louisville had a 10-game winning streak coming in and was favored by nine points ahead of tipoff. The Cardinals looked well on their way to an 11th-straight victory by leading by as many as 13 in the first half.
Damon Stoudamire’s squad, however, played near-flawless ball over the final 20 minutes and surged ahead midway through the second half and led for the final 10:31 of the contest.
“What a win. Happy for the guys,” Stoudamire said. “I’ve felt, and I’ve been saying it, we were about due and I feel like we’re ready for a breakthrough. And I do. Today was that day.”
Stoudamire only played six of the 10 players he had available Saturday, and one of those six, Baye Ndongo, fouled out with 2:54 to play. The sophomore center finished with 12 points and 11 rebounds in the win.
Lance Terry led Tech (10-12, 4-7 ACC) with 23 points, Nait George had 15 points and nine assists and Javian McCollum had 12 points. But it was Tech’s defense that told the story.
The Cardinals (16-6, 9-2) shot just 39.3% in the second half and made just one 3 after making nine in the first half. They also turned the ball over 14 times.
Louisville also missed eight free throws — and lost the game by seven.
“Give Georgia Tech credit. The first half, I just thought they set the tone at the beginning of the game from an offensive rebounding and a rebounding standpoint,” Louisville coach Pat Kelsey said. “They played like a desperate team and they deserved to win today.”
Tech had shocked the visitors by taking an eight-point lead with as little as 7:57 left on the clock in the second half. Louisville trimmed that lead down to 63-58 at the 5:41 mark, but the Jackets didn’t waiver and brought the few Tech fans in attendance to their feet when a turnover led to McCollum’s alley-oop for a soaring Ndongo putting Tech ahead 70-61 with 3:20 to play.
Louisville never got any closer than four and Tech improved to 20-1 under Stoudamire when leading with five minutes left to play in regulation.
“Everything that we wanted to do tonight, we succeeded,” Stoudamire said. “To play against a Louisville team that has more turnovers than assists? They haven’t done that. And if they have, it’s been a while. We did a good job of matching up, not worrying about if it was our man or not. Guys were connected. The fellas had good connectivity.”
Both teams started hot offensively and Tech had a 16-12 lead 5 1/2 minutes in by making seven of its first 10 shots. Louisville went on a 12-0 run from there, taking a 24-16 lead on Chucky Hepburn’s triple, the Cardinals’ sixth of the game at that point.
Another long Hepburn 3, this one at the 9:50 mark, gave the Cardinals a 29-18 lead, much to the delight of many of the 6,147 in attendance cheering for the visitors.
The Jackets would suffer through a stretch of 6:02 without scoring a single point and, at one juncture, were 1-for-14 from the field after that 7-for-10 start. Yet they only found themselves down 33-28 with 94 seconds to play in the half.
Louisville got a Reyne Smith 3 from the left corner and Hepburn jumper from the left block before the halftime buzzer to go up 38-27 at the break. The Cardinals shot a shade under 52%, made eight 3-pointers and had nine assists.
The Jackets had not won a game this season (0-10), and only three previous times under Stoudamire, when trailing at halftime.
“Times in the past, we’ve let that (an opponent’s lead) dictate the game. If a team starts off hot, we’ve let it get to us before,” Terry said. “I think today, turning the corner and coming out strong ourselves and not getting down really helped. First half, a lot of our shots weren’t going down. We pretty much got the same looks (in the second half), really, they were just falling. Just had to stay confident, keep shooting.”
Tech found itself down 49-39 five minutes into the second half, but it went on a 10-0 run and tied the game at 49-all on George’s midrange jumper from the right side. That spurt was part of what turned out to be a 21-3 run that put the Jackets up 60-52 with 8:18 remaining.
The Cardinals never quite recovered and were held to their lowest point total since Jan. 4 when they won 70-50 at Virginia.
“It’s really big time, because we’ve been in close ones, but we just couldn’t get away with it through closing the game,” George added. “But getting this one and closing the game facing adversity and coming over that hump, that obstacle, it really shown tonight. That’s what we have to keep doing moving forward.”
Terrence Edwards Jr., a Tucker High School graduate, led Louisville with 22 points.
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