Northwestern University Athletics
Georgia Tech In Review
12/4/2014 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
Three weeks ago, in their season opener against Houston Baptist, the `Cats started sluggishly and were down nine with just over six minutes gone. Eight days later, in their Saturday matinee with Elon, they reprised that routine and found themselves trailing by 10 with just over nine gone. They would rally to win both those affairs, but then came their Wednesday night meeting with Georgia Tech at Welsh-Ryan in the penultimate game of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge.
"I thought the way we practiced coming into the game, I really felt good about how we were going to play to start this game," Chris Collins later said. "For whatever reason, it wasn't there."
"They," said forward Sanjay Lumpkin, "absolutely hit (us) in the mouth."
The Yellow Jackets, in fact, did not just hit the `Cats in the mouth at their game's start. They instead pummeled the `Cats, they punished the `Cats, they pushed the `Cats into an abyss deeper than an advanced physics class. They opened with a layup, and then came a three, another layup, an old-fashioned three, and finally a jumper from the free throw line.
Now, with his team down 12-2 at 16:39, Collins burned a timeout, but that did nothing to quell the deluge. The `Cats came out of it, and committed a turnover, and-- when he burned another one at 13:14--they were down 20-2. The Yellow Jackets, here, had dropped eight of their 11 shots (72.7 percent) and scored on nine of their 10 possessions. Collins, here, recalled an ancient alchemist seeking a magic mixture to cure is team's ills, having one group of five on the floor at 13:50 (JerShon Cobb, Tre Demps, Dave Sobolewski, Gavin Skelly and Jeremiah Kreisberg) and a totally different group out there just 36 seconds later (Lumpkin, Alex Olah, Bryant McIntosh, Scottie Lindsey, Nathan Taphorn).
Out of that last timeout, this latter group did get an offensive rebound from Olah and a stop and a fast break layup from Lumpkin, and now the `Cats had begun their long ascent from the deepest of holes. "But," Collins would say after his team fell by eight, "you cannot spot a good team 20 points (actually 18) and expect to win. This game was about the start of the game.
"We can analyze it any way we want. You're down 20-2, you're climbing uphill the rest of the way. That was the story of the game tonight."
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That, obviously, was the story of this game, but other cross-currents cut through it as well. There was Olah's flaccid play in the first half, which he ended with just four points and four rebounds, and his inspired play in the second, when he went for 15 and six. "I really can't answer that," he would say when asked what keyed his resurrection. "I knew I had to do something. I had to be more aggressive. I really played soft in the first half."
There was the similar resurrection enjoyed by Demps, who missed all four of his first half shots and then went five-of-eight in the second. There was the `Cats miserable shooting from outside the arc, where they were a mere four-of-23 (17.4 percent) for the game, and their impressive shooting from inside it in the second half, when they went 12-of-15 (80 percent) on their two-point attempts. There was their improved defense, which held the Yellow Jackets to 38.6 percent shooting after their initial outburst, and their work on the boards, where they matched a Yellow Jacket team that was out-rebounding opponents by an average of 12.8 per-game.
Those were the rungs they used to slowly ascend from the abyss and then came their final burst, which began at 4:53 with a Demps' three from the right corner. That cut their deficit to eight and now came a Tech turnover and a foul line jumper by Demps, who coolly dropped the shot after Yellow Jacket forward Marcus Georges-Hunt flopped looking for a charge. Then Demps pressured Hunt into missing a three, and Olah hit a short hook off a pretty McIntosh feed, and suddenly the `Cats had scored on six straight possessions and were down just four at 3:27.
The game, at last, was truly on, and now came this. Tech went up six on a jumper. The `Cats pulled back to within four on a pair of Lumpkin free throws. Tech forward Charles Mitchell lost the ball in the scrum and Cobb emerged with it. McIntosh found Olah out high and Olah dropped a three at 1:17 to leave the `Cats down just one. Here, remarkably, an improbable comeback seemed entirely possible, but then came the two moments on which this one ultimately turned.
The first featured Tech guard Josh Heath, who drove up the gut to put his team up three with 55.5 seconds remaining. The second belonged to McIntosh, who early in the shot clock offered a contested three that missed badly. That forced the `Cats to start intentionally fouling, but that would do them no good. Tech would make seven-of-eight from the line now and with that grab off its win.
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The start. Not surprisingly, in his post-game press conference, Chris Collins kept coming back to it, and to what he might do for the `Cats Saturday game at Butler. "We have to figure that out," he would finally say. "Starts of games have been a problem for us, so we have to evaluate. What are we doing pre-game. Who are we starting. We've got to play better early.
"I don't know. Right now it's too emotional right after the game. But there's no question starts to games are something we have to get better at. I'm not sure if it means personnel, but it might. That's something my staff and I will have to figure out before Saturday."
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