Battle of ATL

[forensicbuzz]

Scores in the 50's says the game was slowed down to keep it close. I suspect GaSt was very methodical on offense and burned clock. Just a guess based on the score.

A lot of missed shots on both sides, especially in the first half

 

[RhoChi]

Scores in the 50's says the game was slowed down to keep it close. I suspect GaSt was very methodical on offense and burned clock. Just a guess based on the score.

I’m sure both teams would take the compliment of being thoughtful and methodical rather than constantly turning over the ball and not making shots.

Being honest? It was a war of attrition out there. Tech just lasted longer.

 

[slugboy]

I missed the game, but I’m glad y’all got to enjoy it.

The box score says to me that both teams made a lot of turnovers, but we were slightly worse there, and worse on the boards. But we’ve got better shooters. It looks like we have a lot to clean up.

Is this what you saw?

Starters	MP	TS%	eFG%	ePAr	FTr	ORB%	DRB%	TRB%	AST%	STL%	BLK%	TOV%	USG%	ORtg	DRtg	BPM
Dallan Coleman	37	.629	.500	.286	1.857	8.3	8.8	8.6	6.9	0.0	0.0	0.0	18.9	144	94	6.6
Lance Terry	30	.500	.500	.000	.000	0.0	17.8	10.5	8.0	0.0	0.0	33.3	10.8	72	90	-5.7
Rodney Howard	24	.000	.000	.000	.000	0.0	13.5	7.9	26.2	2.4	0.0	83.3	13.7	21	86	-11.7
Deivon Smith	23	.470	.429	.143	.143	6.8	14.3	11.2	25.8	7.8	0.0	11.8	20.4	101	75	9.1
Kyle Sturdivant	18	.370	.400	.000	.800	0.0	18.4	10.8	0.0	3.3	0.0	22.8	27.3	59	82	-8.2
Miles Kelly	29	.558	.538	.231	.077	0.0	3.7	2.2	0.0	0.0	0.0	6.9	27.3	110	97	2.1
Jalon Moore	19	.608	.500	.000	1.000	16.5	29.1	23.9	0.0	6.3	5.0	14.8	19.9	118	67	6.9
Javon Franklin	11	.307	.250	.000	.500	13.4	9.4	11.1	0.0	0.0	16.2	17.0	28.2	64	85	-9.2
Tristan Maxwell	9	.258	.000	.667	.667	17.5	12.3	14.5	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	24.3	76	92	-9.4
Jordan Meka	0					0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0		0.0		99	-4.4
School Totals	200	.485	.427	.167	.563	26.9	67.6	50.8	36.8	10.3	7.0	17.8	100.0	86.8	83.8

MP -- Minutes Played
TS% -- True Shooting Percentage
A measure of shooting efficiency that takes into account 2-point field goals, 3-point field goals, and free throws.
eFG% -- Effective Field Goal Percentage; this statistic adjusts for the fact that a 3-point field goal is worth one more point than a 2-point field goal.
3PAr -- 3-Point Attempt Rate
Percentage of FG Attempts from 3-Point Range
FTr -- Free Throw Attempt Rate
Number of FT Attempts Per FG Attempt
ORB% -- Offensive Rebound Percentage; an estimate of the percentage of available offensive rebounds a player grabbed while he was on the floor.
DRB% -- Defensive Rebound Percentage; an estimate of the percentage of available defensive rebounds a player grabbed while he was on the floor.
TRB% -- Total Rebound Percentage
An estimate of the percentage of available rebounds a player grabbed while he was on the floor.
AST% -- Assist Percentage
An estimate of the percentage of teammate field goals a player assisted while he was on the floor.
STL% -- Steal Percentage
An estimate of the percentage of opponent possessions that end with a steal by the player while he was on the floor.
BLK% -- Block Percentage
An estimate of the percentage of opponent two-point field goal attempts blocked by the player while he was on the floor.
TOV% -- Turnover Percentage; an estimate of turnovers per 100 plays.
USG% -- Usage Percentage; an estimate of the percentage of team plays used by a player while he was on the floor.
ORtg -- Offensive Rating
An estimate of points scored (for teams) or points produced (for players) per 100 possessions.
DRtg -- Defensive Rating; an estimate of points allowed per 100 possessions.
BPM -- Box Plus/Minus
A box score estimate of the points per 100 possessions a player contributed above a league-average player, translated to an average team.

Provided by CBB at Sports Reference: View Original Table
Generated 11/13/2022.

 

[YlJacket]

Rodney is 83% turn over rate.

 

[Connell62]

I thought we got plenty of good looks in the half court, we just didn’t make enough of them. People need to give a little credit to GA State too. They played hard on defense and fed off the energy of their crowd. That had a lot to do with the offensive struggles. Additionally, remember that we’re still feeling each other out. We’re a young group, but there’s some good things happening.

Before the season, we said we wanted to see Deebo be more than a spot-up shooter, and we talked about the importance of getting to the line. Last night, Deebo score most of his points in the lane by creating his shots. We got to the line very often (27 attempts / 13 for Deebo), we just need to make a higher %. Miles is growing up in front of our eyes. We will continue to see him do more on the offensive end.

We only had 13 turnovers (5 from Howard) and only 4 in the second half, but they weren’t necessarily due to the Princeton or the offensive design. Rodney had 3-4 turnovers in the first 6-8 mins of the first half alone on good looks.

He dropped a few passes that hit him right in the hands, all we’re with him under the goal from a dump off or him rolling to the goal. All should have been dunks or layups, instead they resulted in turnovers. He truly has hands of stone

 

[alagold]

I didn't see it but stats told of an UGLY game.Fouls, bad shooting, poor TO/asst ratio.Their 3pt % was the worst stat ---so we won- is the way it looked on paper.

 

[Root4GT]

I thought we got plenty of good looks in the half court, we just didn’t make enough of them. People need to give a little credit to GA State too. They played hard on defense and fed off the energy of their crowd. That had a lot to do with the offensive struggles. Additionally, remember that we’re still feeling each other out. We’re a young group, but there’s some good things happening.

Before the season, we said we wanted to see Deebo be more than a spot-up shooter, and we talked about the importance of getting to the line. Last night, Deebo score most of his points in the lane by creating his shots. We got to the line very often (27 attempts / 13 for Deebo), we just need to make a higher %. Miles is growing up in front of our eyes. We will continue to see him do more on the offensive end.

We only had 13 turnovers (5 from Howard) and only 4 in the second half, but they weren’t necessarily due to the Princeton or the offensive design. Rodney had 3-4 turnovers in the first 6-8 mins of the first half alone on good looks.

He dropped a few passes that hit him right in the hands, all we’re with him under the goal from a dump off or him rolling to the goal. All should have been dunks or layups, instead they resulted in turnovers. He truly has hands of stone

Do you see Miles playing more point going forward or was it just a matchup as this game went on. He looked excellent driving to the basket and is a good finisher especially with his right hand. It was very interesting to watch. Kelly and Coleman are solid players with plenty of room to grow which they should. Moore flashes potential, likely a year away from being a major player that can become a player other teams don't want to face. How the Guard minutes play out will be very interesting. Nice to have some options! Good win!

 

[BeeRBee]

It feels like for 20 years GT has struggled with short shots, but 5/18 at the rim is oof.

Smith seems supremely confident that he can drive against larger players and finish. I am skeptical.

I absolutely loved the huge smile on Jalon Moore’s face after he nailed the two late free throws. Should give him confidence going forward.

With 11:49 left in the game, the lineup of Kelly/Maxwell/Coleman/Moore/Howard saw their first action together for either game. Over the next 6:55 they outscored GSU 14-5, with 0 turnovers. GSU was called for 6 fouls in that stretch, and Tech was called for 2. When Maxwell fouled at that point (4:54 remaining) Pastner substituted Terry for Maxwell, and that lineup finished the game with the scoring 10-10.

Fun game to attend, and will second an earlier comment that the GSU students did a great job.

 

[78pike]

Do you see Miles playing more point going forward or was it just a matchup as this game went on. He looked excellent driving to the basket and is a good finisher especially with his right hand. It was very interesting to watch. Kelly and Coleman are solid players with plenty of room to grow which they should. Moore flashes potential, likely a year away from being a major player that can become a player other teams don't want to face. How the Guard minutes play out will be very interesting. Nice to have some options! Good win!

That's a good question. Personally I don't see it as a long term thing but more of a situational solution. I can see us moving back to a single point guard sitting either Smith or Sturdivant (I would sit Sturdivant) and replacing with Kelly. I guess it depends on the opponent. If we play against teams with 3 guard lineups I think Kelly would be a matchup problem.

 

[majorQ9]

Was surprised to see attendance was only a hair over 4,083. I really thought GSU would pack it out with it being a new stadium and a chance to knock off Tech. GSU students/band did a great job bringing the energy.

 

[gte447f]

Was surprised to see attendance was only a hair over 4,083. I really thought GSU would pack it out with it being a new stadium and a chance to knock off Tech. GSU students/band did a great job bringing the energy.

I watched on tv, and it looked pretty sparse. I read somewhere that their new arena holds about 8k , so only about 50% capacity. Not impressed, but kudos to the students and others who were there if they made it loud. I figure that’s probably about what we would have drawn for the game if it had been played at McCamish. I’m glad they didn’t make us look bad by packing their place out.

 

[gte447f]

I’m glad tech got the W, but watching on tv we looked pretty bad doing it except for that stretch in the second half where got up by about 8 or so. I like the Princeton high post set, but the way we run it lately seems way too congested, and we hardly ever actually make any passes to the cutters. Last night when we did try the back door passes , most of them ended up a turnover. The other thing is we don’t actually move the ball much when we run the Princeton high post. It goes in to the center, then it stays there as we run tons of off ball screens and cuts, but the ball just stays at the 5 and never moves. What are we doing wrong or different that isn’t working?

 

[gt24]

It feels like for 20 years GT has struggled with short shots, but 5/18 at the rim is oof.

View attachment 13511

Smith seems supremely confident that he can drive against larger players and finish. I am skeptical.

I absolutely loved the huge smile on Jalon Moore’s face after he nailed the two late free throws. Should give him confidence going forward.

With 11:49 left in the game, the lineup of Kelly/Maxwell/Coleman/Moore/Howard saw their first action together for either game. Over the next 6:55 they outscored GSU 14-5, with 0 turnovers. GSU was called for 6 fouls in that stretch, and Tech was called for 2. When Maxwell fouled at that point (4:54 remaining) Pastner substituted Terry for Maxwell, and that lineup finished the game with the scoring 10-10.

Fun game to attend, and will second an earlier comment that the GSU students did a great job.

this is some high quality stuff. thank you. love the lineup data.

regarding your skepticism on Smith... my take on Smith from last year: modern bball is FULL of AAU "combo guards". other than the rare exception, "combo guard" means not a 2 and not a 1 and too small to play anything else. does not shoot well enough to play on the wing and keep defenses honest (unless you have a 3 AND 4 who can drill 3s while the "combo guard" just plays downhill). does not run the show well enough to be a team PG. they are explosive, athletic, make incredible plays. they are "tantalizing" - but... they... are... not... PGs. regardless of the stat line, they are not PGs. they tease you (coaches, fans, etc) with athletic potential and incredible skills - but not shooting skills and not PG skills. "combo guard" is a red flag. some in the AAU world have caught on to this and, for recruiting purposes, now label every short fast athletic player a PG even if they have zero history of playing PG, nor the mindset of a PG.

they can dominate AAU. they can get very high recruiting ratings based on potential and the hope that they find a system to fit their athleticism and AAU skills. it works sometimes. and modern position-less basketball helps. its a matter of finding the right system and complementary parts/players. i hope Smith and Pastner find that. because when teams have a dude like him playing position-less (not the PG distributor, not the deadly shooting guard keeping defenses honest) it can be awesome. but like @BeeRBee i am skeptical and have been the whole time. i really hope i am wrong and absolutely could be because he is young and has so much room for learning the game. but old (AAU) habits are hard to break. i hope i am wrong.

 

[gt24]

What I loved:
-Kelly and Coleman getting aggressive. 13 FT from Deebo? YES! Kelly with the final shot? YES! These two are our best offensive players and they need to be aggressive.
-Kelly at PG. I was surprised to see Kelly as the main ball-handler when Sturdy goes out (in both games this year), but he has good handles and makes good decisions. He isn't a great distributor (0 assists), but its a smart choice from the coaches to put the ball in his hands more.
-Defensive flexibility. When the zone works, it works well. But it didn't work against GSU and the coaches were smart to drop it and use it less throughout the game.
-Depth. Is it too early to proclaim this as Pastner's deepest team? Its nice to have options when some guys are having off games.

What I didn't like:
-44 fouls in 40 minutes, but it felt like 44,000. I don't know that I have EVER seen refs with such a quick whistle. It really slowed the game down and players on both teams were visibly frustrated.
-Howard's game. Everybody has bad games, and credit GSU for being ready with a good game-plan against him, but whoa, his first few minutes were really rough. We all know he is a better player than that, and he will have better games. We need him to be better than he was in this game.
-13 TOs to 7 assists. Yuck. Some of this was an strategic adjustment to the refs, but it was really ugly to watch. In fact, what I saw of this game was some of the worst D1 basketball I have seen in a long time. Just really bad in a lot of ways. But to play like that and still pull out a W? Oh, yeah, I'll take that all day! Better basketball will come, but we should be excited about going into a hostile environment and playing really poorly and still making the plays to win.

Go Jackets!

thank you. this was a good read.

 

[lv20gt]

The other thing is we don’t actually move the ball much when we run the Princeton high post. It goes in to the center, then it stays there as we run tons of off ball screens and cuts, but the ball just stays at the 5 and never moves. What are we doing wrong or different that isn’t working?

My opinion is that the issue is pretty much what you said. The ball goes into Howard and stays there as we run consecutive actions off it until something works. That made a lot of sense when we had Lammers at the 5 and without great pg play, or guard play in general. But now we need to be looking to be a lot quicker with our actions when the ball goes to Roddy. Hit him when he's making a cut there rather than posting up and if the first or second action isn't there for a cut then he needs to have the ball out of his hands and back to a guard right away. I think a big part of the problem is just the mentality of our guards where we need them to realize that they have to go get the ball from Roddy after the first action rather than just going through the next read or cut.

I would hope that Sturdivant would have been better about that by now, but in general, without Devoe and Usher with that experience there will be some growing pains in that regard.

 

[Techster]

Smith reminds me a LOT of Jordan Usher when he first transferred here from USC. That is, Usher and Smith have a big advantage with their athleticism and explosiveness. Smith just easily glides by defenders, and he's a really good rebounder for his size. Remember how everyone thought Usher played out of control at times because he was just getting by on his athleticism? Well, Smith is kind of at the same stage...once he puts it together and lets the game come to him he's going to be a really good player. There are some "wow" plays mixed in with some "wtf" plays...the goal is to get him to play consistently with a lot more "wow" plays and very few "wtf" plays.

IMO, Smith will be a MUCH MUCH better player in the second half of this season. There's quite a few guys on the roster we'll say that about.

 

[slugboy]

Thank y’all for the thread.

I was at a friend’s party that they hold every year. It was a wonderful party, and I’m glad I went, but I would have loved to have seen the game.

The descriptions here aren’t the same as seeing the game in person, but it helps a lot as we ease into the season, and it’s the game breakdown I love to see on this site.

So, thanks again.

 

[gt24]

Smith reminds me a LOT of Jordan Usher when he first transferred here from USC. That is, Usher and Smith have a big advantage with their athleticism and explosiveness. Smith just easily glides by defenders, and he's a really good rebounder for his size. Remember how everyone thought Usher played out of control at times because he was just getting by on his athleticism? Well, Smith is kind of at the same stage...once he puts it together and lets the game come to him he's going to be a really good player. There are some "wow" plays mixed in with some "wtf" plays...the goal is to get him to play consistently with a lot more "wow" plays and very few "wtf" plays.

IMO, Smith will be a MUCH MUCH better player in the second half of this season. There's quite a few guys on the roster we'll say that about.

love this analogy. a lot of similarities. i think the main difference is size. usher could play/defend 3,4,5 - inside and outside. a lot of flexibility. smith is only a small perimeter player. much less flexibility offensively and defensively.

 

[MtnWasp]

I think it is too early to make any kind of accurate assessment on the value of rotation players over the course of a season.

I'm not sure why so critical on Smith. He didn't have a great game but his stat line wasn't so bad for 22:40 played. 3-7 from the floor isn't great but Deebo Coleman was also 3-7 from the floor. 7 points, 4 rebounds, 2assts, 1 turnover, 3 steals and a +3 isn't any reason to give up on such promising athlete.

 

[GT33]

Was surprised to see attendance was only a hair over 4,083. I really thought GSU would pack it out with it being a new stadium and a chance to knock off Tech. GSU students/band did a great job bringing the energy.

They didn't help themselves with tip off time other than keep GT fans away. Football was over at 6:45, how did they expect anyone would get there by 7?

Damn, they should have started at noon or 8-9 pm.