Battle of ATL

[tsrich]

I wish pastner would hire an offensive assistant. Our best offense seems to be when the guys freelance

 

[mstranahan]

My two cents.... Ga State isn't very good. Other than their one big, Hudson, they were 8 - 39 with about 4 minutes left. Tons of horrific shots hoisted. They looked disjointed and like a bunch of guys who just met at the gym a few days ago. They may get better as the year moves along, but right now, they are not good.

Thought we played badly for most of the game. Rodney was awful. 1 rebound, 4 turnovers and 3 fouls was his first half stat line, and that didn't reflect how truly painful he was. Kelly made a big difference in the last ten minutes. Hit a big 3 to answer one by them. Two nice drives, including the game winner. Think CJP benched Smith & Sturdy because we weren't scoring with them in the game and having Deebo and Kelly on the court was our best avenue to winning. Lots of possibility for this team, but the youngsters need to continue to develop for that to happen. I'm hopeful that will happen.

 

[slugboy]

I wish pastner would hire an offensive assistant. Our best offense seems to be when the guys freelance

Isn’t Antony Wilkins that offensive assistant?

 

[mstranahan]

Minor correction... this was Ga State's third game in the new arena. Exhibition against Morehouse and a real game against Coastal Georgia on Monday.

LOTS of empty seats, so far from a packed house. The GSU student section was awesome. They were loud and involved the whole game. Lots of energy and definitely give the team a lift.

 

[Jacketman99]

My two cents.... Ga State isn't very good. Other than their one big, Hudson, they were 8 - 39 with about 4 minutes left. Tons of horrific shots hoisted. They looked disjointed and like a bunch of guys who just met at the gym a few days ago. They may get better as the year moves along, but right now, they are not good.

Thought we played badly for most of the game. Rodney was awful. 1 rebound, 4 turnovers and 3 fouls was his first half stat line, and that didn't reflect how truly painful he was. Kelly made a big difference in the last ten minutes. Hit a big 3 to answer one by them. Two nice drives, including the game winner. Think CJP benched Smith & Sturdy because we weren't scoring with them in the game and having Deebo and Kelly on the court was our best avenue to winning. Lots of possibility for this team, but the youngsters need to continue to develop for that to happen. I'm hopeful that will happen.

GA State has a ton of new players on their roster so both teams are really trying to figure out rolls and build some cohesion. This was bound to be an ugly game.

 

[RhoChi]

That was hard to watch overall. Howard with 4 TO in the first 4 minutes. 0 points. Got out rebounded. But led in Assists? I'm not sure what to take away from this game. Deebo and Kelly looked super good for us. But watching the game was messy. Players slipping and falling all over the court. Tech getting outrebounded and not being able to secure rebounds at all. So many guys for GT tried to do a putback dunk but couldn't even possess the ball cleanly. This game ended in the most perfect way. A wayward pass turnover out of bounds. Deivon still has hops. We have lots of good pieces. We have players that have talent. But, tonight was rough. We only have 2 returning starters this year and our talent is split evenly between all years. But this win was an ugly one. But then again, there's no such thing as a pretty loss so maybe I should just shut up and enjoy it haha

 

[GTBandit22]

We are gonna need someone to step up at PG. You can see we are trying multiple guys, trying with Smith off the ball. Need two of Sturdivant/smith/Kelly/Maxwell to step up and be our PGs.

Moore is a guy that plays bigger than his size. Says a lot when they say he’s 6’7 and im like “that’s it?”

Made enough plays to win, but need to finish some of those plays down the stretch and we win by double digits.

 

[WrongShadeOfGold]

Any insight on Smith's lack of second half minutes or more CJP letting Miles take the reigns.

During one of the second half timeouts, I noticed him in the huddle with a super sized knee brace on but then in a later timeout, no brace, so who knows.

 

[tsrich]

just watched the replay on espn3. Looks like we got our share of the calls.
Was this the Ga St crew? Boy were they homers

 

[MtnWasp]

Grinding thru adversity and coming from behind to win a close game is the best way to develop a team.

Fans tend to want to extrapolate too much in early season games. Extrapolating on few data points is never a good idea. Be happy with the W. Other teams present different match-ups and the way games unfold will look different.

The team was +8 in Howard's 24 minutes played (-6 in Javon Franklin's 11:24). The team was -16 in Sturdivant's 17:38.

Best news was that Coleman took 13 free throws and was fouled 9 times, indicating that he looking to be more than a jump shooter.

7 Assists on 19 made field goals is bad. We need to generate offense by running the system and moving the defense. I'm certain that Pastner will be all over this.

We didn't play that well and we won. That is a good sign.

 

[gt24]

watching the replay of the final play, and really like the design. its simple, but its got the right amount of moving pieces to move all the key defenders. kellys timing on the attack was just a half-second off, otherwise it would have been even tougher to guard.

double ghost screen to cause potential defensive communication errors at TOK and to put the roll defenders in tough spots for drive and dish or for boxing out on the weakside putback. lance terry deep strongside corner to lock in his defender and eliminate help, freeing up kelly's mind for easier reads. roll/replace with deebo so that his man cannot be the tag on the howards roll (or if he does tag then deebo is wide open at TOK for kelly kickout). moore after the ghost and spacing to the weakside wing is running-start crashing weakside boards. take a look at howard and moore when the ball goes in - if it rolls off they have the advantage and its all because of the play design and putting all 5 defenders in tough spots.

all of it is simple to execute, hard to screwup -- but its not "stand-around-and-watch" simple.

 

[GTNavyNuke]

One common theme of Pastner's teams are slow start relative to other teams and improve more than other teams as the year goes on. So reason to believe that will happen again. At least we don't have the resume killing loss (yet). How good this win will look in March, who knows.

We could have folded up twice and didn't.

Press conference at the bottom of this:

Kelly’s Layup Lifts Tech past Georgia State

Sophomore scores winning points in 59-57 Yellow Jacket road triumph

ramblinwreck.com

 

[YlJacket]

Pastner hast to figure out how he wants this team to play. Prior to the game the open man was the go to man and don’t give the ball a headache. In the game we gave the ball a migraine and shot contested shots after backing their guards down one on one. I actually was relieved to see Howard at the elbow as we actually moved when we went to that set. If we are going to play really small with essentially four guards then the ball needs to move a lot and we need to find open shooters from the perimeter, not pound the ball and back people into the paint

I was taken in by all the perimeter movement for Georgia state and thought that was why we went small until I realized They can’t shoot from three. We should have gone to Howard and Mohr or Franklin a lot earlier and simply packed it in to rebound the basketball instead of letting them make a living on the offensive boards.

I did like the tempo we tried to play at and agree with others that the refs made this hard to watch but both ways. Take the win and run hard. But most of all I think the staff needs to think hard about the way they want this team to play

 

[AUFC]

Pastner hast to figure out how he wants this team to play. Prior to the game the open man was the go to man and don’t give the ball a headache. In the game we gave the ball a migraine and shot contested shots after backing their guards down one on one. I actually was relieved to see Howard at the elbow as we actually moved when we went to that set. If we are going to play really small with essentially four guards then the ball needs to move a lot and we need to find open shooters from the perimeter, not pound the ball and back people into the paint

I was taken in by all the perimeter movement for Georgia state and thought that was why we went small until I realized They can’t shoot from three. We should have gone to Howard and Mohr or Franklin a lot earlier and simply packed it in to rebound the basketball instead of letting them make a living on the offensive boards.

I did like the tempo we tried to play at and agree with others that the refs made this hard to watch but both ways. Take the win and run hard. But most of all I think the staff needs to think hard about the way they want this team to play

Unfortunately we turned over about 80% of our backdoor cut attempts in the Princeton. If you told me this roster only took 8 3's and only made 3 3's and still won the game, I would be very surprised. It was really tough to come by open 3s last night - somebody else earlier in the thread spoke to spacing/chemistry issues during motions.

The rebounding on the defensive end was frustrating but I think there's some merit to the overall impact of made 3's in hostile environments. Home teams can chew off huge runs quickly if 1 or 2 of those drop in the 2nd half. The team did a good job of keeping composure and bouncing back when GSU ripped off that 8-0 run late in the game. I thought we started running clock/playing "prevent offense" way too early.

 

[Techwood Relict]

Pastner is still trying to figure out our best lineup, and some of the big contributors are still young so this kind of performance is expected. The big thing is we won...

So glad to see a W while we work thru the rotation. Seems like in recent years these games went against us. Go get another W!

 

[Techwood Relict]

I actually was relieved to see Howard at the elbow as we actually moved when we went to that set. If we are going to play really small with essentially four guards then the ball needs to move a lot and we need to find open shooters from the perimeter, not pound the ball and back people into the paint

If we are going small lineup, big man up top also helps our get back defense. I'll take wins with lots of points or little, W is all that matters.

 

[Jack]

Nice win for the Jackets.

I wasn't pleased with our defense and we put Rodney in the high post too much... Again.

Yes, I think it was bad coaching to keep running the offense through Rodney at the high post.
I think he would be better off on the baseline for rebounding and put backs.

 

[YlJacket]

Unfortunately we turned over about 80% of our backdoor cut attempts in the Princeton. If you told me this roster only took 8 3's and only made 3 3's and still won the game, I would be very surprised. It was really tough to come by open 3s last night - somebody else earlier in the thread spoke to spacing/chemistry issues during motions.

The rebounding on the defensive end was frustrating but I think there's some merit to the overall impact of made 3's in hostile environments. Home teams can chew off huge runs quickly if 1 or 2 of those drop in the 2nd half. The team did a good job of keeping composure and bouncing back when GSU ripped off that 8-0 run late in the game. I thought we started running clock/playing "prevent offense" way too early.

I was not trying to say I am a fan of the modified Princeton with Rodney, just that that was the only time it seemed we moved on offense. We did a whole lot of just standing around when we went to the open set offense. I would actually love to see us run something like what Georgia state was running with a lot of weave and ball movement on the perimeter simply to get the ball moving and defense switching or moving. Have Howard setting high ball screens and rolling and look to create close outs or perimeter shots

 

[SecretAgentBuzz]

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!

 

[g0lftime]

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.