Article Tech Takes Care of Business in Final Preseason Tune-Up

CuseJacket

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ATLANTA, GA - The Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets successfully completed their preseason campaign with a convincing 74-41 victory over the Clayton State Lakers Friday night at McCamish Pavilion. Twelve players saw 10+ minutes with 5 players reaching double-digit point totals.

Given the number of new faces that joined the program many fans wondered how the team would gel and who would form the starting five. Tonight that five was G Travis Jorgenson, F Marcus Georges-Hunt, F Quinton Stephens, F Robert Sampson, and C Demarco Cox.

With the game under control from the start Head Coach Brian Gregory went deep into the bench and rotated in 9 different players before the under 16-minute timeout. It was a planned strategy before the game even started.

"[Tonight] was more about getting guys minutes," said Gregory. "I didn't want anyone playing more than 20. That's hard though playing 12 guys. I wanted to see different guys in different situations and different alignments."

Despite playing against an over-matched Lakers squad, Gregory was able to create many different situations to see how his team would respond. After starting the game with just one true guard in Jorgenson, the Jackets reversed course at times playing small in a three guard set. Defensively the Jackets played a mix of zone and man presses as well as half court man-to-man and 2-3 zone.

With winning as goal number one and spreading minutes seemingly as goal number two, suffice it to say Gregory and the Yellow Jackets were successful. If you were a fan with the goal of gleaning insight into this year's rotation or who will step up with the shot clock ticking down, perhaps you would not have been as successful.

In exactly one week from today, however, there is one goal and one goal only for Gregory and fans alike - taking down rival Georgia in the season opener back at McCamish Pavilion. With fresh legs and a burning desire to start the season off on the right foot, it's probably safe to expect that we will learn a lot more about this year's Georgia Tech squad in short order.

Other news and notes:
  • Forward Charles Mitchell and Guard Tadric Jackson led all Georgia Tech scorers with 12 points apiece. All of Jackson's points came on 3-point plays, three of which were from behind the arc and one off a converted lay-up and free throw.
  • Georgia Tech dominated the boards by a final tally of 53 to 28. Forwards Charles Mitchell and Marcus Georges-Hunt led the way with 7 rebounds each while six others contributed at least 4 rebounds per person. "We can't rely on just being big to rebound," said Gregory. "We have to be much more physical than maybe we were at times today. You need to hit somebody. That's something you need to do every day."
  • During his postgame press conference Gregory pointed to two areas in the box score that need to improve - free throw shooting and turnovers. In his words, "16 turnovers is too many and the free throw situation is not where it needs to be." The Yellow Jackets were 11 for 25 from the free throw line.
  • Pointing to the positives Gregory said, "I thought our point guard play was good. At times our off guard play was good. Obviously Tadric got it going a little bit at the end of the first half. I thought Marcus did a lot of good things for us and I thought our post play was pretty good."
 

Connell62

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Looking at the players that got 2o minutes or more: MGH, Demarco, and Tadric.

I think that those are players that you will see on the floor at crunch time when we need a basket, along with Jorgensen.
 
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