Georgia Tech Basketball: Yellow Jackets Fall to the Dayton Flyers

You would have thought that the Dayton Flyers (9-2) were at a disadvantage coming into this game after Archie Miller had to suspend two of his big men from the team.

In actuality, the suspensions played right into Georgia Tech’s weaknesses as they handed the Yellow Jackets (8-3) their third loss of the season by a score of 75-61.

Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets /

Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets

It is understood that road wins are hard to come by in basketball, but when you watch these games you want to see something from the road team that gives you hope that they have a shot at getting the win.

The Yellow Jackets simply did not show that Tuesday night.

Georgia Tech in the first half struggled defensively allowing the Flyers to get easy buckets on the interior off of penetration and ball-movement.

The Jackets also did not close out on three-point shooters letting Dayton hit 7 of 10 treys.

Tech was able to do enough damage in the paint with 19 first half boards and shooting 47.1% from the field. However, they were fortunate to go into the locker room down six points at 39-33.

Tech closed to within a point to start the second half , then Dayton went on a run 12-3 open up a 51-41 lead.

Georgia Tech continued in the second half to not close out on shooters and that was costly while they went through an eight minute stretch where they shot 2 of 17 and had five turnovers.

Dayton continued to use solid ball movement and stretched their run to 19-5 as they opened up a 15-point lead at 58-43.

The Flyers maintained that lead the rest of the way as Georgia Tech never really threatened to make a comeback.

The Yellow Jackets ran into a team that despite missing key pieces in the interior, knew how to execute and exploit their weaknesses.

Dayton played a 2-3 zone and exploited Tech’s lack of outside shooting while also making it difficult for the Jackets to make entry passes inside.

Brian Gregory’s bunch shot 39.7% from the floor overall and could only knockdown 4 of 20 from beyond the arc.

(video recap care of cbssports.com)

Dayton had a decisive edge in free throw shooting going 23 of 31 from the charity stripe, as well as three-point shooting hitting 10 of 18 from downtown.

Georgia Tech enjoyed their usual rebounding edge, 39-27 in this case, and snatched 15 offensive boards which led to Tech having a 36-20 scoring edge in the paint . The lack of perimeter shooting did them in.

Marcus Georges-Hunt finished with 13 points and eight rebounds, and Charles Mitchell logged a double-double with 10 points and 10 rebounds.

Tadric Jackson came off the bench to add 12 points on 4 of 11 shooting.

The main damage by the Flyers was done by guard Jordan Sibert and forward Dyshawn Pierre.