Georgia Tech Basketball: Yellow Jackets Ready For Home Tilt Against the Florida State Seminoles
The Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets (11-13, 2-10 ACC) have suffered one tough loss after another this season. The latest loss in Blacksburg, VA to Virginia Tech 65-63 after losing a 10-point lead late in the game, might have been the biggest letdown this season.
The Jackets will once again dust themselves off, and look to make themselves well in the friendly confines of McCamish Pavilion to play against the Florida State Seminoles (13-12, 5-7 ACC ).
Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets
Florida State just lost to No.4 Duke 73-70 in Tallahassee on Monday. But they do have four wins in their last seven contests.
Leonard Hamilton is going into his 13th season as FSU head coach and has a record of 254-169 in Talahassee. He has not taken his team to the NCAA Tournament since 2012.
The Seminoles are led by freshman guard Xavier Rathan-Mayes who is averaging 13.4 points and 4.6 assists per game on the season. Rathan-Mayes is shooting 41% from the floor and is one of the top scoring freshman in all of the ACC.
Montay Brandon is a versatile 6-foot-8 junior guard who is very efficient offensively averaging 12.7 points and 5.3 rebounds per contest. He is the leading rebounder for the Seminoles this year.
What makes Florida State difficult to deal with is the size and length they can put on the court.
Junior center Boris Bojanovsky (4.9 points an 3.6 rebounds, 57.3% FG) is an active 7-foot-3 in the paint who can change shots and make things difficult with his wingspan.
Michael Ojo (2.5 points, 2.5 rebounds, 54.5% FG) is another junior center that also can be a shot changer inside at 7-foot-1, 290 pounds.
Though these players are not putting up gaudy numbers, their physical presence makes an impact on the game.
Florida State scores 68.6 points per game as a team while giving up 68.0 points per game to their opponents.
Brian Gregory spoke about the problems that the Seminoles can present defensively in his Florida State Preview Interview on the Georgia Tech Athletics You Tube Channel.
It is interesting that Tadric Jackson came up again during the interview session. Slowly but surely he is starting to find his stride in ACC play.
The one thing that you had to respect about Jackson is that even though his shot was not falling for a good stretch this season, he kept pulling the trigger.
Tadric has now set himself up to be an X-factor down the stretch in this ACC schedule. If he gets his offense going, maybe the Yellow Jackets can get hot in these last six games.
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It is a well known fact that the Yellow Jackets have lost nine of their conference games by an average of 3.8 points per contest. If you are a fan of moral victories you are quite pleased with that stat.
If not, you are a person that believes in the saying, ” You don’t plan to fail, you fail to plan!”, you see that stat as the Yellow Jackets failure to execute when it matters the most in games.
We have said this a thousand times, Brian Gregory has the team playing hard and we can never say that the effort they are putting forth is lacking.
If their is one thing that the ACC season has shown Yellow Jackets fans, it is that the little details will cost you a whole bunch of ball games, and can truly be the difference between winning and losing.
The Yellow Jackets have improved with their offensive execution. They’re doing a better job of getting their shots off when they are supposed to in their ball rotation, and Josh Heath along with Travis Jorgenson are doing a good job at taking advantage of their opportunities to get out on the break.
Now the issue seems to be late game execution. If fans see that Marcus-Georges-Hunt isolation play coming out of a timeout one more time, Twitter is going to explode.
Florida State has won the last nine games of this series. Georgia Tech is 17-24 against FSU since the Seminoles have joined the ACC.
This game will be televised at 2:30 PM EST on the ACC Network and can be heard on local radio 680AM and 93.7 FM. It can also be heard on satellite radio Sirius 117 and XM 194.