Tired of losing so many close games in the ACC, the Yellow Jackets finally have figured out how to pull out some wins…just blow their opponent out. It’s so simply, it has to work, right? First it was that 20-point victory over Miami a couple weeks back and on Saturday it was a 73-59 win over Wake Forest.
Georgia Tech opened the game up on a 8-0 run and had a double-digit lead for most of the first half, despite the fact their big men (Demarco Cox and Charles Mitchell) kept missing point-blank shots at the rim. They relied on Marcus Georges-Hunt (13 for the game) and Chris Bolden (14 points), who for the second straight game was the George Clooney of three-point shooting. He hit 4-7, after hitting 4-6 against Duke earlier in the week. At this rate, the Yellow Jackets are going to move into the top-300 in three-point shooting.
In the second half, Tech blew the game open, as Mitchell started to work it inside. He scored 15 for the game on nine shots, managing to get to the FT line 10 times.
For Wake, they went Vanilla Ice early as they struggled to hit shots, missing their first seven from the floor, sitting at 1-11 at one point. They kept it reasonable with a trio of threes, but they didn’t hit a two-point shot until under the nine-minute mark in the first period.
Wake’s stars, Codi Miller-McIntyre and Devin Thomas, were particularly bad. Miller-McIntyre didn’t score a point in the first half, hitting 3-10 for the game. Thomas started 0-5 from the floor, 3-9 for the game, even though he was actually getting good position against the wider Tech big men. Worse yet, he’s usually a man among boys along the glass, but he managed only five total rebounds for the game before he was pulled at the 17-minute mark in the second half, never to return.
Was Danny Manning sending a message with the benching? It seemed like a “sending a message” kind of day as three players, including Greg McClinton (who typically plays about 15 minutes per game), were suspended from this game for violating team rules.
The loss ends the Demon Deacons two-game winning ways, as they split their season series with the Yellow Jackets. Next up is a struggling Miami team. Wake needs that one if they are hoping to enjoy the taste of victory again anytime this month, because with their schedule, I don’t see another win until March (they have Virginia twice, at Notre Dame and Duke up on the schedule).
Georgia Tech improves to 11-12 on the season with just their second win of 2015. Of course the two have come in the last two weeks, so that’s a positive. Up next they face two teams currently sitting outside of Ken Pom’s top-125, so can you say winning streak?
