Georgia Tech opened their season on Wednesday when they welcomed new D1 member West Georgia to the Flats. The Yellow Jackets won 85-62 and had control the entire game which is what I was looking to see.
There was not a ton of surprise to me in the lineup and usage. I had the starting lineup correct (Nait George, Javian McCollum, Kowacie Reeves, Luke O’Brien, and Baye Ndongo) and all of the backups played basically as much as I expected them to. There were two minor surprises for me. First was that Stoudamire went with a looot of three guard lineups. All four of the guards have good ball handling which is great for getting into transition quickly and all but freshman Jaeden Mustaf have proven to be good offensive shooters and a threat from deep which helps the offense a ton. But I’m worried about the defense. None of the three veterans are notably good defenders and that will give up a lot of size against bigger teams. The other surprise was that I don’t think I saw any lineup with both Baye Ndongo and freshman Doryan Onwuchekwa. I was hoping that getting Onwuchekwa on the floor would sometimes let us move Ndongo down to the 4 and go with a bigger lineup. Instead Onwuchekwa just spelled Ndongo. That will limit his playtime this season as I expect Damon Stoudamire to try to keep Baye on the floor.
The offense was mixed, which is weird to say about a team that put up over 50 in the first half, but you have to consider opponent. Shooting was suspect. The team shot just 25.9% from deep on what was mostly pretty good looks. Kowacie Reeves and Luke O’Brien are supposed to be 3-and-D wings, but combined for just 1-9 from deep. Onwuchekwa shot a couple of threes, but missed both. Javian McCollum had the best day hitting 3-6. The ball movement was really good. The team had 20 assists on 33 field goals (61% assist percentage is pretty good). George and McCollum led the way with 7 and 5 respectively, but Ndongo added 4 from the center spot. They also rebounded like crazy. Onwuchekwa and O’Brien both looked really good on the boards. They should dominate a team like this on the boards, but I mostly liked the way they looked while doing it. Ndongo kept poking the ball away from West Georgia on rebounds and I’m not sure that works as well against better teams, but we’ll see.
There were some concerning things. First is Duncan Powell’s hair. His game looked good, but I’m not sure why he seems to be emulating Drew Gooden’s hair choices. There was also the turnovers. All in all 12 turnovers is not bad, but only forcing 8 against a much inferior team is worrying. Especially with a team who has such potential in transition it’d be nice to make that easier.
The freshmen all looked a little bit rough around the edges at first, but grew into the game. Jaeden Mustaf looked tentative, but got more aggressive as the game went on. He was first off the bench so Stoudamire trusts him. Onwuchekwa was a little more assertive, but looked a little lost at times. Darrion Sutton came in later in the game and he really looked tentative and never really grew into the game. I don’t think he’s an immediate contributor, but as the season goes on he could grow into a role.
All in all a solid first effort. The next game is against North Florida at McCamish at 1 pm on Sunday which was supposed to be another warm up game. However in the Ospreys’ first two games they’ve upset South Carolina and blown out Charleston Southern. The team will have to be on their game for game #2 or they’ll fall victim to North Florida as well.
