Georgia Tech basketball passed its first major test of the season on Monday night, defeating the Tennessee Volunteers in Atlanta by a final score of 69-67. The story of the game was a pair of awful three-point attempts, one by each team, in the closing seconds. Georgia Tech's Adam Smith was forced to hoist his ill-advised, contested, deep three-pointer at the end of the shot clock while the Jackets had a two-point lead and just seconds remaining in the game. That set up the second terrible three, this one coming from Tennessee's Devin Baulkman as time expired. It appears that Vols coach Rick Barnes decided that no play at all is preferable to drawing up some fancy-pants scoring play, so Baulkman just kept the ball and threw one up. I will say, however, that I was at least 680% sure that the game-winner would go for Tennessee. Death, taxes, and ugly three pointers to beat you at the end of regulation. Nothing else can be certain.
This weekend's upcoming game against Miami may not mean much for Tech's 2015 season, but it surely carries some great significance for the Hurricanes -- Al Golden Larry Scott's team has struggled with stopping mobile quarterbacks and Miami as a team hasn't done a great job of stopping the option since Paul Johnson arrived at Tech. This season would indicate that stopping "dual threat quarterbacks" and stopping an option quarterback like Thomas are two totally different things. Numerous teams -- including Virginia Tech, Duke, and North Carolina among others -- had done terrible jobs of stopping running quarterbacks coming into their respective meetings with Tech but handled Thomas well. It just isn't the same. Dual threat quarterbacks present a problem because they scramble out of the pocket during pass plays. Justin Thomas rarely has a pocket to scramble from. It's a different concept.
The Georgia Tech vs. Virginia Tech game once again ended with a disappointing personal foul on a Yellow Jacket, this most recent one coming from offensive lineman Errin Joe in the closing seconds of the game. Joe, in the AJC piece that you can read by following the link, was clearly trying to protect his quarterback. I get that it was a bad choice, but it was nowhere near as egregious as Jeremiah Attaochu's punch on Logan Thomas two years ago. Going from a possible third-and-5 to third-and-20 is hardly a fun thing, but I don't feel like anyone can fully blame Joe. By the way, I have no idea if that AJC article is subscription only or not. It let me in so I assume it's free(?).
I'll leave you today with a look at how UGA is hoping to prepare for Georgia Tech's option attack: by playing Georgia Southern. I still giggle a little bit when I imagine how smart someone in the UGA program must have felt when they decided to schedule Southern as a preparatory game for Tech simply because the two teams run totally different offenses. Just because the word option is in both titles frankly means nothing. GSU runs their offense out of the shotgun -- something that I'd admittedly like for Paul Johnson to experiment with at Tech -- while the Jackets run every snap from under center. That alone makes the Eagles' offense look as much like Oregon's as Tech's, especially when you consider that every play they run isn't a triple option play. Take a look at the video below to see the differences:
Will playing Georgia Southern help UGA prepare for Tech's rushing attack?