Georgia Tech Basketball: Top 10 Gauntlet Ends With Loss to Louisville

Georgia Tech showed tons of fight this afternoon, but it wasn’t enough as Louisville came out on top, 65-50. After Louisville went up 16-3 in the first five minutes, Tech battled back, eventually cutting the lead to three points in the second half, before Louisville answered with a run of their own and pulled away down the stretch. While today’s game was certainly not Tech’s best performance of the season, the final score does a poor job reflecting how close the game was.

In similar fashion to the Duke game, the Jackets struggled all day to defend Louisville from behind the arc. Despite the Cardinals coming into the game shooting just 32%, (273rd in the nation), they finished the game 9-16 on threes, fueled largely by Donovan Mitchell, who personally shot 5-7. Whenever the Jackets tried to switch to their zone defense, which has been so succesful this season (minus the Duke game), Louisville would hit another three, forcing the Jackets back into man-to-man.

The Cardinals came into this game with a top 10 defense, and they looked every bit the part on Saturday. The Jackets shot just 34%, despite a career high 24 points from Ben Lammers (9-14 from the field). While Lammers came up one rebound shy of yet another double-double, he continues to show the ACC that he’s one of the best, if not the best center in the conference. His incredible non-conference play has carried over into the conference season and the entire ACC is officially on notice. Josh Okogie was the only other Jacket in double figures, with 15 points, right around his impressive freshman season average. The rest of the team shot an incredibly low 13%, good for just 11 points. If just one other player could have contributed, this game may have ended differently.

After facing three straight top 10 teams, the Jackets finally get some relief (if any game in the ACC can be considered relief) when Clemson comes to town on Thursday. Tip will be at 7:00.