Yellow Jackets Cruise Against Northeastern 81-63

Georgia Tech has lost 3 of the last 4 games, albeit against tough competition. This was a classic get-right game before Georgia comes to town next week. Northeastern has been horrible this season, particularly on offense.

This game was generally uneventful. Georgia Tech just kept slowly expanding their lead the entire game. Neither team could shoot from deep which led to this being a battle in the paint. Georgia Tech gave up a lot of offensive rebounds (29.5%) to the Huskies which has been a concern all season, but the Yellow Jackets got them back by getting 39.5% of their available offensive rebounds.

The star of this game was clearly Jalon Moore. He was an absolute menace on the court. 9 rebounds (4 offensive) and 3 blocks highlight his effort play. He also added 16 points in large part due to going 10-10 from the free throw line. He has really improved this year and he’ll be important all year.

Miles Kelly was also very good. He hit 4-5 threes on his way to 16 points of his own.

One of Georgia Tech’s biggest issue this season has been lack of size, in large part because of the struggles of Rodney Howard. Howard got a lot of minutes in the second half and he looked decent. His box score is great, but he still looked like something was off. He was bobbling balls, getting pushed off his spot, and not quite getting to his spot defensively. It was still better than he’s looked all season so hopefully that continues. He improved over the course of last season so maybe he will follow the same pattern this year. Jordan Meka also got some minutes although they weren’t that noticeable. And freshman center Cyril Martynov got 2 garbage time minutes right at the end.

The other big struggle this year has been three point shooting. And that was once again an issue today. Miles Kelly may have been 4-5, but the rest of the team was 1-11. Something has to give here. Lance Terry was too good of a shooter last year to be shooting like he is right now.

Northeastern was led by freshman forward Jared Turner and junior center Alexander Nwagha. Turner had 10 points on 3-6 shooting while Nwagha had 8 points along with 3 offensive rebounds.