Clemson's work in the paint leads to an easy 79-66 win over Georgia Tech

ATLANTA- Georgia Tech couldn’t buy a bucket for huge chunks of the first half and the Jackets dug a 14-point hole at the break they could not get out of falling 79-66 to Clemson on Wednesday night in McCamish Pavilion. Big man PJ Hall bullied the Jackets in the paint for easy buckets while the Tigers' defense shut down Tech’s cuts to the basket and harassed both big men as they tried to set up the Princeton offense. Clemson scored 48 of their 79 points in the paint.

The Jackets went without a field goal for almost 15 minutes throughout the first half in two long stretches and point guard Kyle Sturdivant explained what he thought went wrong.

“Clemson was playing pretty good defense and we were not getting in transition and our defense has to lead to our offense,” Sturdivant said.

Hall led all scorers with 25 points and 10 rebounds and hit 12 of 18 from the field.

Three Clemons players each scored 14 points with Hunter Tyson adding 13 rebounds with his 14 points. Chase Hunter and Brevin Galloway also scored 14 a piece.

“Nice way for us to go to Christmas playing well the last two times out. We played really well offensively and I thought our defense except for the last four minutes of the half was good. That is where we pulled away a little bit and we got bench production to give us some good minutes and our older players PJ and Hunter were great at finishing around the basket,” Brad Brownell said.

Pastner said that Clemson did a good job of clogging the lane for his cutters on offense.

“You hear the coach yelling go under and back off. We’ve been in game mode and it has been hard to change or adjust anything we have one practice and then we are playing again. In finals week, we were in the MASH unit and we didn’t have a lot of time together and next week we have some time to get reorganized and course correct. We have to be better in transition offense and we have to be better in that in the second half we had 10 fast break points and there were times we didn’t defend the ball, we missed a lot of threes too. It is a make-and-miss game, we need guys to step up and make shots, I thought we were past that with Alabama State, but it came back to not making shots again.”

Miles Kelly led Tech with 17 points including 3-7 from the arc and 4-4 from the line. The rest of the team shot just 7 for 14 from the charity stripe.

Jalon Moore had 12 points and nine rebounds, four assists, two blocks, and a steal while Sturdivant scored 14 points mostly late in the game with the outcome already in hand after Clemson led 70-47 with 5:49 left for the Tigers’ largest lead of the game.

Both teams committed 11 turnovers. Clemson had 20 assists in the game while Tech had just 10 on 25 made field goals.

"Three things that stick out, eight turnovers in the first half, we ended up with 11 which is okay. Eight is not what we do and we are top ten in turnovers nationally. We were really 11-20 from the free throw line as Deebo missed the front end of two one-and-ones,” Pastner said. “Hunter Tyson and PJ Hall killed us in the paint and we had zero fastbreak points in the first half and zero in transition. That bit us in the butt.”

Things will not get easier when the Jackets return to the court in 10 days to play Virginia on New Year’s Eve at noon.

“It doesn’t get any easier playing Virginia following that with Miami and then at Florida State and Notre Dame,” said. “We have to get better.”

Tech did outscore Clemson 40-39 in the second half after giving up 40 points in the first half and only scoring 26 points.

Pastner admitted he may have to look at other options in the post if Howard and Franklin continue to struggle.

“We are small in areas and we would’ve been okay with PJ Hall scoring 25, they came in a top 10 three-point shooting team, more so that defense, our offense, the last 15 minutes without scoring is just hard. We’ve got to hit open threes. Do we look at Cyril (Martynov) or (Jordan) Meka, we get bigger, but we are still not scoring enough,” Pastner said.

Tech took an early lead 14-10 before giving up an 8-0 run into the second media timeout to trail 18-14 with 11:41 left behind 10 points from PJ Hall. Tech stayed cold allowing Clemson to pull away on a 15-1 run 25-15 with 8:07 left in the half. Tech did not hit a field goal for nearly 10 minutes of game time and trailed 32-16 after a couple of free throws only during that stretch. Deivon Smith snapped the cold streak with a dunk and Tech hit three straight field goals into the final media timeout of the half to make it 34-22 with 3:52 to go. The Jackets did not hit another field goal in the half, getting just four free throws to make it 40-26 at the half. Tech went without a field goal for 15-plus minutes in the half. Clemson outscored Tech 28-12 in the paint and the Jackets hit just nine field goals in the half on 26 attempts. Clemson big man PJ Hall had 14 points and seven made field goals by himself in the half for the Tigers in 16 minutes.

Tech continued the slow offensive start in the second half, but they did get PJ Hall in foul trouble with 16 minutes left in the half as he picked up a pair of fouls to give him three quickly and a seat on the bench, but the Jackets trailed 46-31 at the first media timeout of the second half. Backup big man Ben Middlebrooks picked up foul #3 with 13:30 remaining. Tech trailed 64-45 at the under-8 media timeout with seven minutes to go. The Jackets made a late run to make the score look more respectable and outscored Clemson by one in the second half.