Tech's comeback bid falls short 74-71 against UMass-Lowell

ATLANTA- Georgia Tech men’s basketball had a tough task facing a pesky UMass-Lowell team that won 26 games a year ago in the America East to finish second. The Jackets compounded the issue by shooting poorly throughout the game with huge scoreless stretches and the River Hawks pulled off a 74-71 win over the Jackets.

The loss was the first for Damon Stoudamire as Tech's head coach and he said he was disappointed with a few aspects of his team's performance.

“Disappointed tonight, but not mad. We have to get off to better starts, tonight the starting unit didn’t give us a whole lot of energy to begin the game, and that bled into what we are doing. It was a weird type of game. I thought the offense was ahead of the defense, but tonight we played decent enough defense to win. In games like this one to two possession games put a lot of pressure on the offense and defense. Toward the end, we got the (stops). The guys who came off the bench played better for us and I was happy for them. We will learn from this. We have 28 more of these and it will be continued growth. I knew what I signed up for,” Stoudamire said.

Tech had a chance to win the game late down 72-71. The Jackets had the ball with 17.7 seconds left and senior point guard Kyle Sturdivant driving in the lane. He collided with multiple River Hawks, but no foul was called and the Jackets had to foul with 2.9 left on the clock. Andres Fulgencio hit a pair of free throws and Sturdivant’s heave fell short and left of the basket to deliver the first loss of the Damon Stoudamire era.

Deebo Coleman did his part scoring a career-high 24 points off the bench on 7-12 shooting and 5-9 from three. His previous career-high came against Virginia Tech last year when he scored 21 points.

"It hasn't been a big adjustment (coming off the bench), but I have to bring a spark or energy and I know if they start off slow I have to bring some energy,” Coleman said.

Star guard Miles Kelly continued his slow start to the season with a 5-19 shooting night including a critical missed free throw with a chance to give the Jackets a lead late. He was 0-6 from three.

“Big picture with Miles, he works on what he needs to work on and his rhythm will come back. He needs to mix it up, I’m asking him to do more, I wasn’t here last year, but I can tell he is being asked to do more in the things we do. We want him to play both sides of the ball and he will find his rhythm. I’m not concerned about Miles. I’m concerned about the starting unit and the slow starts,” Stoudamire said.

Tech missed 10 of 23 free throw attempts while the River Hawks hit 16 of their 19 free throw attempts.

“On free throw shooting it did bite us and we missed 10 free throws. We have to continuously work on them, I preach this all the time and you have to honor the game and do the right thing every day. You play good teams and they do different things and they take your temperature to see if you are a good team. There are things we wish we could get back. We have to hammer it home. We are too inconsistent with our habits on both ends of the floor,” Stoudamire said.

Ball movement was another area of concern for the Jackets who had a season-low 11 assists on 26 made field goals along with 11 turnovers.

“I don’t think we had enough ball movement on offense and I want to also give UMass-Lowell credit as well," Sturdivant said.

Tech once again went with the same three starters, Kelly, Kowacie Reeves, Tyzhaun Claude, Tafara Gapare and Amaree Abram. Stoudamire is concerned about the performance of his starting group and he benched Reeves, Abram and Gapare early in both halves replacing them with freshman Ibrahima Sacko, Sturdivant and Coleman.

“Historically and the way I coach I don’t like messing with lineups, I like when guys come every day and know what they are doing. I can juggle guys here and there, but taking guys out of the lineup says the wrong message and guys are young. Guys can fall into roles and you go from there. Taking someone’s minutes up or down is the easier way to do that,” Stoudamire said.

Tech played without senior guard Lance Terry and freshman big man Baye Ndongo once again. Both players have missed every game and the exhibition with injuries. Stoudamire did offer one interesting nugget on how impactful their absence has been. He thought both would be in the starting lineup if healthy.

“They probably would’ve started if they were healthy. When Lance comes back we have a great perimeter defender and three-point shooter who can attack the bucket. Baye is the unknown factor because no one has seen him play. I don’t want to put pressure on him, but he will impact our team the moment he comes back,” Stoudamire said.

It was a big win for the River Hawks who are in a one-bid America East Conference. Head coach Pat Duquette's team missed the NCAA tournament last year after losing to Vermont in the league championship game.

"It is a great win for our program and I’m proud of our guys. We were 0-8 from the three-point line and if you told me that against an ACC team, I wouldn’t think we’d have a chance to win, but our defense kept us in the game," he said. "Georgia Tech is an athletic team and relative to us they are more athletic than us. Both teams played good defensively, I don’t think it was us missing shots and it was the first time in this environment for some of our guys."

Ayinde Hakim led UMass-Lowell with 24 points and Abdoul Karim Coulibaly added 16 points and nine rebounds to help pace the River Hawks' offense. UMass-Lowell scored Jackets 44 of their 74 points in the paint and 16 more at the line.

“They got to playing their high/low game and we talked about it in shoot around and you’ve got to do your work early, we foul too much, way too much, we’ve mentally got to be better. When we get tired we let our bodies control our brain instead of our brain controlling our body. We can’t get in the penalty early," Stoudamire added.

It was another slow start for the Yellow Jackets as UMass-Lowell took an early 10-2 lead behind a 6-0 run all on shots near the rim. That led to Damon Stoudamire burning an early timeout. Stoudamire subbed in Deebo Coleman, Ibrahima Sacko, and Kyle Sturdivant for Reeves, Claude, and Abram. Coleman immediately hit a corner three to make it a five-point game. That bucket keyed a 14-0 run over the next seven minutes of the game and Tech took a 16-10 lead behind eight points off the bench by Coleman. After a slow run with Kyle Sturdivant out, Tech held a 22-16 lead at the final media timeout with 3:22. Tech did not hit a field goal in the final 3:50 of the half. Both teams combined to shoot a woeful 31% and the River Hawks were 0-8 from three while Tech was 2-16 from the arc.

Tech gave up the lead with a slow second-half start as well leading to an early timeout by Stoudamire as the Jackets trailed 32-28 during the midst of a 7-minute field free streak. After putting in the same group of subs from the first-half early timeout, Miles Kelly broke the streak with a putback layup out of the timeout. Coleman hit a corner three on the next possession to put the Jackets up 33-32 at the first media timeout with 15:51 left. Coleman scored on an offensive rebound off his own miss and a fast break layup to extend the run to 9-0 before the River Hawks responded with a pair of FTs to make it 37-34 GT. Kelly picked up his third foul with 13:49 left. Tech held a 45-40 lead with 11:13 left in the game. UMass-Lowell went on a 10-0 run over the span of 1:12 around the 10-minute mark to take a 50-46 lead. Abram snapped the scoring drought with a corner three. Ayinde Hikim hit a three to put the River Hawks up 56-49 with 7:46 left also the first of the game for UMass-Lowell as part of a 16-3 run. That run extended to 25-3 to put UMass-Lowell up 11, 62-51 and that lead extended to 64-51 on 11-15 shooting by UMass-Lowell during that stretch. A steal and three by Coleman for his 20th point cut the lead to five with 3:10 left leading to a timeout by the River Hawks. Coleman hit a corner three and added a free throw getting fouled on the shot to make it 69-67 UMass-Lowell with 2:48 left. Kelly was fouled and got a goal-tending call to tie the game at 69 with 1:34 left. He missed the free throw. Cam Morris hit a layup and added a free throw to make it 72-69, but Sturdivant answered with two on the other end 72-71. Tech forced a shot clock violation with 17.3 seconds left. Sturdivant drove the lane with the clock ticking down but no foul was called. Andres Fulgencio hit a pair of FTs to ice the game.

Georgia Tech heads on the road for the first time to face undefeated Cincinnati in Fifth Third Arena on Wednesday night at 7 pm.