Scouting GT: View from the Enemy

Nathan Fowler, AOL's GT Fanhouse Blogger, and I swapped articles/scouting reports on our teams for tonight's game. Below is Nathan's take on the Yellow Jackets and the Game.

- - - - - - -
By Nathan Fowler
Georgia Tech is an extremely young team still, playing 3 freshman and a sophmore heavily. The two McDonald's All-American freshman are the focus of the hype coming into this season, and while they have struggled at times - they have both lived up to their repuations for the most part. Unlike the Georgia Team that fell apart in the Stegamausoleum last year in a flurry of turnovers and self-inflicted destruction, this team actually has a real PG.


Image: RamblinWreck.com

Crittenton is perfectly in the mold of previous GT, big, physical and with a scoring bent. He still turns the ball too much, though a lot of it is trying to make flashy plays he really doesn't need (of his 9 TO's against Centenary, at least half were on crazy alley-oop attempts). Thaddeus Young has filled the hole at small forward well, and has fought through his knee problems early in the year to show his all court game the past two times out. He can score from anywhere, handles the ball well and is a strong rebounder and defender.

Other than the two big freshman, Lewis Clinch is the biggest difference in this team. He was hurt early in the year last season and didn't really get going until the ACC season was in full swing. I've heard a lot of Georgia fans claiming he was overrated coming out of high school, and Mike Mercer is the better player, but Clinch is destroying that notion right now. He's leading GT at 17ppg (in only 24 minutes per) and is shooting 57% from the field and 49% from 3. He shot 50% from 3 during ACC play last year, so it's not some fluke that he's shooting this well.

Clinch is probably the best pure scorer in the ACC now with lethal combination of quickness and a super smooth and hyper quick release on his jumper. Clinch has really polished his mid-range game, and scores a lot from the 15' area, something of a lost art in college basketball. I expect Clinch and Mercer to absolutely go at each other all night long in Atlanta.

This Georgia Tech team as a whole can score and rebound with the best of them. Despite having played a brutal schedule to this point (UCLA, Memphis, Vanderbilt, Purdue, Penn State and Miami all from "high major" leagues and only Penn State was at home) Tech is still offensive rebounding more than half of their missed shots. This is a remarkable statistic, and says a lot about Jeremis Smith and his attitude around the rim.

Ken Pomeroy has Tech as the 11th most efficient offense in the country (Georgia is 18th for comparison) and the team is shooting 40% from 3 for the season. While the half court offense looks ungainly at times, and despite the turnover numbers, Tech is putting points up on the board in big bunches.

Defensively is where the problems have been, as Tech has really struggled to contain dribble penetration and has no defensive shot blocking presence. This is a not a good situation to be in facing a Georgia team who's strength is in their guards, so I'm expecting a high scoring shootout type affair in the Thriller Dome.

Overall though, this is a very talented and good GT team who has only played 5 games at home and put a couple of thousand miles on their bodies before they even really began their college careers. Certainly as the season goes on I expect us to improve even more, and I think in front of what will be a flatout mean crowd at the AMC tonight they should be able to do enough on the glass and in transition to beat a (surprising to me) much improved Georgia team.

I think UGA v. GT will become a much better basketball rivalry in the near future, both programs are vastly upgrading their talent levels.

Nathan Fowler
AOL Fanhouse

Tweet