Just the Facts, Ma'am: Georgia Tech withstood a dogged McNeese State team and claimed the Turkey Classic title with a 69-60 win. Ty Marshall led the Yellow Jackets with 20 points off the bench, with Kaela Davis and Sydney Wallace each adding 13. Jayln Johnson led four Cowgirls in double figures with 14 points and eight assists.
For clashing shades, bright shoes, flying guards, slipping the baseline, and big shots, join your intrepid and belated blogger after the jump.
As the ticket booth clerk was so eager to remind me, this is a double-header, which means the championship game is up next, featuring the Cowgirls of McNeese State and the Yellow Jackets of Georgia Tech. I'm going to be up-front about this- until I realized that Ashlyn and Caitlyn Baggett had graduated, I was actually more intrigued by McNeese than Georgia Tech. These are the perils of playing a full Division I fantasy league.
I'm actually hoping for a decent turnout- the Georgia Tech men are also in town, and there's a large Georgia Tech alumni contingent in the city for at least that game, as we ran into them at the Buffalo Wild Wings across from the Barclays Center yesterday.
Georgia Tech is wearing very yellow sneakers. They're a bit more florescent than the usual Georgia Tech gold, though. Their gear is all numbered, which will make it easy to identify them in the pregame. McNeese is working on ballhandling drills in a circle. Those are some strange stretches that Georgia Tech is doing.
Timing, Georgia Tech, you no haz it. Arena security was escorting a blind guy along the baseline, right when the Yellow Jackets were coming out. There are better ways of establishing yourself as the bad guy than running over a blind guy. They successfully dodged collisions, much to everyone's relief.
We've been seeing more of the Bonita Spence memorial patches, which I noticed yesterday but forgot to mention. Full name on the left breast of the uniform- yes, this is one of those times when using the initials is a bad idea. (Referees don't need to be labeled BS.)
At halftime, Georgia Tech is up 40-31 on McNeese State. McNeese has shown a lot of fight, but Georgia Tech has been too big and too fast for them most of the time. Sydney Wallace has 11 to lead the Yellow Jackets. Cecelia Okoye has eight for the Cowgirls. So far, I'm most intrigued by Shayla Bivens. Well-proportioned, athletic size with touch doesn't come along every day.
I don't know why Ty Marshall wasn't starting, but I'm presuming it was some sort of disciplinary action, since she didn't seem to be injured. She seemed to come up with all the big shots for the Yellow Jackets. Dawnn Maye was that player who missed the memo on points of emphasis, kept trying to put her hands on the opponent, and got called for the foul for it. Every team has one. Nariah Taylor was a big presence in the middle, a nice security blanket for when the guards weren't sure what to do with the shot clock running down, and a physical presence on the boards. Donnaizha Fountain had family at the game, or at least people who she was hugging during the LIU-Southern Utah game, and she came up with a big rebound in the second half.
Roddreka Rogers got her points on the inside, but I was more impressed with her movement off the ball, setting picks and screens for her teammates. I don't know if she's the regular starter, or who was starting instead of Marshall, but she's the kind of player you like to have on your team even when she's not putting up numbers. I'd have liked to have seen Shayla Bivens get more touches to see whether all the things she showed were things that she could do consistently, or whether they were all flukes. I don't think the blocks were flukes, though. One of them was so spectacular that you could probably have heard it at the Barclays Center, five blocks down Flatbush Avenue. Sydney Wallace seemed to get into her own head a lot, taking stupid shots that MaChelle Joseph did not approve of. She was stronger defensively in the second half, with a sweet steal leading to a lay-up for her only second-half points. Aaliyah Whiteside was quiet- I think Marshall took the starter's minutes at her position. Kaela Davis has the moves, and the shot, and the build, but I don't know if she has the attitude to succeed. She didn't seem to take well to being pulled early in the second half, and it didn't look like she wanted to listen to her coaches. That all being said, she put the game away for the Yellow Jackets with back to back buckets late in the second half, an athletic two in the lane and a sweet three from the right side. If she can get her head together, she'll be a legitimate player- but I need to be sure that she can get her head together.
Victoria Rachal was a fearless gunner, going to the lane no matter how big her opponents were (I think hers was the shot that Bivens so thoroughly swatted). She was cold in the first half, but caught fire in the second. Amber Donnes made some good defensive plays. Arianna James rebounded well.
Jayln Johnson impressed me a lot. In a sense, she reminded me of Leilani Mitchell, only on college scale- very small, very fast, runs a good offense, hits the three, and gives it all she's got on defense, but is a defensive liability because of her size. Allison Baggett has a very sweet shot, but hasn't learned how to defend without getting in foul trouble, and doesn't seem to know how to defend with four fouls. She's only a sophomore, and I think she'll learn. Cecelia Okoye rebounded powerfully, and her go-to move on the left wing fooled Georgia Tech more than once (which made it pretty funny during the second double-header, when Texas Tech tried to run the same play and botched it). She's not the most reliable shooter, but rebounding like that, she doesn't necessarily have to be. Alaina Verdin did a lot of small things, but none of the big things.. NeTanya Jones cleaned up under the basket, slipping behind the Yellow Jacket defense early and often.
I was very impressed with the Cowgirls. They looked to have mastered the element of surprise, and they know how to adapt. The threes weren't falling early when they were taking a lot of them, so the plays started to go to Okoye and Jones on the inside. Brooks Donald-Williams struck the right notes on the sideline, and I do like a coach who keeps her arguing with refs to a minimum.
Officials missed a couple of bad trips, which is impressive given the bright yellow sneakers on Georgia Tech, but I don't think they affected the game.
That was a much better game than I was expecting it to be, and I think McNeese has served notice to the Southland that they would very much like to be taken seriously.
Sunday, December 1, 2013
November 30th, 2013: Georgia Tech at McNeese State (Turkey Classic)
Friday, November 27, 2009
November 27th, 2009: Georgia Tech at Seton Hall (LIU Turkey Classic)
Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets 57, Seton Hall Pirates 51
What we have here is a failure to communicate. Namely, that the round thing should go through the orange thing.
Game 2 brought more repetition from the blue nano, a shuffling of fans, and an influx of people in really bright blue. I admit, I love the Hall's blue. It's much more striking than most teams' blue.
Apparently we were sitting by LIU family, because a bunch of them came into the stands briefly and chatted before wandering off. Palmer, Johnson, and Evans stayed for the whole second game, and I think I saw a couple of the others as well.
Georgia Tech's uniforms disconcert me. It's not that they're ugly, but I'm not used to bare shoulders. I kind of have this urge to take some of the fabric from the enormously huge shorts and use it to cover the bare shoulders. They run some of the most intense practices I've ever seen, though my traveling companion pointed out that that might just be because they wouldn't have had a chance to do their usual morning practice, so they made up for lost time during shootaround. Whatever the case may be, I've never seen a player knock one of her teammates to the floor during shootaround. That's some intensity.
Sharena Taylor had a nice stroke. So did Alex Montgomery, although she was ineffective for stretches when she got into foul trouble. Chelsea Regins has the most aggressively regulated dreadlocks I've ever seen. I think she shaves part of her scalp to delineate things more clearly. She was in a lot of places, trying to make things happen. Georgia Tech was very frenetic, in general, so if you don't see notes on a specific player, just assume that she was running her ass off in the trap.
I really like the Aussie they have, Brigitte Ardossi... at least on offense. She's not so good at staying with her assignment on defense, but she did a lot of good stuff on offense. ("Good stuff." This is why I shouldn't be letting the Internet distract me so that I'm only getting to these notes six hours after the end of the game.) Yeah, four steals, but much like Sherill Baker, either she'll get the steal or the other team will get the basket. Metra Walthour's sense of timing was impeccable- she hit a couple of early shots for GT, then put in the third one during a Seton Hall run. Mo Bennett was off and on. So was Deja Foster, who needs to learn that cute is for the team picture (and with a team like this, even that statement's debatable- tough as this team is, I don't think they do cute). Goodlett shows promise- I'm so used to the lower rung of the ladder that 6'5" makes me do a double-take. She needs to know a little more about the game, but otherwise she'll be right.
Seton Hall's running short-handed, with only 11 on the roster and only 9 playing. I don't even know anymore. (Confusion here: my notes say the starters were Booker, Emery, Wood, Curry, and Green, while Seton Hall's site has Williams instead of Wood; I'm thinking I misaimed my starter star, in which case you can smack me.) If so, then this is the right place to mention Whitney Wood's earning of the Coco Hart Memorial Award For Epic Fail on an open lay-up. Shanai Heber played starter's minutes for Booker, but still came off the bench. Nice job rebounding, but she picked up a lot of fouls. More of the officiating later. Terry Green had some enthusiastic fans behind us, but I'm not impressed with Mangina's recruit. Kashmere Joseph's really fallen down the depth chart, which, when the depth chart is as shallow as the Pirates' is, is kinda pathetic. I mean, it's not like I was ever terribly impressed with her, but c'MON.
Booker barely played. I'm going to have to go on Seton Hall's site to confirm dimensions, positions, and hometowns, because the roster at LIU was jacked up, but if the numbers I have are accurate, Booker only started because of her build. Ebonie Williams was really the only reason they ever got into the game- she got them off the schnide with a three, and she was hitting pretty consistently once she got going. Nicole Emery and Kandice Green joined the party in the second half, and that was enough to save the team. Emery was at least getting to the line- that's the only way Seton Hall could score for a large chunk of the game.
I don't have much to say specifically about the players from either side because of the way the game shook out. At the beginning, Georgia Tech looked like something out of a defensive maven's wet dream. They were trapping hard ad pressing harder, forcing bad shots and contesting most shots. Seton Hall couldn't buy a bucket. It took almost thirteen minutes of game time for them to finally register a field goal, but once that happened it was like the floodgates opened. Six field goals in seven minutes isn't a bad clip. Once the Pirates got going, the Yellow Jackets' lack of discipline really showed, more on the offensive end than on the defensive end, but they started to fall apart in the halfcourt defense as well. As long as they were able to hawk the ball, they could disrupt Seton Hall's offense, but once the Hall got into a rhythm, assignments were blown and open shots were found- and in the second half, Seton Hall wasn't missing the open shots they were blowing in the first half.
It was an ugly game, plain and simple. The refs didn't help either. The calls got oddly inconsistent near the end of the game, because I think the three guys were overwhelmed by the physicality of the mess.
Here are the two plays, both near the end of the game, that seemed ot encapsulate the fail that the Pirates brought to the yard: with about fourteen seconds left, Seton Hall was down 54-51. This was after fucking off about nineteen seconds from the clock. Instead of going for the three, Emery drove the lane for two. Except that she got called for the charging foul on a sketchy call, her fourth, and possession went back to Georgia Tech, who sank two free throws. Now Seton Hall, down 56-51 with about four seconds left, decides to try a three from the corner closest to the bench. It goes up... and gets wedged between the rim and the backboard. Jump ball, alternate possession gives the ball to Georgia Tech. As hot a mess as that game was, I can't think of two more jacked up ways to end a game.
Seton Hall, OMG, you made my conference look bad, stoppit. Georgia Tech, don't rest on your laurels, because that almost lost you the game.
GNoD DISapproved!