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Dean’s take:
A strong finish to the first half and a quick start to the second half put Nebraska in position to get a little pay back for last year’s 73-56 loss to Georgia Tech, and claim one more win for the Big 10 in the ACC/Big 10 challenge Wednesday at Pinnacle Bank Arena.
But the Huskers didn’t have an answer for Jose Alvarado and Georgia Tech during an 18-5 Yellow Jacket run late in the game and fell to the Yellow Jackets 75-64, allowing the Atlantic Coast Conference to claim its third win in the 11-game series.
After cutting an eight-point deficit to 32-30 at intermission, Fred Hoiberg’s squad scored 10 of the first 12 points of the second half to go up 40-34 on Teddy Allen’s jumper following a Dalano Banton assist. Kobe Webster’s 3-pointer with 14:34 left in the contest put the Huskers back up six, 43-37, before Georgia Tech recovered.
Trailing 52-51, Alvaredo hit his first of three shots from beyond the arc during the 13-point swing on his way to a game-high 24 points for Georgia Tech head coach Josh Pastner.
Nebraska’s Trey McGowens opened the game’s scoring by hitting a jumper and the and-1 just 27-seconds into the contest. The Huskers then led for the first 11-minutes, 3-seconds of the game and built its largest first half lead of 15-10 on Kobe Webster’s 3-pointer with 11:57 left before intermission.
But, Georgia Tech bounced back to take its first advantage of the game with 8:07 left before intermission when Jordan Usher scored on a layup to put the Yellow Jackets up 19-18. Georgia Tech then scored 13 of the next 19 points to build a 32-24 advantage with 2:57 left in the first 20 minutes of play.
Nebraska came back on back-to-back 3s by Lat Mayen and Webster to pull Nebraska back to within 32-30 at intermission. Both squads went scoreless over the final 2:04 of the opening half.
Webster led a trio of Huskers by scoring 20 points on the night. Banton added 17 points while Teddy Allen ripped the cords for 10 points for Nebraska. Alvarado led the Yellow Jackets in scoring after tallying 19 second half points alone followed by Moses Wright’s 13 points. Michael Devoe and Khalid Moore added 12 and 11 points respectively.
McGowens and Banton led Nebraska with a game-high nine boards each while Thorir Thorbjarnarson added seven rebounds and five assists just short of the game high six assists dished out by Banton. Wright and Moore added eight rebounds each for Georgia Tech.
Georgia Tech shot 44.8-percent (26-58) from the field to 37.7 percent (23-61) for the Big Red while both clubs knocked down eight 3-pointers each. The Yellow Jackets were 15 of 20 (75.0-percent) from the stripe while Nebraska sank 10 of 15 (66.7-percent) charity shots.
Nebraska out rebounded Georgia Tech 42-34 for the contest and pulled down 15 offensive rebounds, giving the Huskers a 17-12 advantage in second chance points. The Yellow Jackets turned the ball over nine times while forcing Nebraska into 16 errors, allowing Georgia Tech to outscore Nebraska 15-6 in points off of turnovers. There were seven ties in the contest and three lead changes.
Kevin’s take:
Same opponent from last season, but this time in Lincoln? Well, same result more or less in the end as the Nebraska Cornhuskers fall to the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets 75-64 at PBA tonight. The Huskers loss brought the ACC/Big Ten Challenge record to 6-3 as the ACC clawed back with three wins so far tonight after Indiana fell a few minutes after the Huskers.
For a team that was seeing opponents average 40.5 percent from three point range on 24.7 attempts against its zone, the Yellow Jackets watched the Huskers go 8-for-23 on 34.8 percent shooting from deep. Meanwhile, the Huskers went an abysmal 23-61 overall on field goals for just 37.7 percent. Tech was only managing to hold opponents to 46.3 and giving up 68.3 attempts.
Perhaps its a problem of bench depth and dead legs? Yet again just eight players saw the court for the Huskers. Kobe Webster went off for 20 points, while Dalano Banton was second in scoring with 17 and fell just shy of a double-double with 9 boards which tied for best with McGowens who also grabbed 9. Teddy Allen was the only other Husker to crack double-digits in scoring with 10 points.
Nebraska was sloppy with the ball with far too many terrible passes that looked like a Tanner Lee chart. 16 turnovers by Nebraska, only eight of which were forced by Tech. Perhaps if the team can figure out how to better move the ball on offense against a zone instead of looking more like school yard ball at a lot of times the wins will come against programs like the Yellow Jackets who are by no means bad, but certainly were a winnable game tonight.