This and That: South Carolina
Important notes from yesterday's 74-71 Georgetown overtime loss to South Carolina are below.
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The Grab
The game, an extra period bonanza, had it's thrills and chills. For those counting, we witnessed seven lead changes an five ties. One such moment was a Hoya mistake, a blunder that propelled South Carolina into overtime.
The scene: South Carolina's junior guard Meechie Johnson (17 points) missed the front end of a one and one free throw award, the clock reading 24 seconds in regulation, score set as a 64-63 Gamecock advantage.
Johnson's errant attempt was secured by junior Hoya guard, Jay Heath (game high 23 points), who promptly passed to teammate Primo Spears. The game's eventual leading scorer at 23 points, Spears raced the rock down court with just 20 clicks to play, received a screen and subsequent switch, reset, attacked again, pulling up from the left elbow for two. Now, Georgetown led 65-64.
Johnson received the inbounds pass and with 4.6 seconds remaining, heaved a 3/4 court missile of a pass, leading a streaking Hayden Brown to the cup. Brown a graduate forward who contributed 16 points, eight rebounds, had a quick release which helped him get open. Georgetown's Heath was the closest Hoya to the racing Brown, who missed the pass by less than an inch.
The confusion then started. Instead of being Hoyas' rock, the referee's caucused, producing an intentional foul on Heath for attempting to hold Brown back. They were able to do so based on one of several possibilities, despite not seeming to have called a foul initially; anything under two minutes the refs can go to the monitor, a coach can request the review, and referee's can assess an initial non-call if drawn to the monitor for something else, like timing issues.
Regardless of how, Brown was awarded two foul shots and his team retained possession. The forward made one his free throw attempts, but his team could not score, forcing overtime.
Pat Ewing, Hoyas' head coach sharing what happened, noted "I haven't looked at the the tape yet. They just told me Jay i guess, pulled his jersey. In the rules, that's considered a flagrant.
"I didn't even know that was reviewable..But obviously it was, so it is what it is".
The change of reviewability has happened recently.
His USC counterpart, Lamont Paris stated he hadn't "watched the replay, but I saw it live". He recounted "We were in transition, and they reached out from behind and grabbed out jersey. It wasn't a basketball play, and by definition that's a flagrant foul; not making a play on the ball, and grabbing our guy's jersey.
"And so that's what it was. A flagrant foul. So we got two shots and the ball back".
Could Have Been
Super frosh forward GG Jackson showed why he's dynamite, scoring all of his team best 22 points in the second half. Add eight rebounds to GG's overall statistical output. He was clearly a go-to scorer for Paris et al.
How did he turn things around?
"i feel like a lot of times in the first half, i settled for different jump shots, tough shots where the defender was in my face" shared the precocious Jackson, a 6'9" 17 year old prodigy that is one of the youngest players in Division I competition. "But ultimately in the second half we drew up a lot of great sets from the coaching staff; Every time they switched, they told me just roll to the basket".
Apparently "mentally", he "just wasn't there at all" conceded Jackson, who embraced "I take full blame for how the team played in the first half, because i wasn't there the majority of the time - my body language, how i looked on the bench, my head and how i was trotting down the court, my head down and stuff".
Coaches corrected it, as "When we got in the locker room one of the main things that stood out to me was Coach Paris told me, sorry for my language, 'That's bullsh*t. I was like..'Gotcha", recalled Jackson. "And then Coach (Tim) Buckley told me he went to the NBPA Camp last summer was like "I need that G.G., the one always smiling, laughing, getting after it'. I just looked at him and nodded. And when i saw that first shot go in, i was like alright".
Paris is happy with what he has.
"I don't know, I've only seen this group of freshman" responded USC's coach when asked if Jackson is the best college freshman, nationally. "But he's really talented. He's really talented. And you can hear him, he's mature. He's grateful for the opportunity that he has and the gifts he's been blessed with.
"He's an extremely talented guy. I mean take basketball out of it. He plays the drums, he sings. He's got a great personality.
"And you have a 17 year old kid who came up here in this kind of environment, this type of game, and acknowledged his body language in the first half wasn't what it needed to be. I reminded him also, but to acknowledge that as a 17 year old and take responsibility for that is uncommon".
Ewing, well aware what Jackson brings to the table chuckled "You're asking me this after a loss" to a questioner who asked if the young standout was a dominant guy. Ewing: "Look we recruited GG. We thought he was special when we recruited him. i don't see anything differently. He stepped up in the second half and got big boy baskets. So I take my hat off to him".
Jackson acknowledged being pursued by the Hoyas, as "Earlier this summer before i committed to South Carolina, i took an official visit here to Georgetown. So I got to kind of see a little bit of the arena, but I was itching so bad to play in it".
Rock Fight
Though the teams scored similarly, producing 63 points jointly in the first half, 67 during second period work, the way those numbers were produced is different. To start the final 20 minutes, Georgetown scored six points off fast breaks early on, never doing so again.
Proceedings for a large portion of back stanza became a rock fight for both teams - no easy baskets, going against a motivated foe, walking the ball down the floor. As Paris indicated "Both teams competed at a really high level. And both teams wanted to win really badly. And that's not always the case as crazy as that sounds like".
"And so every possession down the stretch, even for the last eight minutes it seemed like, and then the overtime, every single possession seemed so critical".
Ewing didn't care about game flow, saying "I think it doesn't make a difference" if it was wide open or played in a phone booth. "Whatever game you're playing the objective of the game is to win.
"We were doing everything we needed to do in the first half to get that 11 point lead. In the second half we came back and it was just too many mistakes, leaving them wide open on shots, not getting...the rebounds. All of those things added up to the reason why we lost".
