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Jackets Complete Road Swing at Wake Forest

Jan. 17, 2006

ATLANTA –

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Georgia Tech, winners in four of its last five games and six of its last eight, completes a three-game road stretch Wednesday when it visits Wake Forest at 9 p.m. at the Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Winston-Salem, N.C.

The game will be regionally televised over the ACC’s Raycom/Jefferson-Pilot network, airing in Atlanta on WATL-TV (Ch. 36). The Georgia Tech-ISP Network will provide the radio coverage, airing in Atlanta on WQXI-AM (790), WTSH-FM (107.1) and WREK-FM (91.1).

Tech (9-5 overall, 2-1 ACC this season) is coming off an 87-78 defeat at NC State Saturday, but scored its most important wins of the season in the week before, a 76-67 win over Vanderbilt and a 60-58 triumph over No. 11 Boston College. A win over the Demon Deacons would give Tech its second 3-1 in start in ACC play under head coach Paul Hewitt.

Wake Forest (11-5, 0-3 ACC) has lost its first three ACC games to Duke, Clemson and Maryland, its first 0-3 start since 1989-90, but has beaten the Yellow Jackets 10 times in the last 14 meetings. The teams have two common opponents, UNC-Asheville (16-point win for Wake Forest, 28 for Tech) and Elon (19-point win for Wake Forest, 12 for Tech).

This is Tech’s sixth road game of the season, but only its fourth on an opponent’s home floor. The Yellow Jackets, 0-3 on opponents’ home courts, played Air Force and Centenary on neutral floors in their home cities. Tech is 1-4 against the Demon Deacons in Winston-Salem under Hewitt, 4-12 all-time at Joel Coliseum.

After a long 12-day break between games in December and with some alterations in the starting lineup over the semester break, Tech has steadily improved on both ends of the court, allowing just 60.2 points per game over a six-game stretch before Saturday’s game at NC State (87 points allowed). The Jackets have shot 50.2 percent from the floor and 39.6 percent from three-point range over its last eight games.

Tech has played at least one man short for the last eight games. Junior guard Mario West has missed the last five games with a sprained toe, while Lewis Clinch missed five games with a stress fracture in his lower left leg. Georgia Tech’s starting lineup includes 6-0 sophomore Zam Fredrick, 6-5 sophomore Anthony Morrow and 6-5 freshman D’Andre Bell on the perimeter, 6-6 sophomore Jeremis Smith at power forward and 6-9 senior Theodis Tarver at center. The Yellow Jackets are 3-1 using that starting lineup.

Morrow, from Charlotte, N.C., leads the Jackets and ranks 10th in the ACC in scoring at 16.8 points a game. He ranks No. 2 in the ACC with a 42.7-percent success rate from three-point range and is third in the conference in three-point field goals (2.71 per game). He is one of four Tech players averaging in double digits, including Smith (14.1), Ra’Sean Dickey (10.9) and Fredrick (10.3).

Fredrick, from St. Matthews, S.C., has averaged 12.0 points and 5.2 assists over his last five games, and ranks seventh in the ACC in assist average with 4.3 per game. Bell, a 6-5 wingman from Los Angeles, Calif., has averaged 6.6 points per game in five games as a starter, including two double-digit efforts, and averages 4.3 points and 1.8 rebounds for the season.

Smith, from Fort Worth, Texas, has transformed himself into a force in the paint since Tech’s near miss at Michigan State, posting five double-doubles. Fully recovered from a dislocated kneecap that sidelined him for 17 games last year, Smith is the ACC’s second-leading rebounder at 8.7 per game, ahas scored 17.7 points per game (9th in the ACC) and shot 54.3 percent from the floor in ACC games.

Tarver, from Monroe, La., has started seven of Tech’s last eight games, averaging 5.0 points and 3.1 rebounds while making 51.9 percent of his field goal tries in those games.

Off the bench, freshman Lewis Clinch, a 6-3 guard from Cordele, Ga., returned to the court against Boston College after missing five games with a stress fracture in his left leg. He scored a career-high 14 points on 6-of-10 shooting at NC State, and averages 7.3 points for the season. Paco Diaw, a 6-6 freshman from Dakar, Senegal, has averaged 2.6 points, 3.7 assists over Tech’s last five games.

In the frontcourt, Dickey, from Clio, S.C., has averaged 15.5 points (13-of-19 FG) and 9.5 rebounds in Tech’s last two games, and leads the Jackets in field goal percentage at 58.2 percent for the season. Freshman Alade Aminu, a 6-9 player with good athletic ability and shot-blocking skills, has averaged 2.6 points and 2.1 rebounds as Tech’s other post reserve.

Coach Hewitt says …

“It was good to see Lewis Clinch get back on the court for us, get back into shape and get his timing back. He did some nice things for us. Based on what I’ve seen so far, three games in (to the ACC schedule), I like what I’ve seen, but we’ve got a very hungry Wake Forest team waiting Wednesday night, and we’ve got to play well to have a chance.”

[On assimilating a large group of young players] – “Once you get these guys game experience over the long haul, it definitely will pay benefits for you. While you’re going through it, sometimes it can be difficult. But I have to say these young guys have picked things up pretty quickly. Since the Christmas break, the guys are starting to play with the type of urgency I want to see.”

[Have you ever experienced what you have this year in terms of so many first-time starters?] – “My second year, we were even younger. We had one senior, Tony Akins, and no juniors of consequence. We have five freshmen and three or four sophomores. This transition has been smoother. I know I’ve learned a lot from that second year, and it’s come back to help me an awful lot here.”

[On Jeremis Smith] – “He’s just starting to get back into shape. I tell our beat writers all the time, when he gets an offensive rebound and goes back up and spikes it, I know he’s got his legs back. He’s just about all the way back from that injury. His outside shooting is not nearly what it was when he got here. He can shoot the ball better than the 15 to 17 feet that he has already. For the first time since the injury, in the last two games I think I’ve started to see the Jeremis Smith that we recruited.”

[On Wake Forest] – They’re a talented team. They’ve lost to some quality teams. I watched their Duke game in preparation for our game Wednesday. They were right there at the end, and last night at Maryland, they were right there at the end on the road. It’s not like they’ve lost to bad ball clubs.”

Offense Comes to Life

With the exception of its loss at Air Force, Georgia Tech has become more efficient offensively over its last eight games, coinciding with the emergence of freshmen D’Andre Bell and Paco Diaw as major contributors.

Aside from that Dec. 28 loss, the Yellow Jackets have averaged 78 points in the six wins during that stretch, shot 50.5 percent from the floor (40 percent on threes) and assisted on 126 of 203 field goals (62 percent).

Over that stretch, Diaw has 22 assists, second only to Zam Fredrick, and just 13 turnovers while playing nearly 14 minutes per game, Bell is averaging 5.9 points while shooting 46.2 percent in nearly 24 minutes a game.

> Tech has shot 50 percent four times in the last eight games, never less than 45 percent (Bethune-Cookman), and made 60.9 percent, a high for the Paul Hewitt era, against Vanderbilt. The Yellow Jackets have made at least a third of their three-point attempts (the equivalent of 50 percent from two-point range in terms of point value) in seven of the last eight games.

> Tech has been even or on the plus side of the assist-turnover ratio in five of the eight games, 126-to-121 overall with the Air Force game not included.

> Tech’s 47.0-percent clip from the floor this season is a high for the Yellow Jackets under head coach Paul Hewitt. Part of the reason is that only 22.6 percent of Tech’s field goal tries have come from behind the three-point arc. That’s well off the previous low under Hewitt, 27.2 percent in 2002-03. Hewitt’s first Tech team in 2000-01 took 38 percent of its shots from behind the arc.

> Also, Tech has not had two frontcourt players provide the scoring production that Jeremis Smith and Ra’Sean Dickey give the Jackets. Those two players account for 37.5 percent of Tech’s points and have made 55.6 percent of their field goal tries.

Jackets Pound the Boards

Georgia Tech has outrebounded 12 of 14 opponents this season, including the last nine in a row. Over that stretch, the Yellow Jackets have won the battle of the boards by an average of 11.6 per game.

Tech has been dominant in some of those games, including Bethune Cookmam (55-35), Vanderbilt (35-18), Boston College (33-23) and Centenary (46-29).

Tech’s 39.0 rebounds per game represent a high-water mark for the Yellow Jackets under head coach Paul Hewitt. Tech ranks fourth in the ACC overall in rebounding, rebound margin (plus-7.6) and offensive rebounds (14 per game).

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