Baye Ndongo Hits Buzzer-Beater As Georgia Tech Shocks Wake Forest 70-69
As winners of three of their last four, Georgia Tech was arguably playing its best basketball of the season coming into tonight's game vs Wake Forest. The Yellow Jackets played a great game from start to finish on Senior night this past Saturday against Florida State and were coming up against a Wake Forest team that was needing a win to avoid falling further on the NCAA Tournament bubble.
If you go back just a month, Wake Forest handed Georgia Tech one of its most lopsided losses of the season, winning 80-51 and embarrassing the Yellow Jackets in the first half.
There were no changes to the starting lineup for Georgia Tech in this game. Nait George, Miles Kelly, Kowacie Reeves, Baye Ndongo, and Tafara Gapare
The start of this game was similar to the first matchup, but Georgia Tech was the beneficiary.
Georgia Tech hit four of their first five shots and led 12-0. They strengthened that lead to 26-7 and it looked exactly like what Wake Forest did to Georgia Tech in the first matchup. Wake Forest is one of the top offensive teams in the ACC and the country, but the Yellow Jackets did not allow them to get going early in the game and the offense for the Yellow Jackets had a tremendous start. It looked like the game was going to get blown completely open, but Wake Forest kept it respectable for the rest of the first half and trailed 40-26. It was a pretty surprising sight considering how the first game went and that Wake was a 13.5-point favorite coming into this game.
The Yellow Jackets held a massive shooting advantage in the first half. Georgia Tech shot 57% from the floor and from three.
Wake Forest shot 29% from the field and 20% from three.
The biggest cause of concern in the first half for Georgia Tech was the fact they committed nine turnovers. Turnovers have been a problem for Damon Stoaudamire's team this year and that showed in the first half. The Yellow Jackets did hold a big rebounding advantage in the game though.
The question was if Georgia Tech could be on for the rest of the game.
It did not look like they were going to. The second half was going about as bad as it could for Georgia Tech all the way up to the end.
After a great first half for the Yellow Jackets, the first 10 minutes of the second half belonged to Wake Forest. They cut the lead to three and trailed 52-49 with 10:01 to go.
It looked like Georgia Tech had found a way to right the ship the over the next few minutes. They increased the lead back to eight points with around two minutes left.
Wake Forest cut the lead to 68-65 with 1:19 left and Georgia Tech needed a basket to get some of the pressure off of them. The turnover problem extended to the second half though and Nait George committed his seventh one to give the ball back to Wake.
On the other end, Ndongo committed his fourth foul to send Wake back to the line. The Demon Deacons hit both free throws to cut the lead to 68-67 with 37 seconds left and Georgia Tech took a timeout.
Needing a basket to stretch the lead, Georgia Tech committed another turnover. Wake got the ball back and went down and scored a basket to take the lead 69-68 with 18 seconds remaining. It was a 9-0 run for Wake Forest to take the lead and after Georgia Tech had led by as much as 19 points in this game, it looked like they were going to get their hearts broken at the end.
Instead, Baye Ndongo hit a buzzer-beater shot and possibly ended Wake Forest's NCAA Tournament hopes.
It was an incredible shot and effort from Ndongo to give Georgia Tech their third straight win and their fourth win in their last five games.
Despite being outscored 43-30 in the second half, the Yellow Jackets found a way to hang on, even by the slimmest of margins.
Miles Kelly finished with 19 points, while Nait George (16 points) and Tafara Gapare (11 points) also got into double figures. Georgia Tech shot 54% from the field in the game and 48% from three.
The number that has to improve for Georgia Tech is the turnovers. The Yellow Jackets committed 16 tonight, including seven from George.
Georgia Tech will be on the road against Virginia for its final game of the regular season on Saturday at 8:00 p.m. The game will be on the ACC network.
