National Semifinal Game 2
4 Seed Illinois vs
5 Seed Georgia Tech
Unlike the other Final Four
matchup, these teams hadn’t faced each other during the regular season so this
would be the first opportunity they got to go toe-to-toe and would pose as an
opportunity for a team to crash a potential All-ACC National Title game.
On paper both of these teams are
quite similar and it probably wouldn’t take much more than a lucky bounce here
or there for either team to end up the victors, well it just happened that on
this given night Georgia Tech seemed to get all the little bounces to fall
their way and what would have been predicted to be a very close game, ended up
not resembling that.
It was a slow, methodical start
to this matchup as the teams managed to score a combined 40 points over the
opening 12 minutes. Unfortunately for Illinois they were only able to
contribute 15 of those 40 and found themselves down by 10. They were able to
slowly chip away at the Yellow Jackets lead and actually cut it to 5 pts at
33-28 with 3:31 remaining in the 1st half but allowed the next 5
points and eventually found themselves facing a 40-31 halftime deficit.
Illinois came out showing signs
of life in the 2nd half as they cut Georgia Tech’s lead over the opening
5 minutes of the half down to just 3 points (48-45), and looked poised to
potentially take their first lead of the game. Georgia Tech thought better of
that and answered Illinois’ mini-run with a 12-0 run of their own to reclaim a
commanding 57-45 lead with only 9:35 to go in the game. Would Illinois go away?
Sadly the answer to that is kind of yeah. They were able to cut into the lead a
few times to bring it back down to single digits, but they never were in a real
position to reclaim the lead or put a ton of pressure on the big scary ACC
team. The final score ended up being
71-59 in favor of Georgia Tech.
It has been no secret that the
ACC is by far the cream of the crop conference in the country. They are the big
brother to ALL other conferences and in all actuality there was never any doubt
in this matchup despite being in the final four and now sets up an All-ACC National
Title game as Florida St will face off against Georgia Tech.
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