ATLANTA, Ga. - For the second time in three days, the West Georgia Wolves men's basketball team went on the road against a Power Four opponent, falling on Wednesday to the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets by a 85-62 score at McCamish Pavilion
West Georgia (0-2) struggled with the size of Georgia Tech (1-0) down low as the Yellow Jackets had a big, 49-25 advantage on the glass while also doubling-up the Wolves on points in the paint, 48-24.
"This was a great opportunity, I first want to thank Georgia Tech for the opportunity being here," said head coach Dave Moore. "These games are really important for our operations."
Fueled by a 57 percent clip from the field in the opening half, Georgia Tech jumped out to an early 22-9 lead before the Wolves went to work and eventually clawed back to an eight point deficit at 24-16 on their first possess after the under-eight media timeout.
Over those final seven-plus minutes, Georgia Tech would outscore the Wolves 26-13 to take a 50-29 lead into the halftime break.
West Georgia had fairly even scoring distribution in the opening half, with seven different players scoring including seven from Shelton Williams-Dryden and five off the bench from Rickey Ballard.
Georgia Tech's offense cooled off in the second half shooting 38.7 percent in the period to finish the game shooting 48.5 percent from the field. UWG poured in five threes in the second half, and Kolten Griffin scored all 11 of his points in the final 20 minutes. The GT lead never dipped below 20 points in the second half as the Jackets cruised to a win in their season opener while handing UWG their second loss in as many games to open their inaugural season if Division I basketball.
"You know the first half for me was disappointing. Our execution, and sometimes our effort," added Moore, "But I thought in the second half, we battled. We tried to win the second half, and if we'd made our free throws we would have been able to do that."
The Wolves had 33 second half points to 35 from Georgia Tech and shot 60 percent from the charity stripe.
Shelton Williams-Dryden led UWG in scoring with 13 points on 5-of-11 shooting and also led UWG on the glass with five rebounds. Ballard finished the game with eight points which was third-highest for the Wolves.
One positive for the Wolves was a significant improvement in ball security, committing just eighth turnovers after tallying 20 in Monday's loss at Mississippi State.
West Georgia now gets a six day break between games as they resume action with another road contest on Tuesday, November 12 as the Wolves travel to Tennessee Tech for a 7 p.m. tip-off.
