Alvarado, Haywood lead Ga. Tech past N. Texas Big picture

ATLANTA — Point guard Jose Alvarado scored 12 of his 19 points in the first half Friday to lead Georgia Tech to a 6349 win over North Texas and that wasn’t a big surprise, but when fellow freshman Curtis Haywood II dropped 12 of his 15 in the second half, the Yellow Jackets found something.

Haywood made 5-of-7 3-pointers with four of the makes coming after Tech (31) took a 22-19 halftime lead. In the Yellow Jackets’ first three games, the Oklahoma City native made 2-of-7 long balls.

“In practice, I’ve been getting a lot of shots in with my coaches, and ... in the game it just came to me,” Haywood said. “My teammates found me and they’ve been waiting for me to shoot like this.”

Roosevelt Smart paced North Texas (3-3) with 14 points, all in the second half, and he was the Mean Green’s only double-digit scorer. After averaging 85.6 points on 46.9 percent shooting in five games, the visitors shot just 39.1 percent.

Tech’s Ben Lammers and freshman Moses Wright each blocked three shots.

“I could tell we were struggling with the changes of (Tech’s) defenses,” said firstyear North Texas head coach Grant McCasland. “We had nineteen turnovers; that’s a credit to their aggressiveness.”

Georgia Tech senior guard Tadric Jackson added 14 points off the bench — 11 in the second half — in his first action since serving a threegame suspension for receiving benefits in violation of NCAA rules.

Yellow Jackets head coach Josh Pastner went with a smaller lineup most of the second half, removing forward Abdoulaye Gueye — whom North Texas was sagging off of — inserting Jackson.

The Jackets shot 30.8 percent in the first half, and 55.6 in the second.

“They didn’t guard Abdoulaye,” Pastner said. “They didn’t guard a couple of our guys and we needed to size down (and add shooters).”

North Texas: The Mean Green out-rebounded Tech, 31-24, and while making 8 of 15 from 3-point range, they were just 10 of 31 inside the arc. “We shot it well from 3,” McCasland said. “Just wish we would have shot more of them... it was just hard to score around the rim.”

Georgia Tech: Sophomore guard Justin Moore served the second and final game of his two-game suspension for violating unspecified NCAA rules, and sophomore guard Josh Okokie has two games remaining on his six-game suspension for receiving impermissible benefits. rebounds and 50-50 balls,” Pastner said. “It’s a blue-collar mentality, and it’s a blue-collar school,” he said of Christ the King high school.