Georgia Tech loses to Virginia
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Marial Shayok is emerging as the scorer Virginia so badly needs, and making his elevation to the starting lineup look brilliant.
Shayok had a career-best 19 points, the third time in four games he has set or tied his career high, and No. 16 Virginia used a 22-7 run spanning halftime to beat Georgia Tech 62-49 on Saturday.
“Today the guys were finding me and I was just catching and shooting and the ball was going in,” Shayok said.
In his first start four games ago, he scored 17 points.
He matched it the next game, and then set a new high on 6-for-9 shooting against the Yellow Jackets.
“He’s wired to score,” coach Tony Bennett said. “He can play off the bounce.”
London Perrantes added 11 points, all in the first 7 minutes, for the Cavaliers (15-3, 5-2 Atlantic Coast Conference), Devon Hall had 10.
Jack Salt had five points, six rebounds, a steal, a block and played harassing defense on Georgia Tech scoring leader Ben Lammers.
“There were a few story lines but I don’t think there were any bigger than how Jack impacted the game,” Bennett said after Lammers was 3 for 12 and scored seven points, less than half his 14.9 average.
“Jack was just there. He was a presence.”
The victory was the fourth straight for Virginia. Josh Okogie led the Yellow Jackets (11-8, 3-4) with 14 points, all but one in the first half, and fellow freshman Justin Moore had 10.
The Yellow Jackets pulled within 2928 with 4½ minutes left in the first half, but Virginia scored the last six points of the half and started the second half with a 16-7 run to lead 51-35 with under 10 minutes to play.
“We’ve been pretty good at answering runs, but we didn’t answer that one,” first-year coach Josh Pastner said.