Georgia Tech suffers first loss to East Tennessee State

ATLANTA -- The new-look Georgia Tech basketball team looked more like the old-look Yellow Jackets when they dropped a 69-68 decision to East Tennessee State on Sunday at McCamish Pavilion.

The Yellow Jackets (3-1) squandered a three-point lead in the final eight seconds and lost the game when Cincinnati transfer Ge-Lawn Guyn drained a 3-pointer with three seconds left to play. Guyn scored a game-high 24 points, including 16 in the second half.

FOUR WHO MATTERED

Marcus Georges-Hunt: The Georgia Tech wing scored a team-high 20 points, his season high. The senior was 9-for-10 from the free-throw line, but a miss enabled ETSU to play for the winning shot at the buzzer.

Charles Mitchell: The Georgia Tech forward had his fourth straight double-double with 10 points and 11 rebounds. Mitchell also had two steals.

Nick Jacobs: The Georgia Tech forward scored 13 points but had only four in the second half. Jacobs also left the game after taking an elbow in the mouth.

Guyn: The ETSU guard scored 24 points on 8-for-15 shooting with three 3-pointers. Guyn also had seven rebounds, a steal and a block, as well as the game-winning shot.

TURNING POINT

Georgia Tech led by five points with 12:20 left after Quinton Stephens made a 3-pointer, but the Yellow Jackets couldn't put the Bucs away. ETSU wound up tying the game at 57 with 4:51 left on a Guyn 3-pointer.

OBSERVATIONS

A matter of style: Georgia Tech was sucked into play ETSU's style. The Bucs dictated a slower tempo, and the Yellow Jackets could never adjust.

In the paint: The Yellow Jackets were outscored 36-22 in the paint. It's the third time Georgia Tech has been outscored inside but by the widest margin of the year.

WORTH MENTIONING

Groundhog day: Georgia Tech has now started 3-1 every year under Gregory. The last time Georgia Tech won its first four games of the season was 2008-09. That team wound up going 11-10 and losing in the second round of the ACC tournament.

Still the same: Georgia Tech started the same lineup for the fourth straight game -- Georges-Hunt, Mitchell, Jacobs, Adam Smith and Josh Heath. The first substitute was forward Ben Lammers at the 16:23 mark.

THEY SAID IT

Georgia Tech head coach Brian Gregory, whose team had scored 100 points in two of its first three games: "It's all fun and good when you're running up and down, but you've still to get defensive stops, and you've still got to control the glass. We didn't do a good job of that at all for 40 minutes."

East Tennessee State head coach Steve Forbes on the winning shot: "(Guyn) has played at the highest level before. You always want a guy on your team that's willing to do that. That's the way it is on the road. Somebody has to make a big shot, and he did. He wanted to take it. Some guys don't want to take that shot, but he did."

UP NEXT

Georgia Tech travels to Brooklyn to play Arkansas in the first game of the NIT Season Tipoff at 2 p.m. on Thursday.

This story was originally published November 22, 2015 at 6:57 PM.