Homecoming can often be bittersweet.

Just ask Appalachian State forward Marshall Phillips, the Atlanta native who, Saturday at Georgia Tech,  had an amazing career-high, 29-point, 15-rebound performance.

Still, the team could only watch in agony as the Yellow Jackets’ Tony Akins hit the game-winning three-pointer for Tech, with 21 seconds left in overtime, to give the home team the 74-72 win.

It was a tragic ending for a Mountaineer team that had worn its heart on its sleeve to fight back from a 12-point half-time deficit to take the Jackets to overtime.

Phillips’ and the rest of the Mountaineers’ performance in the second half and in overtime was so impressive that it left the 4,851 Tech fans in attendance stunned and the Atlanta sports writers literally asking, “who is this Marshall Phillips, and why doesn’t he play for us?”

After shooting 33 percent from the field and 44 percent from the free throw line in the first half, ASU went into the locker room at half time looking like the team that Tech fans thought didn’t belong on an ACC court.

But Appalachian set out to prove them wrong in the second half.

As Georgia Tech, and former Appalachian Coach Bobby Cremmins said afterwards, “We had the game in the first half... then all hell broke loose.”

The Mountaineers stormed out of the locker room and immediately put themselves back in contention with a 7-0 run that included a Phillips’ three-pointer, and made the score 39-34 Georgia Tech.

Over the next 12 minutes, the Jackets’ lead fluctuated from anywhere between one and 7 points as the Mountaineers matched them bucket for bucket.

Then with 4:49 left, Tech’s Alvin Jones picked up his fourth foul of the game and sent ASU’s Cedrick Holmes to the line.  Holmes, who hadn’t scored all game prior to that, sank both of his free throws and gave the Mountaineers their first lead of the game at 58-57.

A few seconds later, when the score was tied at 60-60, Akins began to take on the role of tech savior.  He hit a bad-angle jump shot with four minutes left to give the Jackets their last lead of the half at 62-60.

After Blair Adderly gave the Mountaineers a one-point lead with 2:31 left, hitting one of two free throw attempts, Phillips and point guard Tyson Patterson then tried to carry the team to victory.

Patterson picked up his third foul on a driving Akins, who hit one of two from the stripe to tie the game.  After a Phillips lay-up that made it 65-63, ASU, Patterson fouled Akins again, and again the Jackets’ freshman point guard could only hit one of two.

But on the ensuing possession, Akins was called for a foul on Patterson which sent the Georgia Tech fans into another uproar. 

 Just a few seconds earlier, the fans had protested a charging foul on Jones that gave him his fifth and ended his day. 

Patterson missed the first shot and then the second, but Phillips came up with the rebound and was quickly fouled. 

After nailing the first free throw, Phillips aired the second, making it 66-64, ASU.

Akins then proved why he might contend for ACC rookie-of-the-year honors by driving down the court and nailing the tying jumper with 16 seconds left.

ASU had one last chance to put it away as the Mountaineers took the ball down and volleyed it around the rim on three shots but could not get it to fall as time expired.

In overtime, ASU jumped out to a quick lead on a Shawn Alexander tip-in.  The Mountaineers then had a chance to extend their lead to 70-66, but Holmes missed two free throws.

After backup Darryl LaBarrie hit a free throw to bring Tech within one, Alexander made a bad pass and gave Akins the chance to drive the length of the court and hit a running jumper that gave Tech the lead at 69-68.

Then, with 1:14 left and ASU up by three, LaBarrie hit a jumper to make it 72-71, Appalachian.  That gave Akins the striking distance he needed to hit his game-ending shot.

The two-point loss marked the Mountaineers’ closest of the season.  Their other two losses, which came to third-ranked North Carolina and Big Ten powerhouse Minnesota, were by margins of 23 and 14 points respectively.

“I was really concerned about this team coming in,” said Bobby Cremmins afterwards, “I knew they had played Carolina and Minnesota well.”

Cremmins acknowledged the fact that, when an ACC team loses to a Southern Conference team, such as UNC did to College of Charleston that same afternoon,  many fans and writers see it as a travesty.

“If you loose to Appalachian, you know what kinds of things people are going to say,” Cremmins said.

As for the 4-3 Mountaineers, they were a little bit more positive.

“Overall, it was a great college basketball game. We just kept scrapping and scrapping,” said  ASU Coach Buzz Peterson.  “We can’t hang our heads about this loss.”

Both Peterson and Phillips acknowledged that it was the Mountaineers’ 55 percent free throw shooting that decided the game.

“Free throws killed us... that’s our weakness right now,” said Phillips, who had dozens of family members and friends in attendance at Alexander Memorial Coliseum to watch the game.

The rest of the team noticed that vocal ASU contingency and knew who it was there for.

“We were going to try to get this one for Marshall,” said Adderly, who spent 37 minutes on the court, more than any other Mountaineer.

Ironically, Saturday’s loss, which coincided with the football team’s defeat at the hands of Northwestern State, marked the second time that Appalachian has seen its men’s basketball team lose to Georgia Tech and its gridiron squad lose in the second round of the play-offs. 

 On Dec. 2, 1995, Bobby Cremmins and the Yellow Jackets visited Varisty Gymnasium and beat the Mountaineers, 89-65. 

Later that day, Appalachian saw its Division I-AA title hopes dashed as Stephen F. Austin came back in the fourth quarter to beat ASU, 27-17.

This year’s Mountaineer team now has one more shot to win against a major conference team when they take on SEC power Georgia, tonight at 7 p.m. in Varsity Gym.

Coming off this almost-win, Peterson and Phillips predicted that the team would be very fired up.

“We’ve got to get a victory this time,” said Phillips.