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Saturday, October 29, 2005
Dogs’ dreams go ‘poof’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Jacksonville –- In dreamland, this is where we tell you that the little kid who grew up longing to be a Bulldog while staring at artwork of a Georgia-Florida game on his bedroom wall pulled off a miracle.
This is where Belue-to-Scott is knocked off the shelf by Tereshinski-to-Brown. This is where Georgia goes on to win the SEC, and Virginia Tech and USC and maybe even Texas somehow stumble, and the Dogs leap in the rankings and win their first national championship in 25 years.
That is dreamland. That worked 25 years ago.
Saturday, it vaporized.
“I was thinking the same thing –- what a great story it would’ve been, especially if they had gone on to win the rest of their games,” Buck Belue said Saturday. “They would’ve talked about this game for a long time.”
Poof.
Georgia lost to Florida, 14-10, Saturday.
Sounds pretty dry, given what this could have morphed into.
“Ooooh … this would’ve been Joe’s dream come true,” running back Danny Ware said.
Actually, it pretty much would have qualified as a dream for everybody in Athens. This would have been: “Classes cancelled bye week. We’re all just going to gather around Joe T. as he tells us the story of ‘Spartan 47.’ Tell us Joe, how you pitched the ball back to Thomas Brown, slipped, fell, got up, stumbled to the end zone, then leaped, fought off defenders and made that touchdown catch. Tell us Joe: What’s it like to be you?”
Poof.
Time to snap out of it.
The rally fell short, which basically means the Bulldogs are left with a bag of “almosts.” They almost pulled the upset. They almost clinched a spot in the SEC title game. They almost kept alive hopes for an unbeaten season, which would have kept alive the chance to claim the BCS has it in for the SEC.
Now, what do they have?
“There’s still a lot to play for,” coach Mark Richt said.
“Most of our goals, we don’t have to redefine.”
Well, that’s not quite true. You take out the national title and the deck is significantly reshuffled. The goal now is do better than the Outback Bowl.
The Dogs do still control their own destiny in the SEC, but it means probably having to beat Auburn at home in two weeks, which certainly doesn’t look as easy as it did –- well, when Auburn lost to Georgia Tech.
“We haven’t lost in a while,” Richt said. “We have to remember what it feels like… . But I don’t think Auburn is going to feel sorry for us.”
Florida did this to Georgia in 2002. The Bulldogs were 8-0 coming to Jacksonville and left 8-1. But they rebounded to win their first SEC title in 20 years.
That still counts for a lot –- it just pales to the potential story line. Florida jumped ahead 14-0. As Richt said, “It looked like it could be 50-0.” That’s usually what 14-0 looks like when there’s a first-time starting quarterback on the “O” side.
But the Gators sputtered and Georgia came back. The 9-yard touchdown pass from Thomas Brown to Tereshinski made it 14-10 in the third quarter. But that was sandwiched between two drives that ended in missed field goals, and that’s as close as the Dogs got.
Did it even occur to Tereshinski that he was about to carve out a special place in an improbable history?
“Not really,” he said. “Ten years down the road, I might’ve looked back on those memories,” he said. “But luckily I do get one more shot at these guys. Next year hopefully we’ll come out victorious.”
Funny thing is, there’s no guarantee Tereshinski will even be starting next season. He was the afterthought last year behind David Greene and D.J. Shockley. He was the obscurity this season behind Shockley.
Next season, he’ll just be a senior fighting for a job. The backdrop won’t be the same. And those dream sequences don’t come around very often.
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Jackets not pretty, but win anyway
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Well, this was not one you’d press like a rose in your book of memories. It was sort of like a baseball game that starts out like a pitcher’s battle, then ends up a sluggers’ match. You get the idea when I point out that Georgia Tech and Clemson were tied 3-3 at one time, then in the end that Georgia Tech scratched and scrambled around and beat their guests from upper South Carolina, 10-9.
And that the Yellow Jackets were never safe until the final second had ticked off the clock at Bobby Dodd Stadium, and the 55,000 or so could traipse out of the place exhausted, but uninjured.
It was a sloppy piece of work, just to be bluntly honest. It took them over 40 minutes to play the first quarter, pockmarked as it was by one penalty after another. Then, later on, Clemson would appear to take the lead when Charlie Whitehurst connected with Thomas Hunter in the end zone on a 22-yard touchdown pass. But, alas, the Tigers were detected to have 12 men on the field. In case you’re new to American football, that’s one too many.
Georgia Tech also scored an apparent field goal, off the toe of Travis Bell’s boot, but alas and double alas, the poor blokes had allowed time to run out.
In fact, a guy dressed in a T-shirt and blue jeans, and a modest topper, was tied with both teams at halftime. The unidentified chap, slight of build, kicked a field goal from the 25-yard line, won a contest sponsored by Ford Motor Company, thereupon collecting a prize of $1,000. So all three of them were tied at 3-all. But the prize-winning booter retired to his seat in the stands. The Tigers and Jackets still had 30 minutes to play.
It turned out a bit better than the first 30 minutes. Clemson, for the most part, rolled up yard after yard and was winning the statistical battle breezily. But it was like playing the dime slot machine in a casino. The Tigers managed to come unglued one way or another. For instance, they had played seven games and not lost a fumble. Here they lost three.
What really turned it all around for the Yellow Jackets was when Chan Gailey finally turned the offense over to P.J. Daniels in the second half. Daniels is the Jackets’ surest offensive weapon, but for some reason or another, he had touched the ball only six times in the first half, and for only 25 yards.
He was trusted with the ball 15 times in the second half, picked up enough yards to top off his day with an even 100, and peaked out crashing into the end zone from two yards out with 8:35 left in the game. But the Tigers still weren’t done. They kicked another field goal, and as the clock wound down to nine seconds, Ben Arndt errantly punted out of bounds and the set up the Tigers with one final “Hail Mary” fling. They missed, but the Jackets weren’t safe until the ball came to rest in friendly hands.
Now, say this: Reggie Ball can sometimes soothe the most devoted Tech devotee, and he can sometimes drive said devotee to utter despair. It’s like playing Russian roulette. This was one of his Russian roulette days, pull the trigger and hope for the best. His game was erratic, and he was like a magician extricating himself from trouble. He was responsible for 169 offensive yards, but that wasn’t one of his better days.
He couldn’t wipe the smile off Gailey’s face, though. The coach gave credit where credit was due -– to the defense. There were times when Tech was in more trouble with the ball is in own its hands, but whenever they found themselves in a bind on this autumn day, the defense got them out of it, and Gailey gave his defensive side two thumbs up.
It wasn’t pretty, and the score was a rare one in football, “but that’s college football and that’s fun.” And that was the coach’s epitaph.
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