AJC > Sports > Tech > Blog > Archives > 2006 > November > 29 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USDefense rules the day
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In keeping with the bizarre notion of Wake Forest being in the ACC championship game, the Demon Deacons run a bizarre offense. They don’t pass much, although they pass very efficiently with redshirt freshman quarterback Riley Skinner, whose father, Chip, played baseball at Tech.
And they run the ball all weird sorts of ways. The good news is that they don’t run it like Clemson, which is to say with two blinding fast backs behind a behemoth line. The Deacs don’t have that kind of personnel. But they have some speed, and they use it in something of a non-traditional fashion.
Coach Gailey spoke about it yesterday. “The thing you have to worry about with Wake is that they’re trying to run the ball horizontally,” he said. “They are speed to the corners trying to get outside. Then when you get caught up in that is when they throw it down the field. They catch you off-guard with all that sideways stuff, then they run North and South or they split that big fullback up the middle. They’re one of the few teams in the country that get you thinking sideways, and then you have to worry about North and South. They’re unique in that respect.”
If I had to make a prediction, I’d say Tech’s defense is built to be a problem for this style, what with good to very good speed in most positions. In particular, linebackers Philip Wheeler and KaMichael Hall have serious lateral quicks. Although nobody on that defense could touch Clemson running back C.J. Spiller in a straight-line race (who can?), Wake doesn’t have any Spillers.
On to hoops. The Jackets are disjointed on defense. They’re losing track of folks on the weakside, and as Paul Hewitt said after last night’s win over Penn State, they’ve slacked defending on the ball once the ballhandler drives.
Those zones that Penn State laid on the Jackets forced them to shoot outside, and fortunately Tech shot well enough. But PSU also put Tech’s inside guys, other than Jeremis Smith (12 points, eight rebounds), to sleep. It was like Peacock and Dickey had no idea what was going on. When your centers combine to hit 1 of 4 shots, and that’s a 3-pointer, and grab a combined three rebounds (Dickey also had four turnovers in just 14 or so minutes), that’s awful.
That won’t work over the long haul, although nobody will play 39 or 40 minutes of zone like Penn State, which kind of has no choice. They don’t have the athletes to play man.
As I’ve said, the pieces are there. The assembly continues.
Comments
By coach
November 29, 2006 04:18 PM | Link to this
Wake’s offense is based on misdirection. Tech may have a problem with over pursuit. Wake is very good at taking advantage of aggresive defense. And, since their QB is completing 67% of his passes, they have the ability to retain the football and score points. Tech will have to keep the Wake offense off of the field. This is one game that will have to be won by the Tech offense.
By The Man
November 29, 2006 04:25 PM | Link to this
HEY COACH - IF THIS IS ONE GAME THAT WILL HAVE TO BE WON BY THE TECH OFFENSE, THEN THE NERDS ARE COOKED WITH REGGIE “DOG” BALL AT QB. STICK A FORK IN ‘EM.
REGGIE BALL IS A LOSER!!!
I BET CJ WISHES HE HAD DAVID GREENE, DJ SHOCKLEY, AND MATT STAFFORD THROWING TO HIM. INSTEAD HE GOT STUCK WITH REGGIE BALL HAHAHA!!!
15-12!!! HAHAHA!!!
15-12!!! HAHAHA!!!
15-12!!! HAHAHA!!!
15-12!!! HAHAHA!!!
I AM THE MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
By reality check
November 29, 2006 04:34 PM | Link to this
Defense always rules the day in football. That’s why Tech should beat Wake Forest. Tech matches up well.
Tech’s offense will be much more successful than they were against Georgia because Georgia’s defense is much better than WF’s. For emotional reasons Tech fans refuse to give any credit to Georgia’s defense. Rather than acknowledge Georgia’s obvious superiority Tech fans feel they have to take out their frustration by blaming somebody - the refs, Chan, or Reggie. Reggie certainly does his part to be a good target for blame, but he’s not as bad as Tech fans say. Look for him to have a good game and Tech to win.
By coach
November 29, 2006 05:27 PM | Link to this
Hey reality check, how many other QB’s has Georgia’s great defense held to 26% completions?
By savgt
November 29, 2006 06:21 PM | Link to this
I’d liked to see some better play calling on offense. If we can can run up the middle on UGAG’s D we should definetly be able to do it on Wf’s D. So lets run the ball and KEEP running.
By reality check
November 29, 2006 06:21 PM | Link to this
Hey, coach, don’t confuse me for a Reggie Ball fan.
Georgia played an excellent defensive game and that is one of the reasons Reggie had one of his worst performances of the year - roughly half the completion percentage he’s had the rest of the year.
It has been widely reported Georgia has the 9th best defense in the country this year statistically.
I haven’t checked the stats on the other teams Tech played this year, so tell me, coach, which ones Tech played are ranked more highly than Georgia on defense?
By toemeetsleather
November 29, 2006 07:52 PM | Link to this
REGINALD BUSH IS GOING TO HAVE A MONSTER GAME…HAVE FUN WATCHING GAMES THIS WEEKEND BULLPUPPIES…THE CHAMPIONS ARE PLAYING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!JACKETS RULE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
By toemeetsleather
November 29, 2006 07:53 PM | Link to this
OOPS…I MEANT REGINALD BALL/IS A RESEMBLANCE AS FAR AS WINNERS GO!!GO JACKETS!!
By reality check is boring
November 29, 2006 07:56 PM | Link to this
.
By Ernie McDweeb
November 29, 2006 08:17 PM | Link to this
Hey Techies, any of you NOT going to the Star Trek Convention this week? I need someone to tape the game for me. I don’t have to worry about hearing the score, because everyone else I know from my dorm will be there with me. If I don’t hear from anyone soon, I’m going to have to go across the street to Techwood wearing my white and gold camo to avoid getting sniped and find someone to help! I am so happy we have a Wendy’s there, though…anyone who says we don’t have a great college environment has never been to Wendy’s!
By Cottoneye Joe
November 29, 2006 10:34 PM | Link to this
THX REGGIE. My windshield has never been so clean. Don’t spend that dollar all in one place now, ya hear?
By surfrider
November 30, 2006 12:56 AM | Link to this
Put Reggie in the slot about 50% of the time and behind center about 50% of the time. Let him catch and run more than pass. Put Bennett in the game to complete passes and move the chains. And please Nix, Gailey take other jobs and let’s promote Tenuta to Head Coach.
By What?
November 30, 2006 01:02 AM | Link to this
Chan gives P. Nix an opportunity to call plays and he makes block head remarks to you all at the AJC.
FIRE HIS A*….NOW
By Are you kidding????
November 30, 2006 01:08 AM | Link to this
FIRE PATRICK NIX
By real reality check
November 30, 2006 08:37 AM | Link to this
UGA’s defense had nothing to do with RB playing poorly. Your logic falls short about UGA’s D, they lost to Vandy and Kentucky.
UGA defeated GT because, and only because RB fumbled the football. If not for the fumble UGA is shut out in a 13-0 GT victory.
In fact, just as UGA fans cry about Jasper’s fumble in 2000, I will consider UGA’s victory very tainted by a terrible call.
Anyway, GT is moving on to win a conference championship, which really is more important that one game in Athens. I’ll take an ACC championship over a State of GA one anyday, Sonny Do can have it.
By coach
November 30, 2006 08:54 AM | Link to this
Reality check since you asked. Miami and Virginia Tech have better defenses than Georgia. Clemson is equal. But I will conceed that Georgia’s defense is better than Notre Dame.
By reality check
November 30, 2006 09:20 AM | Link to this
Coach, thanks for the info. It sounds like we can agree Virginia Tech and Miami have great defenses. In fact, seems like I heard somewhere that Virginia Tech is the top rated defense in the country. Did I hear that right?
Coach, can you tell me how many yards Tech gained against the Miami and Virginia Tech defenses? I do know Tech scored 38 points on Virginia Tech’s top rated defense and 30 points on Miami, compared with the 12 Tech scored on Georgia. I’m not sure how many yards Tech had against Georgia, but as I recall it was around 200. If you have those facts handy could you share them?
Honestly, I didn’t watch the games against Virginia Tech and Miami. Was Reggie Ball the Quarterback in those 2 games?
By GT
November 30, 2006 09:41 AM | Link to this
I see Reggie cracking up again. He plays his best when he doesn’t care what happens. He will be out to prove something this weekend and that has always been bad in the past. I think what Spurrier would do in this situation. First of all he would have a sense of humor. Nothing riles a redneck up more than someone laughing at him, but it keeps his players loose. He is also very honest in his humor, and gets a lot of points across that people, including the Reggie type, don’t want to hear. Secondly the second string quarterback always sees action during a season. It keeps the first string on his toes but it also takes pressure off the first string knowing the world in not entirely on his shoulders. Richt another great quarterback coach does the same thing, but his teams play tight sometimes too, because they are over hyped. Tech goes as Reggie goes, not too different from most teams except Reggie is well under 6 feet, has average speed, and certainly is no football genius on the field. He has a good arm but many times his small hands lose the grip and the wounded duck falls short. Add to that his street personality and it is a wonder he has been involved with 9 wins, which is sad because the rest of this team could have even done better.
By FOOTBALL
November 30, 2006 10:28 AM | Link to this
This is how Wake can beat Tech. FIRST - Play CJ rough & tight off the line every play. Run & pass situations. Double or zone him long. CJ can beat that but if they stick with him 2 or 3 seconds, r DOG b will, 1) throw out of bounds 2) start running or 3) throw into coverage. Then r DOG b stops looking for CJ. r DOG b only looks for the first receiver as if he can’t remember the second receiver & goes into panic mode. SECOND - Stop TC . Play run defense first , play run defense second. No hard pass rush until they know r DOG b has the ball. THEN - Wait for r DOG b to hand them the chances they need to win the game. Georgia did it for 4 years. Clemson did it again this year.
I hope I’m wrong.
By GT-JJ
November 30, 2006 11:02 AM | Link to this
reality check,
To kind of answer your question, RB played pretty good against VT and UM, which, for him, means aboiut 170 passing, a couple of big plays, and no “game-costing” plays (although, he did give UM a defensive TD on the FIRST PLAY of that game). Let’s look, though, at his stats against UNC: 10 of 24, 78 yds, 0 TD, 1 INT. Not quite as bad as the UGA game, but almost. And UNC was, at the time (maybe still is) statistically the worst defensive team in the ACC.
All I’m trying to point out is that GT fans aren’t trying to take away anything from UGA defense by blaming RB. UGA had a great game plan (get in RB’s head) and executed it perfectly. But, I wouldn’t say that any defense which allowed someone to run for 150 was dominant.
Fact of the matter is, GT doesn’t often win because of RB, but we do often lose because of RB. We didn’t need RB to win the game for us against UGA; we just needed him not to lose it (which, most GT and UGA fans agree, he clearly did).
BTW, almost as much of my anger goes to P Nix, who took 50 minutes of the game until he figured out he should just hand the ball to TC, but that’s another topic.
Thanks for the good posts and intelligent conversation.
By Pitbull
November 30, 2006 11:27 AM | Link to this
The great thing about this weeks ACC Conference Championship Game is that all of the people attending will be able to sit in the first 2 or 3 rows, given the expected attendance.
By GT
November 30, 2006 11:58 AM | Link to this
We should have never stopped Miami from recruiting the thugs and FSU from “free shoe university”. Real college football has no attraction to anybody except the people that went to school there. The paying public wants action. They want a fat gutted defensive lineman trash talking or a demented quarterback stomping the leg of an opponent. Cheap theater beats Shakespeare with the masses. If Iraq University fielded a team there would be a huge following, then maybe we could have one of the Jacksons do a strip at halftime or maybe they could have a public execution of Sadame, serve beer at 5 dollars a pop. The networks would eat it up only they would be saying they couldn’t stand the direction of college football to be politically correct for the record. If crowds are what you want, I promise we can make it happen and what else happens we are not responsible for.
By Wrecker
November 30, 2006 12:07 PM | Link to this
UGA fans- Congrats on last week! But we have moved on…All that matters is that Tech is playing for a Championship and a BCS bowl on Sat. You are sitting at home watching. Or, probably most of you are working as you have the weekend shift at McDonalds…
By not disappointed
November 30, 2006 01:02 PM | Link to this
Go out and win Jackets!!
By Brooks
November 30, 2006 01:26 PM | Link to this
realrealitycheck, If you watched the game you would have noticed that “Reggie” was flushed out of the pocket on a regular basis. The Dawgs D did a good job of getting in his head and making him make bad decisions and throw poor balls. As far as the Vandy and Kentucky go, if you want to point your finger put it on the offense. Unfortunatey we had alot of costly turnovers on our side of the field. Any defense working with a short field over and over is going to give up points. That’s not a fair assessment of the D as a whole. As far as the score and the fumble is concerned, you can blame it on the “Reggie” or the officials. That is too easy. An ACC crew made the call of a touchdown on the field. Replay had no indisputable evidence. Result was a 15-12 W. If you look in the record books you will notice that the Dawgs and Tech did not play in 2000. So any comments on that game are null and void. As far as the ACC title goes, you would have traded it all for a state title. Say what you want but everybody knows the truth. GO DAWGS!
By reality check
November 30, 2006 01:47 PM | Link to this
GT-JJ, thanks for the comments.
I’m hoping Tech wins the ACC championship this weekend and I believe they will.
I want them to win for a couple of reasons. One is I pull for Tech except when they play Georgia. There was a time I actually was a Tech fan instead of a Georgia fan because my father went to Tech and when I was growing up in Atlanta Bobby Dodd’s Tech teams were great. We saw some great games together back then.
Another reason is it is further validation for Georgia’s season. Our win was over a very good championship team in a rebuilding year. That is much more satisfying than a win over a poor team.
In my view Tech fans should be proud of this team, not critical. There is no shame in losing a hard fought, close game to a strong opponent and criticizing that opponent devalues the Tech team unnecessarily.
It is really curious that when someone tries to write something positive about Tech’s quarterback, coach, or team on a Tech blog the Tech fans respond in an overwhelmingly negative way. I’ll risk more negative reactions and retired engineer’s “boring” and say it anyway… Go Jackets!
By Brooks
November 30, 2006 07:30 PM | Link to this
reality check, “I pull for Tech except when they play Georgia”. What is that garbage? Real Dawg fans don’t make that statement.
By BadgerDawg
November 30, 2006 08:46 PM | Link to this
If a tree falls and all the Tech grads are playing Dungeons and Dragons, does it still make a sound?
By ACC NC
November 30, 2006 10:36 PM | Link to this
Badger Dawg- the funny jokes are on you. We’ve moved on. Your team was the better team (for the past 6 years), but we are on to more important things. BCS is something we don’t joke about. Maybe you and your mates can do stand up at the local Dairy Queen on Saturday. Us? We’ll be playing for a BCS berth and a conference title. Who’s laughing now? GT IS!!
By Wrecker
December 1, 2006 12:41 PM | Link to this
Hey Brooks- strange you say “Dawgs and Tech did not play in 2000”. I vividly remember sitting in the GA student section and watch George Godsey shred the UGA defense (passing AND running!). It was a blow out at half (24-3 if I remember correctly). And I hope you are not referring to the issue with the sanctions, that is weak.
By Wrecker
December 1, 2006 12:44 PM | Link to this
And the comments that Tech would trade beating UGA for the title game and a BCS bowl- I don’t know any Tech fan that dense. That’s simple math- not only the BCS $ but the prestige and legacy that goes with winning a conference title.