If you watched Georgia Tech's nationally-televised game at Duke Wednesday night, you might think that it didn't look good when guard Matt Causey whacked his head on the floor and sustained a mild concussion. And you might think it looked worse when he re-entered the game even after his eyes fluttered at one point as he sat on the bench.

Coach Paul Hewitt agreed Thursday, saying that had he seen it, he wouldn't have let Causey play even though he had been cleared to return. He even called Causey's mother Thursday to apologize for playing her son.

"That looked pretty scary," Hewitt said of two sequences shown on ESPN, the other which happened during a break in action while he was on the court. "It wasn't until I got on the plane and reviewed the game that I saw that."

Causey hit the back of his head on the final play of the first half, after he and Duke guard Greg Paulus collided. He remained on the floor for a couple minutes as he was tended by Tech trainer Richard Stewart, Hewitt and others.

Causey participated Thursday in practice, which was little more than a walk-thru. He said he fluttered his eyes on purpose, and that it was not an involuntary effect from his concussion.

"I got some weird eye movements anyway," he said with a grin Thursday afternoon. "I was just trying to get my perception, my vision, back."

Causey's concussion was erroneously reported as grade two by some media outlets, including The Journal-Constitution, but Stewart said it was not, and that Causey did not lose consciousness.

Citing federal privacy laws, Stewart declined to answer specific questions about Causey but he did issue a statement:

"[Causey] was evaluated by our medical staff. He did sustain a mild concussion, and those symptoms resolved themselves within a short period of time."

When Hewitt first tried to play Causey in the second half, the player was quickly called back from the scorer's table.

"Richard and I mis-communicated on that one," Hewitt said. "He wanted to test Matt some more. The cognitive [tests], he did at halftime, and then the physical stuff needed to wait about 20 minutes [after Causey hit his head] so what Richard wanted to do when you saw him jogging on the sidelines was some tests."

Causey soon re-entered, playing eight of his 21 minutes after halftime and the tests. "There's a lot of different tests, a balance test, and they asked questions and compare them to questions they asked before the season," Causey said. "I passed, and I told them all the time that I was OK to go back in."

Hewitt said he was unhappy with comments made by ESPN announcer Mike Patrick, who seemed to suggest during the game that Tech should not have played Causey in the second half.

"I think we run a pretty responsible outfit here, and we're not going to put him on the court unless our medical staff says its OK," Hewitt said.