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Home > ajcsportstalk > Archives > 2006 > December > 02
Saturday, December 2, 2006
Tech’s ‘D’ stands offended
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jacksonville — The breakthrough season wound up broken. It came apart in the bleakest of games in the bleakest of settings, came apart so completely that the better part of Georgia Tech’s team didn’t disguise its disgust for the other half.
“I don’t forget anything,” said defensive tackle Joe Anoai. “Someday I’ll look back on this, and … it’s a lack of offensive production. The defense can’t do everything.”
With the ACC championship there for the taking, Tech didn’t score a touchdown. It saw a team of lesser gifts pull even and then ahead in the final 8-1/2 minutes. It saw the best season of Chan Gailey’s stewardship disintegrate over consecutive Saturdays — two massive games, two dispiriting losses.
Anoai again: “It’s pretty difficult to come down here and do what we did today.”
As happened against Georgia, Tech took a fourth-quarter lead and spat it back. As happened in Athens, Tech spent the first three quarters looking like the stronger team but never quite proving it.
The stout-hearted defense that yielded one scoring drive in Athens was touched for two field goals in the final period here, and those six measly points carried a gray and drizzly day that should have belonged to the Jackets.
Tech whiffed on three fourth-down tries inside the Wake Forest 33, Reggie Ball delivering an interception on the first and throwing to the wrong receiver on the third. On the other he was stuffed on a quarterback sneak. These failures kept the Deacons in the game at a time when Tech had established a physical superiority. Then again, the physical part isn’t what derailed this team.
The mental part did. Put simply, Jim Grobe outcoached Gailey. Grobe took the lesser side and won a championship with it. Gailey and coordinator Patrick Nix took an offense with the ACC’s best player (Calvin Johnson) and its leading rusher (Tashard Choice) and managed two crummy field goals. And then, with just over two minutes remaining and Tech facing fourth-and-13 after Ball scrambled out of bounds, Gailey chose to punt. The Jackets never touched the ball again.
“We didn’t get ready to play,” Gailey said, “and that’s my responsibility.”
Ball was better than he’d been against Georgia — he couldn’t have been worse — but completed only 9 of 29 passes and threw two more interceptions. The second changed the game. Leading 6-3 with 12:15 remaining and with Wake having bled out one second-half first down without benefit of penalty, the Jackets took possession at their 17. Run Choice and burn the clock, right? Uh, no.
Ball threw long for Johnson on first down. (It marked the seventh time on 11 second-half first-and-10s the Jackets had deigned to throw.) Johnson could have caught the ball but deflected it to Wake’s Riley Swanson instead. Wake took the turnover and drove to the tying field goal and soon to another.
Two Deacon catches — a third-down reception by backup tight end John Tereshinski, whose brother Joe caught a touchdown pass for Georgia on this field last season, and a deep ball to Willie Idlette between defenders Djay Jones and Jahi Word-Daniels — energized the drives. The Deacons, however, should never have been in position to win. Tech should have run Choice 31 times, not 21, and killed the game off. Tech should have played to its strength (Choice pounding), not its weakness (Ball flinging).
“It’s hard to go out there and give everything you have,” said linebacker KaMichael Hall, “and the last second runs off the clock and then you lose.”
Tech was talented enough to have beaten Georgia, to have beaten Wake, to be nuzzling up to the Top 10 as opposed to falling from the Top 25. As much as these Jackets did, they left too much undone. And they knew it.
“I don’t think it’s a breakthrough season,” said Hall, an icepack on his damaged ribs. “It’s not a breakthrough season if you can’t finish. We didn’t win a rivalry game and we didn’t win the ACC championship. It got away from us.”
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Jackets fall in ACC final
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wake Forest’s offense was miserable, but so was Georgia Tech’s in a defensive-minded ACC title game the Demon Deacons claimed by a 9-6 score. A late field goal by Scott Swank was the winning margin with all the scoring coming from the PK position.
Reggie Ball once again struggled mightily, but his receivers didn’t help him either and Tashard Choice, while going over 100 yards, was bottled up at key times by Wake’s sturdy defense.
The loss was the second in a row for Tech, coming off last week’s setback to Georgia, and the Jackets await their bowl fate. Will it be another trip to Jacksonville for a Gator Bowl that doesn’t want them?
How dispirited are you that an offensively talented team couldn’t make big plays when it needed? Tech is 9-4, but missed out on a BCS spot. Can you get excited about a lesser bowl — probably not the Chick-fil-A, which is expected to invite UGA and Virginia Tech on Sunday?
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