Georgia Tech takes undefeated record on the road against Duke

Georgia Tech’s undefeated season rolls right along through the middle of October.

Third-year coach Brent Key on Monday, however, continued to insist no one inside his locker room is satisfied.

“The biggest thing we have to do is continue to improve during the week, continue to close that margin and that gap between practice and games, elevate the way we do things,” Key said on SiriusXM on Monday. “(I) met with the team (Sunday) night and told ‘em, ‘Everything we’ve done, we gotta do better. We gotta do more.’

“The cool thing about this football team is, we win by three scores on Saturday, but again, everyone sees more. They see more meat on the bone, they know there’s more we can do and there’s better we can play. When you have a hungry team like that, and a hungry coaching staff that’s looking to improve every day, it’s a very uncommon thing. Very uncommon for guys to crave the work and crave the preparation and the training.”

Off to its best start since 2011, the Jackets beat Virginia Tech 35-20 on Saturday at Bobby Dodd Stadium. That victory was their ninth consecutive triumph at home and fifth consecutive over an ACC opponent.

In 17 ACC wins under Key, however, it was only the fourth time Tech has won by double digits. The Jackets had leads of 18-0 and 28-14 while piling up 481 yards of offense, with 268 of that total coming on the ground.

There was no need for late-game heroics after winning the first two conference games of the season by a total of four points. But the Jackets could be in for another down-to-the-wire finish Saturday at Duke.

“We’ve talked about that for a few week’s now, we’re gonna get everybody’s best,” Key said Monday on 680 The Fan. “True competitors want everybody’s best. True competitors don’t wanna go out on the field and play a lower-rate team that’s not playing hard or has nothing to play (for).

“You want everybody’s best shot every week when you’re a competitor. That’s how you truly prove how good you are. We know that, and we understand that. We talk about protecting what we’ve done.”

For the second time this season, Tech will face an ACC opponent coming off a bye week in a road game scheduled for a noon kickoff. In the first such instance, Wake Forest threw enough new curveballs and wrinkles at the Jackets on Sept. 27 to cause all sorts of fits and nearly spring an upset.

Duke last played Oct. 4 at California and won 45-21. The Blue Devils are on a three-game win streak, scoring 42.7 points per game during that stretch and outscoring their opponents by an average of 23.7 points in those three victories.

Quarterback Darian Mensah, a California native who played his freshman season at Tulane, is completing 69.8% of his passes and has thrown for 1,838 yards and 15 touchdowns. He is complemented by running backs Nate Sheppard (447 yards, four touchdowns) and Anderson Castle (263 yards, six touchdowns) and has two wide receivers — Cooper Barkate and Que’Sean Brown — with at least 400 yards receiving.