In the first meeting between the two teams, Saturday’s Georgia Tech-Georgia Southern affair started out looking as though it would produce a fitting result — Tech coach Paul Johnson leading his team to a waxing of his former team, Georgia Southern.
It ended quite differently, as the sleepwalking Yellow Jackets nearly lost in a most discouraging manner. In the final minutes, quarterback Justin Thomas and the Tech offense saved the afternoon, pulling out the win with a 13-yard touchdown pass from Thomas to A-back Deon Hill with 23 seconds remaining. Tech absconded with a 42-38 win over the Eagles before a near-sellout at Bobby Dodd Stadium.
“Right now, it’s kind of a bittersweet feeling,” B-back Zach Laskey said. “We won the game, but in some ways, I almost feel like we lost.”
Had Tech lost, it would have set a school record for the largest lead ever given up in a loss, surpassing the 20-point advantages the Jackets gave up in losses to Georgia in 1978 and the gut-punch double-overtime defeat last season. Instead, the Jackets head into ACC play, starting with next weekend’s game at Virginia Tech, 3-0 and well aware of its shortcomings.
“You’ve got to play a full game,” safety Jamal Golden said. “You can’t play a half. You’ve got to play 60 minutes. If you only play 30 minutes, then the other 30 minutes can bite you, and then you’ll be 3-1 instead of 4-0.”
Tech’s first-half storming of the Eagles was practically a distant memory by game’s end. Intent on improving on slow starts from the first two games, when they allowed Wofford and Tulane to take first-half leads before recovering, the Jackets opened the game with a 63-yard run by A-back Charles Perkins (the same against-the-grain counter that Orwin Smith hit against Kansas in 2011 for a school-record 95-yard touchdown run on that game’s first play) and scarcely slowed until halftime.
Tech scored touchdowns on its first five possessions and by halftime had compiled 385 yards of offense on 47 plays. The Jackets defense gave up another long score, as they had done in the first two games, this time a 69-yard touchdown run to Georgia Southern running back Matt Breida, but besides that was giving up just 3.1 yards per play.
And then Tech flipped the switch, expecting to be able to cruise on a 35-10 halftime lead.
“We weren’t focused second half,” linebacker Quayshawn Nealy said. “They came out ready to go; we came out slacking. And it showed.”
On defense, tackling was woeful and assignments weren’t carried out. In their first year as an FBS team, the Eagles ripped through the Jackets, reaching the end zone on four consecutive possessions to take a 38-35 lead with 10:46 to play. A young Tech team was learning a painful lesson.
Georgia Southern (1-2) was driving midway through the fourth quarter to try to push the lead to two scores. One third down was converted in which Breida took a swing pass on third-and-9 and ran through four would-be tacklers for a first down. On a first-and-10 play from the Tech 24, though, quarterback Favian Upshaw tried to pitch to Breida, but Golden batted the ball down. On the field, it was ruled a forward pass and an incomplete pass.
Through his headset, Johnson was told by assistants upstairs that it was a lateral and to challenge the call. Officials decided to review it on their own.
Nealy: “I was a little nervous, a little skeptical.”
Defensive end KeShun Freeman, who pounced on the ball: “I was just, like, praying in my mind, like, God, just let the referee see the same thing we saw.”
The play was ruled a fumble and a turnover.
“I thought it was a forward pass,” Georgia Southern coach Willie Fritz said, “but they’ve got all the replay technology. Hopefully they got it right.”
Tech was now on its 28-yard line with 4:12 to go, down three points. The Jackets had not moved the ball more than 27 yards in their previous five possessions.
Huddling and playing methodically, Tech ran on eight of its first nine plays, reaching the Georgia Southern 13. On play No. 10, Thomas threw incomplete. On play No. 11, Thomas spun away from linebacker Edwin Jackson, who came free on a blitz in the middle of the line, and then found Hill dragging across the middle. Thomas called it the “334 connection,” referring to the Alabama area code both players share. Hill ran a similar crossing route for another clutch touchdown reception late against Virginia Tech in 2012 from another Tech quarterback from Alabama, Tevin Washington.
Crisis averted.
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