The Duke Blue Devils fell to Georgia Tech 38-35 on Saturday after erasing a 21-point halftime deficit.
Although Duke scored four straight touchdowns in the second half, the Blue Devils’ scoring surge wasn’t enough to overcome two failed fourth-down conversions and two turnovers from the first half.
“It’s very rare that you start a game the way we did and the outcome ends up being what you want,” Cutcliffe said. “You have 344 yards of offense at halftime and 7 points to show for it. That’s really a pretty bad picture you’re painting.”
The Yellow Jackets (5-3 overall, 2-3 ACC) allowed an average 355.1 total yards per game entering Saturday’s game. The Blue Devils finished Saturday’s conference game with 559 total yards.
“We were moving the ball the whole game, but it was just a matter of converting some of those bigger plays,” Jones said. “I don’t think we struggled (in the first half). I think we didn’t make some of those big plays and that was just lack of execution in certain instances and we can’t afford to do that.”
Jones threw 22-for-36 for 305 yards and two touchdowns. Just over half of Jones’ passing yards and one touchdown occurred in the first half.
The Yellow Jackets allowed the Blue Devils 344 offensive yards and one touchdown in the first half and 215 yards and four touchdowns in the second half.
Tech safety Corey Griffin said the Blue Devils scored 28 straight points because Tech’s defense failed to respond to the change of pace early enough.
“When they started speeding up, it was kind of hard to get the plays communicated across the board because when they did certain things, we had to communicate throughout the defense and we did not do that, nor did we get lined up or execute the defense,” Tech safety Corey Griffin said.
Tech’s possessions during Duke’s scoring surge were two fumbles, a field goal, a turnover on downs and their last touchdown of the game, which regained the lead.
At halftime, Duke coaches adjusted some matchups and encouraged players to stay on their assignments to limit any more big plays by quarterback Justin Thomas who threw for 264 yards and two touchdowns and rushed for 195 yards and two touchdowns against the Blue Devils.
Most importantly at the half, Cutcliffe let his team know he believed they could finish the game.
“We went step-by-step with what we had to do as a team to put ourselves back in the game,” Cutcliffe said. “I told them, ‘There are a lot of people that will run from these situations.’ There’s a lot of people. At the worst of times, that’s when people jump off bandwagons, we’ve all heard that term. Not this group of young men. It was really impressive to see the battle wage forward and everyone took part. Third-quarter kicking, offense, defense. Some really good things that occurred and we just couldn’t finish.”
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