MIAMI — Clearly distraught, freshman Zach Laskey slumped on the bench and stared at the turf as if he were trying to scorch a hole in the earth and crawl in.
Several Georgia Tech teammates, including lineman Will Jackson and receiver Jeff Greene, tapped him on the helmet or patted him on the pads, trying to console him. In his misery, Laskey must have certainly appreciated — but did not acknowledge — the efforts to lift dashed spirits.
Though Tech had played the first 20 minutes Saturday as if hell-bent on getting blown out, the Yellow Jackets trailed only 7-0 when Miami’s Dalton Botts sent a pooch punt Laskey’s way from the Yellow Jackets’ 42-yard line.
Suddenly, it was 14-0 ... a critical misstep on the path to 24-7 defeat.
Laskey watched the ball bounce, moved to grasp it in traffic congestion at his own 9-yard line and had it jarred from his hands. The fumble rolled toward the end zone, and Miami’s JoJo Nicolas allowed it to scoot across the goal line before dropping on it for the score.
“Sometimes you’ve got to be smart,” sophomore safety Jemea Thomas said matter-of-factly, unjudgmentally. “In situations like that, you’ve got to just get away from it, because no good will come from trying to get on it. ... It was bouncing to him, and I guess he thought he could scoop it up.”
Laskey’s gaffe did not alone doom Tech to its 24-7 loss, the second consecutive after it won its first six. The gaffe was one of many on special teams that were anything but special.
Coach Paul Johnson, in fact, best summarized an afternoon of frustration by noting, “We can’t overcome the special-teams [play] we had today.”
There was the fake punt that failed midway through the first quarter when Thomas was corralled inches short of a first down on a fourth-and-3 snap from Tech’s 38. There was a 13-yard punt shanked by the same guy (Sean Poole) who had previously thundered a 52-yarder.
There were kickoff returns from the Tech end zone that left quarterback Tevin Washington with field position at his 8-yard line in the second quarter and his 14 in the fourth.
But almost as damaging as the Miami touchdown off Laskey’s miscue was a 48-yard kickoff return by the Hurricanes’ Travis Benjamin after Tech’s lone sustained drive carved its deficit to 14-7 with only 74 seconds left in the first half.
“Even with all the things that had happened,” Johnson said, “if you get [into the locker room] at 14-7 and you get the ball first in the second half, you’ve got a chance.”
But the Hurricanes turned Benjamin’s return of what looked like a squib kick — but wasn’t supposed to be — into a lightning-like, three-play, 46-yard drive culminating in Lamar Miller’s 14-yard scoring burst up the middle untouched.
Johnson said the special-teams play was a reflection on him and said “something we’re doing ain’t right.”
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