“I was disappointed in the way we played. We aren’t good enough to lose the turnover battle 3-0 against anybody and win the game. Couple that with penalties, especially in the first half, that kept drives alive for them. And in the red zone where they scored touchdowns and we kicked field goals … there’s the game. Hopefully you can learn from it and move on, but I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t disappointed.”
— Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson
“We’ve been pretty good not missing our turn on offense and keeping the pressure on the other side. Sooner or later, that’s what’s going to happen. You’re not going to score every time. But we got beat today offensively, too. We didn’t play well enough on offense to win the game either.”
— Johnson
“We aren’t good enough to turn the ball over and have penalties and let people out there. We’ve got to play clean games. That’s the way we’ve got to play. We can’t roll our helmet out and beat anybody. It’s not going to happen.”
— Johnson on mistakes
“This game didn’t go a whole lot different from the other ones we’ve played, except we had three turnovers and they didn’t.”
— Johnson on comparing this to past games
“You could tell we came out flat in the second half. When you are playing a team like Duke and not scoring in the red zone, you can’t spot them any turnovers and penalties. Three turnovers in the second half is atrocious.
“We need to flush it out of the system and get ready for North Carolina next week.”
B-back Zach Laskey
“We couldn’t stop them today, really anything we couldn’t stop them.”
— Defensive tackle Adam Gotsis
“Of course you want to go 6-0. We didn’t really come out here and play a good game on offense. We couldn’t get anything going. At the same time, we still look at the (scoreboard) and some of those things are still alive. So we have to flush this game down the toilet and look to next week.”
— A-back Tony Zenon
“For a split second I thought I was open, but the safety made a good play on the ball.”
— Zenon on the interception near the goal line
“Guys were peeking into the wrong gaps, and they were finding the open gaps. Duke isn’t going to beat itself. With us peeking into the wrong gaps they were able to bust some long runs on us.”
— Linebacker Quayshawn Nealy
“It felt good, no question. You say you don’t think about it, but you do if you’re honest. It’s a difficult challenge, and the reason it’s difficult to beat them is that they don’t beat themselves. They do what they do very well. Today we were able to create three turnovers, which was significant in the ballgame.”
— Duke coach David Cutcliffe on breaking the losing streak
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