In its come-from-behind win over Duke on Saturday, Georgia Tech’s chance at winning was as low as 9% before the Yellow Jackets pulled out the win with quarterback Jeff Sims’ 36-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Adonicas Sanders with 51 seconds remaining in the game, according to ESPN’s win probability calculations.
Credit: ACC
Tech’s probability to win rose as high as 88.8% after Sims’ scored on a 1-yard run to put the Jackets up 14-0 in the first quarter and continued to hover well over 50% for most of the game. However, it began to drop after Duke tied the score at 24-24 with 12:33 left in the fourth quarter and then when the Blue Devils took a 27-24 lead with 5:06 left on Charlie Ham’s 22-yard field goal.
It fell to 9% as Duke tried to run the clock out and, with 2:07 left, a second-and-15 play went for no gain and Tech used its second of three timeouts to preserve time on the clock.
After Tech got the ball back with 1:42 remaining on its own 12-yard line, the Jackets’ chances jumped to 32.3% after Sims’ first completion to Sanders, a 37-yarder. Sims’ incomplete pass to Malachi Carter on second-and-6 from the Duke 6 dropped the probability back down to 27.3%.
But after Sims’ touchdown pass, Tech’s chances flipped to 95.9%, a jump of more than 65 percentage points.
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