Oct. 2, 2010
Recap | Box Score | Notes | Photo Gallery
Georgia Tech Head Coach Paul Johnson
Opening statement…
“Wow. The best thing I can say is that our guys competed right until the end. The kept fighting and fighting. We didn’t look good for a long time. The execution wasn’t very good and crisp on offense, but we just hung in there and found a way to win. They had a nice drive to get down there in field goal range. We got them stopped and give our quarterback credit, he made some plays and kept the thing alive. You have to be proud of the way that they fought and competed, but Lord knows we have a lot of work to do.”
On the Wake Forest defense stopping the Georgia Tech running game…
“We never got anything consistent out of the running game. If we single-blocked the nose tackle, he made every tackle, and if we doubled him, the linebacker made it. You just had to pick which one you want.”
On the winning touchdown play…
“It was just a slant route. It was single coverage back there. Actually, Coach Preston up in the box had seen it before and felt like it would be a good call. It was a quick pass, so I thought we could get it off so that if it was incomplete we would be able to kick the field goal.”
On Scott Blair making three field goals…
“He made some big field goals. He went out was as solid as could be. I don’t know about that kickoff there at the end (that went out of bounds). The last two kickoffs weren’t very good, but the field goals were great.”
On whether he was satisfied with the defense…
“I thought we played well. We got some stops. Even when they got the ball down there, most of the time they had to kick field goals. At the end of the game there, they had to choose whether or not to kick the field goal.”
Wake Forest Head Coach Jim Grobe
On what happened late in the game…
“I think Georgia Tech did some good things. I don’t think there’s any question about that. I thought their kids played really, really well. I thought we had some missed assignments in the fourth quarter that turned into good plays for them. For four quarters, I think overall we played pretty good. We just didn’t make plays in the fourth quarter when we needed to.”
On not taking advantage of scoring opportunities in the game…
“I think we had opportunities during the game. We had pretty good field position more than one time that we didn’t do anything with and came away with no points. You can’t squander opportunities. You get late in the game and you realize that you missed some opportunities earlier and everything has to be perfect down the stretch.”
On the play of Skylar Jones…
“I thought Sky did some good things. I’m disappointed we had three quarterbacks get hurt tonight. Ted (Stachitas) got hurt early, then Brendan Cross got hurt and then Sky hurt his foot down on the goal line. We were having to work on him just to get him back out on the field. I don’t know what it’s going to take to find someone that’s durable enough to make it through a football game. We went through three of them tonight. It’s hard to go through a week giving a third of the reps to each quarterback hoping that one of them will come through and stay healthy. I thought Sky did some really good things tonight. I thought he threw the ball well at times. Obviously, he doesn’t have a lot of experience so he makes mistakes, but I was pleased with Sky. Hopefully, he can improve.”
On Georgia Tech completing 11 passes in the game…
“It’s disappointing. The thing that would have been disappointing is if they would have gone down the field to kick a field goal to tie, but to go the entire length of the field to win it is more disappointing. You have to give credit to them. I thought Josh Nesbitt did a really nice job. He had a couple of really good runs late and he hit some throws that were really nice. They did what they needed to do. I’m very disappointed that we weren’t able to keep them bottled up a little bit better in the throw game. I thought they did some good things.”
On using the I-formation more in tonight’s game…
“I thought going under center was going to be good for our quarterbacks. I thought we needed to take some pressure off them. With Tanner down, we didn’t know who would be at quarterback so we gave reps to all three of them during the week. We felt one way we could take pressure off those guys is to go under center. We did some good things out of the I. That probably needs to be us a little bit more in the gun and under center some.”
