Oct. 7, 2005
Recap | Final Stats | Notes
Georgia Tech Coach Chan Gailey Post-game Quotes
NC State, October 6, 2005
On the last play, pass versus rush, what options were you weighing?
“Well, we thought that we had a good play where we could fake the run up the middle and draw people up and give Calvin a chance to win one on one. He’s obviously one of the best players on the field and you are going to give him a chance to win the ballgame. And, if it’s incomplete, which it is a majority of the time, if it’s not a touchdown, you’ve got two more downs because you’ve got time enough to do that if you throw it. If you run it and you don’t make it, then you are scrambling to get on the ball to just get one more play off and you’ve got to go to the huddle. You don’t have a lot of two-minute goal line situations set up.”
Is a loss like you had tonight any tougher than a loss that you had two weeks ago?
“A loss is a loss. In three weeks, they’ll both be in the “l” column.”
What did you see on the pass play to put NC State up in the fourth quarter?
“They hit a crease. Threw a quick slant and ran through the whole team. I’ll have to watch it on film to see exactly what happened, but the quarterback just hit a crease. It was one of those things where you think you’ve got people converging to the ball to make it an 8-10 yard pass, but it ended up splitting a crease.”
On the play of Tech’s other receivers:
“A lot of people caught balls and PJ did a good job on a screan, James caught a couple, Bilbo caught a couple, Pat had a big one on that last drive. Everybody is contributing out there. We try to throw it to a lot of different people, but we didn’t hit them all the time, but we tried in order to keep them off Calvin.
Can you put a finger on what is going on with Travis Bell?
“No. I sure can’t. I’ll be the first to admit that I can’t go coach those guys and tell them exactly what they are doing wrong. But, he’s not in synch like he was last year and that’s obvious.”
On the play of the offensive line:
“I’ll have to watch the film, but my first thoughts are that we didn’t run the ball well and actually didn’t do a lot of things well in the first half. We made some adjustments at half time and got things going pretty good. To give you a full evaluation, though, I’d have to watch the film.”
What did you say to the team after the game?
“I told them that I know they hurt, I hurt for them, but I’m not disappointed in them. Life is full of these situations and how you deal with them is important. We’ve got a game next Saturday and have got to get ready to go play. It’s part of it and that’s the season and they all count the same. I think our guys will get ready to play just like they always have.”
Was there any rust in the first half because of the off week?
“No, we just didn’t execute well.”
On the pressure they applied in the first half:
“They played a little different defense in the first half than they had been playing and they did a few things differently and it took us until halftime to make those adjustments.
On Reggie Ball’s play in the second half:
“He started to get a feel for the game and when he starts to see things and feel things he can make a lot of things happen, which he did. We had a much better vision of what they were trying to do to us in the second half and he adjusted well, I thought.”
NC STATE HEAD COACH CHUCK AMATO
On if his team was due to win a close game – “It’s about time we got one, and we almost didn’t for the same reasons, with penalties. Penalties, penalties, penalties. But you know what, nobody on that team ever gave up. Nobody on that team ever quit. Nobody thought we wouldn’t hold them and go into overtime or do something big in the end zone. And we did. I’m so happy and proud for those kids.
“You know what you can do with statistics? Ninety-one snaps they had. That might be a record. Since 1988, the first time NC State has won in Atlanta against Georgia Tech, an outstanding Georgia Tech team. And the sad part is, in the third quarter, we take the opening kickoff and almost break it, then we punt it and give it to them on the three-yard line, and they take it 97 yards. How many big plays did they make, and how many did we not make? And it went on and on and on.”
On whether Tech’s late timeout might have been a break for NC State – “We took our last one because our kids were dead. I wanted to hold one in case we wanted to ice the kicker. But we wanted to get our kids some air so they could go harder than they did the play before. They were tired. When they got down there, they probably had to do that (take a timeout) to get things in order. So what are we going to do. They’re going to take three shots in the end zone, and who’s it going to be? So we practiced that defense, and we got the tip, and this time we made the miraculous catch in the end zone.”
On the contact Marcus Hudson made on Calvin Johnson on the end zone interception, jarring the ball loose – “No doubt, no doubt. Those corners played their fannies off against the best wide receiver in the country.”
On the two TD receptions by Brian Clark – “We put so much stock in our seniors for leadership like everybody else does. They were two big plays. The first one, you could have caught. The second one, you couldn’t have. They would have caught you. That was really big.
“We won it. We go back to the drawing board, and nothing is going to be easy.”
“It’s not fun to lose, but I guess it is a part of football.”
“We had some mistakes and two big plays in the game killed us right there. That’s all it took. The ball didn’t bounce our way again, and that’s going to happen. We just have to come back next week and fight a little harder.”
“We get up and we talk about how we are going to stay together. Our motto this year is “family.” Family wins together and family loses together. So we’ve got to rally around each other, pick each other up and keep moving on. We’ve got a lot of games left, the season isn’t over yet.”
“We just go out and work hard every week in practice. We have to come back next week against Duke and play a stronger game.”
“It’s definitely different. It hurts a lot worse. In a game like last week, there really wasn’t anything we could do about it and this week it came down to the wire. They made a big play at the end, but we are going to bounce back and play hard against Duke next week.”
“I think that we came out and showed a lot of poise and a lot of dedication to come out and make that last-minute drive at the end of the game to put us in a great position to win the game. Unfortunately for us, they made an interception and they won the game, but our offense showed a lot of poise. A lot of growing up happened in this game so we’re going to be back next week and be ready.
“We were in a cover-three. They made a good slant call. Dawan tried to jump outside to make the pick, and unfortunately he went to the inside and made the catch and we didn’t tackle. We didn’t tackle too well the entire game, and that’s another phase of our game that we have to get better at.”
