Oct. 7, 2014
Opening Statement
“I was proud of our guys on Saturday night. I thought we had a great crowd and it was a great college atmosphere. It was a great football game. Our guys played hard. Then we talked about it and cleaned up the game on Monday and now we move on to Duke. So everything moving forward has to do with Duke. It’s another division game, a coastal division game. They’re coming in 4-1, giving up 13 points per game defensively and scoring 36 points on offense. It’ll be a challenge for us on Saturday. I am sure we are going to get their best shot.”
Giving up three points over last three quarters against Miami
“I think it’s a combination. We got the big turnover there at the end, but they only had the ball four times in the last three quarters; so that helped. But it was a combination of both. Defensively we kind of bended, well not kind of, we did bend a lot, but when we got down in the red zone we made a couple of plays. The bottom line is the score. So if you can keep them from scoring touchdowns, you’ve got a good chance to win.”
Georgia Tech’s identity
“I’d say they’re resilient. Nothing much seems to affect them. We get behind and nothing changes. They don’t panic. They just kind of keep playing, and that’s a good trait to have. We’d like to get to a point where we don’t get behind. Like I said before, I think the chemistry is good and I think they like each other. I think they like what we do and they enjoy doing it. They’re having fun with it. When you do that, you can get better at it and I think they’ve gotten better each week.”
Comfort level with Justin Thomas
“I think that I’m getting more and more comfortable with him in the option. I think he’s getting better and better each week. I was pretty confident in him to run the thing on fourth and two. I was pretty sure he could pull it off. I think he’s made some plays at the end of games, so you give him some leeway.”
Winning as validation for the Yellow Jackets’ hard work
“I think they’ve worked hard all year. I’ve had to get on these guys very seldom in practice. And I’ve gotten on them a couple of days like all teams, but very seldom. They usually come to work. They do what they need to do in practice. The neat thing is that they realize they can get better. They can watch the tape and see that ‘I can be way better at this’ or ‘I’ve got to get better at this’ or ‘You know if we just did this a little bit better, think about how much better it would be for the team or individually.’ When you’ve got guys like that, they’re fun to coach and they’re fun to help. As opposed to guys who are ‘Well it’s not my fault because…’ or ‘they know that this is coming or they knew…’ These guys have been pretty good that way.”
Understanding Duke better after the Miami game
“I think that you have to play them. I know Duke doesn’t beat themselves. They’ve got a lot of veteran guys. It’ll be a tough, hard fought game unless you can just totally out-athlete them. They usually don’t beat themselves; it’s a dogfight. I think if we play well we’ll be okay and if we don’t’ play well we’ll lose. That’s kind of who we are. No matter who we play we are kind of like that. They had a great year last year and they got off to a great start this year. We’ll see how it unfolds.”
Zach Laskey’s skillset as a B-back
“His freshman year he was a punt returner because he could catch the ball and we didn’t have many guys who could catch punts. We recruited Zach to be a B-back. That’s what we was recruited for coming out of high school. Tough guy, team-player and great attitude. I couldn’t say enough good things about him. Zach will be successful at whatever he does. He’s got that work ethic about him. He’s got a great personality. I think people like him, kids like him. And he’s tough. He may not be the quickest guy or the fastest guy, but he’s quick enough and fast enough to be a good player. And he’s got toughness. He had a great spring practice. I thought he was going to have a good season and Saturday night was his best game to date. There’s still seven games to go and I think he could have a good year. I think he could be a good player. ”
Jamal Golden, Isaiah Johnson and Demond Smith’s performances against Miami
“I thought they played their best game Saturday. Overall the tackling was better. We made some mistakes, but it looked like they played their best game. That’s encouraging because we need those guys to be good. Both Isaiah and Jamal came up with big interceptions and that certainly helped. It was good to see them play their best game. I think they did on Saturday; they played better.”
Team chemistry
“Sure it has a lot to do with it. I don’t know that we’ve had teams that didn’t like each other. But if you walk down to practice every day they always have something going. Yesterday they were killing Justin [Thomas]. They’ve always got something going on. They can laugh at each other and have fun and do things. I think that’s important for any team. Chemistry has a lot to do with it.”
