Jackets to host Deacons after another tough loss
ATLANTA — Georgia Tech needs to have a short memory. Again. The Yellow Jackets are coming off another heartbreaking defeat, becoming the first Atlantic Coast Conference team since 2006 to lose a pair of one-point games in a season. This time, it was a 25-24 setback at No. 8 Miami, which rallied from an 11-point deficit in the second half to kick the winning field goal with 4 seconds remaining. Georgia Tech (3-2, 2-1 ACC) knows it can’t afford to be agonizing over the last game when it hosts Wake Forest today.
“You sit on it for a day, then you’ve got to flush it like any other win and any other loss,” defensive tackle Desmond Branch said. “You can’t let the last week’s opponent be the next week’s opponent. We’re not going to let Miami beat us twice.”
The Yellow Jackets already went through this once before. In the season opener, they thoroughly dominated Tennessee and had a two-touchdown lead in the fourth quarter. The Vols rallied to tie the game, blocked a field goal on the last play of regulation and won 4241 in double overtime.
Georgia Tech bounced back to win its next three games by a combined score of 105-34.
Coach Paul Johnson stressed to his players that they can still reach all their goals, though they’ll need a little help after losing to divisional foe Miami.
“You hope that it hurts, but you’ve got to learn to put it behind you and move on,” Johnson said. “You can’t go back and change it. You’ve just got to talk about why it happened and why you were in that position and all the opportunities you had that we shouldn’t have been in that position.”
Wake Forest (4-2, 1-2) is coming off a bye week, which gave the Demon Deacons a chance to do some extra work preparing for Georgia Tech’s tripleoption offense.
“The triple option brings a lot of new challenges,” linebacker Grant Dawson said. “We pretty much run a whole different defense than we do the rest of the year. This bye week we’ve had has helped us prepare for this challenge we’re facing, but we’re still going to have to come out on Saturday focused on every single play and play hard. That’s the biggest thing. We have to play hard and tackle well.”