North Carolina's Mack Brown on Georgia Tech's upset win over Miami: "Give Georgia Tech credit, give Brent Key credit"

Georgia Tech defeated Miami in stunning fashion last Saturday

Jackson Caudell | Oct 12, 2023

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Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets

Georgia Tech is in the midst of their bye week and does not have an opponent on the schedule, but the opponent that they played last weekend is getting ready for a big game on their schedule.

The Yellow Jackets stunned Miami in one of the craziest finishes in college football history and now the Hurricanes have to go on the road to face an undefeated North Carolina team in a crucial ACC matchup. North Carolina head coach Mack Brown is familiar with being part of a big upset against Georgia Tech and in the leadup to the game on Saturday, Brown talked about his reaction to the final sequence in Georgia Tech's win over Miami:

“It’s a really interesting question because you’re sitting there saying do I want them to win or lose, what’s best for us?” Brown asked. “And I don’t know, and it really doesn’t matter, because if they won they were going to come play hard and if they lost they were going to come play hard.

“What I thought is Georgia Tech’s pretty good, so that’s something we can use in four weeks. And the other thing, it’s the mind games of sports and life, but you’re sitting there looking at it, nobody thought Georgia Tech could win. About the time you think something can’t happen it does, I thought that was us against Georgia Tech last year.

“So give Brent Key credit, give Georgia Tech credit, quarterback’s better, they’re running the ball good, they got a great young wide receiver. The quarterback made plays to win the game at the end. So that’s what I got out of it, is that we’ve won two of the last 12 in Atlanta and they got a good team."

North Carolina head coach Mack Brown — Mack Brown discussed Georgia Tech's upset win over Miami / Scott Taetsch-USA TODAY Sports

While that game has been over for five days, it has still generated a lot of conversation around the college football world.

Most of the attention that has gone towards Georgia Tech's upset win over Miami has been about the decision by Hurricanes head coach Mario Cristobal to not kneel the ball down with the game clock under 40 seconds and the Yellow Jackets without any timeouts. Miami opted to try and run the football and running back Don Chaney Jr fumbled the ball, the Yellow Jackets recovered and then drove the ball and scored with one second remaining.

There has been a lot of debate about whether Chaney actually fumbled the ball or his elbow was down before the ball was out, but today, ACC supervisor of officials Alberto Riveron told ESPN that the right call was made at the end of the game.

"We made the right call on the field based on the angles that were afforded to us," Riveron said. "The process and the protocol was followed."

Brown has been one of the few people to give Georgia Tech more credit for going out and winning the game. Earlier this week, Georgia Tech head coach Brent Key talked about that and how the focus has been all about Miami:

"Another thing is, I got home and was getting ready to watch the game last night and someone on the TV last night was talking about our game and I told the team that there is this thing about talking about the decisions that were made on their sides of the ball that impacted the game and I told the team and the staff that it was you guys on the field and chose to play that down as hard as you could, you chose to play that down as hard as you could. If you listen to the noise, if you looked at the scoreboard, if you saw the timeouts that we did not have, if you saw the time on the clock, if one person on the defense plays at 90% or 95% on that last play, then we don't get the outcome that we like. We turned it around to go 75 yards in 26 seconds, to go that length of the field... If one person did not play the way that they can, if they had not played hard and played with everything that they have, if they had payed attention to what the clock said or the scoreboard said, then we would not have had that outcome. That is the way that I look at it. Our guys were the ones on the field and chose to play the way you're supposed to play. We challenged them to play 60 minutes and we had to wash a stigma off of us on this football team and we went out and did that."

Georgia Tech returns to action next Saturday against Boston College at home (12:00 p.m. ACC network).

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