Following a thrilling late-night win in Colorado on Friday to open the season and an early Saturday morning arrival back in Atlanta, Georgia Tech head coach Brent Key didn’t waste an opportunity to get on ACC Network to discuss his team Saturday.
Key joined the ACC Huddle pregame show hosted by Taylor Tannebaum alongside Eddie Royal, Eric Mac Lain and former head coach Jimbo Fisher to discuss the Jackets’ 27-20 victory in Boulder and what it meant for the team to open the season in that fashion.
Here’s what the “Tech Man” leading his alma mater in his third full season at the helm had to say:
On if he’s slept any after the win and travel back to Atlanta…
KEY: “Are you kidding me, Taylor? Uhh, I’m pretty tired. I’m pretty tired. But no, it was a lot of emotions after that one, lot of emotions. Just really proud of our guys. So no I haven’t slept a lot at all.”
On what it meant to him to see his team show mental and physical toughness fighting to the end…
KEY: “I don’t know. It’s kind of like Jimbo (Fisher) just said…to now own that distinguished honor to have three turnovers and come back and win the game…I mean golly. You know when you sit there and you’re getting ready to go into your first game, you go through your head a million different things that could possibly happen or go wrong, and if you had told me a million things, this is a millionth and one that I would’ve guessed about our football team that we had three turnovers in the first three drives. But they’re resilient. They kept playing, and I’m proud of them.”
On the audio last week from a Colorado assistant saying Tech wasn’t physical and then running for 300-plus yards and what that says about his team…
KEY: “That we hear everything that’s said. I mean you don’t need motivation like that to go into a football game one bit. You have to have an innate just grit to you to play the game that way, and we do. And I truly believe that. I said that at Media Days that’s our identity as a football team. We’ve got to continue to do the other things better, but that is our identity and it may or may not have given a little extra motivation for some big boys up front.”
On Haynes King being a leader and putting the early turnovers behind him to pave the way to the win…
KEY: “Yeah, it’s one of those things where you don’t want that adversity to happen in the football game. You really don’t. You know you usually can’t come back from it, but to see Haynes and his demeanor and truly that next-play mentality that we preach all the time…Haynes is a special, special person and not just a football player. He’s a special person. And there are not a lot of people that know what that feeling is to run the ball like he is, to sit back and throw the ball, to do what he does and then still be able to do it in the fourth quarter, end of the fourth quarter. I can’t say enough about Haynes King as a football player, as a person, as a leader, but we’ve also got other people around him now that are stepping up as leaders as well. So it’s not all on his shoulders. It’s not all on him to have to lead and do all those things. So proud of the whole team really rallying around Haynes last night too.”
On being back in Atlanta and preparing for the next one vs. Gardner-Webb…
KEY: “We’ve got a lot of work to do so that’s going to start here in a minute. Appreciate y’all. Go Jackets!”
