The Herald Citizen on Tennessee Tech

Tennessee Tech is coming off a shellacking at Georgia. Here is what their hometown paper had to say.


TTU FOOTBALL: Tech optimistic after UGA loss
Thomas Corhern
Herald-Citizen Assistant Sports Editor
Monday, Nov 09, 2009
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ATHENS, Ga. -- After Saturday's 38-0 loss to Georgia, the Tennessee Tech football team is ready to be back on its own turf as it prepares for a crucial Ohio Valley Conference matchup this Saturday at Jacksonville State.

And while the Golden Eagles were shut out, there's no hard feelings between the two programs.

"I wish the best for Mark (Richt) and his team the rest of the way," said Golden Eagles coach Watson Brown. "I know that this is good for college football. The fans and everybody sometimes wonder why you do these things, but the dollars we get out of this is huge. The memories the kids get out of these games will be with them for the rest of their lives. They'll all say I played at Georgia, at Auburn, at Arkansas or wherever else we're headed.

"The dollars are important to us and I think it helps the Georgias of the world where they don't have an open date and they have a game and they get to play a lot of people and get a little fresher. He's got some very important games that he's got to get ready for too. Both of us leave this game and we gain something from it because we've both still got a lot left on the table."

The game also gave Brown the opportunity to put a few players in who haven't had a lot of playing time, including Georgia native and Tech backup quarterback Tre Lamb.

Lamb threw for 37 yards on 3-for-6 passing in the contest as he took over the Tech offense in the second half.

Brown was asked during the postgame interview whether Lamb would be the Golden Eagles' quarterback of the future.

"There's three of them, and there may be a fourth," Brown said. "They'll all fight it out in the spring. Lee Sweeney's been our guy for three years, so it will be a totally different offensive bunch. We'll get back to things that I really like to do -- run the option, throw the ball, spread it out. There's three quarterbacks on our campus now that will fight it out and I'll probably bring in a fourth one. We've got all but nine guys back on this team, and, really, all but 17 back for two more years. We're a young bunch and we're going to need a quarterback to come through for us in the future."

Current QB starter Sweeney saw a lot of pressure from the Georgia defense on Saturday as he was sacked four times, and Brown was honest -- it could have been a lot worse.

"It could have been 10," Brown said. "It would have been 20 if I had called passes. They were killing us. We could not hold them out. It could have been a lot worse. That's why I tried to stay very conservative and played as many quarterbacks as I did. I had two young ones that I needed to get some reps with, partly because it was katy-bar the door back there."

When asked about the positives from Saturday's loss, Brown answered bluntly.

"Not much," the veteran coach said. "We played hard, but I don't know if I can take anything out of it, really. We were classy. We didn't drop our heads. We didn't start fussing at one another. We hung in there and we played as hard as we could play. That's a winning bunch.

"I told our kids we've played nine games and we've played two seasons. One season of playing (Football Bowl Subdivision) teams and one season of everything else. We're 5-2 in that other season and we're going home still in the conference race. We're going home in second place in the OVC with a chance to win or tie the championship. There's a lot to get out of this and hopefully we'll take it home, get our heads up and get some competitiveness about us when we play a really tough Jacksonville State team on Saturday."

A major positive, though, was even against an FBS power such as Georgia, Tech was able to hold on to the ball. The Golden Eagles improved their turnover ratio to plus-5 with an interception on Bulldog quarterback Logan Gray, while not giving the ball up themselves.

"We did a lot of things," Brown said. "We didn't have any penalties, we didn't have any turnovers. We just got whipped, dominated."

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