Georgia 31, Virginia Tech 24
By Adam Kilgore
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 31, 2006
ATLANTA, Dec. 30 -- The ball dribbled off the tee, and the feeblest looking of plays turned into the most frightening one the Virginia Tech football team could imagine. The Hokies had all but knocked out Georgia, leading the Bulldogs by 18 at halftime after playing their finest football of the season.
It all unraveled after a surprise onside kick off the foot of Brian Mimbs. The Bulldogs recovered, the Georgia Dome shook, the Hokies fell apart and the lead evaporated. By the time the Chick-fil-A Bowl ended, Georgia had shocked Virginia Tech, 31-24, before a Georgia Dome record crowd of 70,406, ending a resurgent Virginia Tech season in a bitter, painful way.
"It snowballed," Virginia Tech Coach Frank Beamer said. "I think it's pretty simple. When you turn the ball over against a good football team, you're going to lose. Not very Virginia Tech like."
The rush came so quickly and so cruelly for Virginia Tech. During a disastrous span of less than nine minutes in the fourth quarter, Virginia Tech quarterback Sean Glennon turned over the ball on four straight possessions -- three interceptions and a fumble -- and Georgia scored off the first three. Georgia, backed by a raucous cheering section that outnumbered Virginia Tech's two to one, used those miscues, in part, to score 28 consecutive points.
"I don't really know how to describe it," Glennon said. "I take responsibility for what happened. Regardless of whether they're bad breaks or not, they're still turnovers. I wouldn't say I lost confidence. I was definitely very frustrated. It just seemed like nothing was going right."
Virginia Tech's collapse, its worst since it led Virginia 29-7 at half in 1998, was as dramatic as it was shocking. The Hokies (10-3) led 21-3 at halftime, and it seemed the competitive part of the game had ended. The Hokies and their No. 1 ranked defense rattled and overwhelmed Georgia freshman quarterback Matthew Stafford while holding the Bulldogs to 47 yards and two first downs.
"Never. Never" defensive tackle Carlton Powell said. "Never could I see us having a 21-3 lead and then losing the game."
Georgia (9-4, 4-4 SEC) mustered a 51-yard field goal by Brandon Coutu, one of the nation's best kickers, on its second possession of the second half, but it seemed harmless. Then came the most nightmarish sequence of Tech's season.
Mimbs approached the ball on the ensuing kickoff, and the Hokies front line retreated as it normally would. But Mimbs gently slowed down as he swung his leg and tapped the ball forward. After it tumbled 10 yards, with the Hokies having vacated the area, Mimbs himself smothered it.
It began an avalanche the Hokies couldn't dig themselves out from under. Stafford led a six-play, 52-yard drive, culminating with a six-yard touchdown pass to tight end Martez Milner that cut the Bulldogs' deficit to 21-13.
That was only the beginning. Virginia Tech would hold the same lead at the start of the fourth quarter. By the time it was half over, Georgia led by 10, heads hung on the Virginia Tech sideline and the game was pretty much over.
"We just started to fall apart," offensive tackle Duane Brown said. "I think it was just the turnovers."
Georgia began beating the Hokies to every punch, turning their marauding defense into a husk of what it normally is and overwhelming its offense. Virginia Tech got the best of seemingly every hit in the first half. In the second, Georgia was the aggressor.
Virginia Tech crumbled under the pressure, the mostly partisan crowd rumbling and unnerving the Hokies. Glennon, under constant duress from Georgia's pass rush, threw two interceptions to linebacker Tony Taylor in the span. The first came on the third play of the fourth quarter, and it set up a three-yard touchdown run by Kregg Lumpkin and a two-point conversion that tied the score.
On Virginia Tech's very next play, Glennon was sacked and fumbled, leading to a field goal by Coutu that gave Georgia its first lead. Virginia Tech got the ball back and couldn't come close to mustering a comeback. Glennon threw another pick on the third play of the drive, which Taylor returned inside the Virginia Tech 1-yard line. Virginia Tech's defense, somehow, held on three surges, but fullback Brain Southerland finally punched it in to put Georgia up 31-21.
When safety Kelin Johnson picked off Glennon with 6 minutes 40 seconds remaining, the Hokies were virtually finished. Less than nine minutes earlier, they had been leading the game.
The Hokies built that lead with an equally furious wave. Using brute force on defense, speed on special teams and guile on offense, the Hokies scored 21 consecutive points in less than 10 minutes.
The loss dropped Beamer to 6-8 in bowl games and robbed him of what seemed at halftime to be a sure chance to win back-to-back bowl games for the first time in his 20-year tenure. Of all the losses, this might prove to be the most painful memory. Players filed out of the locker room after the game, some with red eyes, some void of any expression.
"For the next eight or nine months," Glennon said, "I'm not going to forget this feeling."
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