What Wake Forest Said After the Miami Loss
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Playing with heart is important in college football. Playing with guts and determination matters. Playing with an inability to cut down your own penalties gets you beat, particularly by one of the top teams in the country. Wake Forest had a 31-7 deficit at the hands of Miami Friday night at Allegacy Stadium. They outscored Miami 13-2 from that point to make the game closer, but clearly not close enough. So, let’s check in on what Wake Forest said after the Miami loss.
What Wake Forest Said
Jake Dickert
The head coach had to tackle a few topics in the post-game interview. His team had just committed 13 penalties for 122 yards, including two holding penalties on punt returns that cost them close to 100 yards in field position. And getting behind early as Miami’s quarterback completed his first 24 passes in a row.
“You’re not going to beat a really good opponent with 13 penalties and 122 yards,” Dickert said in the post-game press conference.
“We had some opportunities to get back in that game in the fourth quarter. We just could never quite get over the hump,” he said. “Obviously, penalties were a big deal, especially in special teams. We had some field flipped. Some momentum surged.”
Dickert acknowledged that it was like a switch was flipped in the second half. Miami had 303 first-half yards on offense while Wake had 88. Hurricanes quarterback Darian Mensah was 20 for 20 passing for 193 yards and two touchdowns in just the first half. Conversely, Wake’s Gio Lopez was six of 10 for 59 yards and a touchdown.
“What I told them in there,” Dickert said of talking with his team in the locker room after the game, was like, ‘What changed in the third quarter?’ The defensive calls didn’t change. The offensive calls didn’t change. Our execution, our tackling in space, we did some of the fundamental things better.”
It was clear that there was no upside feeling about cutting the deficit in the last quarter-and-a-half of the game. “We don’t celebrate losses around here. We’ve got to get learns. We’ve got to be a better football team for next week.”
Wake quarterback Gio Lopez came away from last week’s double overtime win over Purdue with a banged-up hip that caused him to hobble a bit. The hobbling was a lot more pronounced in the fourth quarter Friday night as the Deacs were trying to mount a comeback. There were some moments where a healthy Lopez likely would have tucked the ball and run through the open field in front of him. But Friday night, he was opting to try to stick to the plays called.
“He was gutting it out,” Dickert said of his transfer quarterback. The coach estimated that his quarterback took approximately 20 hits during the game, including three that were roughing the passer calls on Miami. “The quarterback run game after a while, even for him to scramble out of some of those late sacks was impressive.”
“It proves we’re a good football team,” Dickert said of the effort to come back. “I believe that. Now we’ve got to go show that on the road next week because the schedule doesn’t get any easier.”
Zach Lohavichan
The senior defensive lineman said the team was expecting to be able to compete with one of the top teams in the country all along. “We were prepared for a four-quarter war, and that’s what it was,” he said after the game. “If a couple calls go our way, it would have been a one-possession game.”
The deficit in the first half was the byproduct of several things. “We had a tough time tackling in the first half, it seemed like,” Lohavichan said.
He said it felt like Mensah was checking down to the shorter passing game throughout the first half. “It felt like he was getting the ball out really fast.”
As if the loss was not hard enough to take, the rest of the weekend brings some challenges as the team has to rehash what went wrong before it can move on. “Watching the film is going to be hard because we’re going to see all the moments where one little thing could have gone our way, and we would have been right in the game.”
Jack Foley
The second-year receiver had six catches for a team-leading 118 yards and a touchdown. “The energy continued to pick up as we continued to go through the game, so I was just really proud of the guys,” he said in the post-game press conference.
He said the pace of the play on offense played a factor in the second-half comeback. “That was actually one of the big things. Getting lined up. Getting the play called. Pushing our tempo faster and using it to our advantage,” he said while snapping his fingers to emphasize the sense of urgency that the team came out with for the second half.
He talked about Lopez fighting through the obvious pain in the second half as he tried to lead a comeback. “I know when all the receivers line up, we have full confidence in him whether he’s banged up or not banged up, that he’s going to deliver.
What’s Next
Because of the Friday night game, Wake has an extra day to work through the physical issues and watch the film before starting prep for the Louisville game, which is Saturday at 12 noon.
Main Image: Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images
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