Jackets believe they can win
By Matt Winkeljohn | Wednesday, September 12, 2007, 02:27 PM

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

It’s a tough thing to evaluate faith, or confidence, but my bat senses tell me more every week that Georgia Tech players and coaches are coming to believe completely in what they’re doing.

There is a lot of wiggle room for interpretation on something like this, but I’m convinced most teams “think” they can win most of the time (not Samford last week), but in the back of players’ and coaches’ minds they know in many instances that they’ll need to have a few breaks, win the turnover war, etc. to actually achieve success.

In short, I’d be willing to bet that if put through a lie detector test a majority of players and coaches (everywhere, not just Tech) would say they “hope” to win. I see the hope range as the huge middle part of what might as well be a bell curve. On the far left, though, you have players and coaches who know they have little or no chance (Samford last week), and on the far right you have players and coaches convinced they’re going to win, or that it will take something like a miracle for them to lose.

In the middle, hope.

I’m not going to trot out any player quotes, or Gailey quotes here because to a great degreet the quotes are the same most years, and not just at Tech I imagine.

This is more about conviction, the way things are said, the body language of the people saying them, the intonation, inflection — all the above and more.

To be clear, I’m not saying any of this means Tech will win Saturday. But I think over the long haul having a belief system like this — as long as it is not falsely implanted — helps a heck of a lot. It sets players, coaches — teams — up better to deal with adversity when they face it because their faith is that much tougher to shake.

And just about everybody faces adversity.

It can go too far. Ohio State felt itself unbeatable in the national championship game last January, and wasted its time in practice leading up to the game. That was gross, big-headedness to the nth degree.

Tech’s nowhere near that point. But I think the Jackets have moved past hope, and are on the right side of my bell curve.

Matt