Cervenka: ‘We Just Kept Fighting’
Although Clemson fans were biting their nails deep into the fourth quarter against the UNC Tar Heels, as Mack Brown’s team went for two points and the victory with less than two minutes to go in the game and then failed to convert, the Tigers survived by a score of 21-20 to capture their 20th win in a row and save their national title hopes.
Senior Gage Cervenka, whose fellow teammates along the offensive line helped Clemson to 125 yards on the ground and 331 total yards, said that during the Tigers’ go-ahead scoring drive in the fourth quarter, players stayed positive about the game’s outcome.
“It just shows that we have a fight in us that no matter how tough the situation gets, no matter what the game is, I mean, we're going to keep fighting, and we're going to keep playing," Cervenka said. "And I mean, the whole time in the huddle, I was just telling the guys, ‘Hey, come on, this play right here. I mean, we're bound to break one. We're about to score here.’ And just keeping that mindset of don't get down, just keep playing.”
He said that down the stretch as UNC put the game in jeopardy, the Tigers maintained their resolve and didn’t get discouraged, even when there was penalty.
“I thought it was very big and huge that we just kept playing and just didn't get down on ourselves when we'd have those bad situations or those false starts of hurting ourself and just not having good drives,” Cervenka said. “I mean, we had good (drives). We just couldn't finish at the end, but I think it was big that we just didn't get down on ourselves, and we just kept fighting.”
Close games like the one against UNC provide learning opportunities for the team going forward, he said.
“Yeah, we had a close game, but what can we learn from that?” Cervenka said. “And we take what we can learn from each game and just move on and just move up and mature from there and learn from that.
“... That's just what we try to strive on to be elite is just learn from our mistakes and grow as a program. That's something big that we did last year is we didn't have the best first couple of games, but we learned and got better as the season progressed. So that's just something that we want to focus on.”
