Mike Reed on handling Orange Bowl loss to Vols: 'Bottle this up'

Mike Reed said they have to bottle up the feeling from the Orange Bowl for future use.

by Nikki Hood - Staff Writer - Tue Jan 10 07:00:04 GMT-04:00 2023

MIAMI GARDENS, FL – Following Clemson's 31-14 loss to Tennessee in the Orange Bowl, there were no smiles, no joking, and no laughter coming from the Tigers' locker room. What there was, though, was anger, pain, frustration, and sadness on the faces of the players and coaches as they thought about the missed opportunity.

Breakdowns on offense, defense, special teams and from the coaches on the sideline led to one of Clemson's biggest losses in recent memory.

Assistant head coach and cornerbacks coach Mike Reed told TigerNet following the game that the outcome was not what anyone expected after a good week of preparation but that everyone in the locker room – especially the younger guys can use that experience to learn and grow.

"I mean, we practice very hard, and guys are prepared. It's just one of the things where, you know, things didn't go our way," Reed told TigerNet. "I'm not one of those guys that can talk about the stars and crap like that, but one of the things where everything you practice what we've seen. They didn't make plays, we didn't do a good job of coaching, and I didn't do a good job of coaching, so you've got to go back to the drawing board and use this right here as a learning experience. And I think it was good for a lot of our young kids, you know, so now they know what it takes - a few plays here, a few plays there we make, and it probably could change the outcome of this game."

Reed's advice to his cornerbacks and the defense?

"Bottle this up and understand, there's going to be a new team, there's going to be new guys in different positions," Reed said. "They're not going be sophomores anymore; they'll be juniors, so now they've got to take more of a leadership role than they were this year. Just certain aspects that they have to grow from. We've got to use this and grow from it. We can't take steps back; we've got to keep going forward."

For freshman linebacker Wade Woodaz, he wants to remember the locker room's environment in the Orange Bowl's immediate aftermath.

"Just gotta remember this feeling that we all have right here – the feeling and the aura in the locker room right now. Remember this during all of our off-season training and spring ball, fall camp -- all the way to the start of next year," Woodaz told TigerNet.

Linebacker Barrett Carter said bottling up this emotion and using it for good starts with seeing exactly what went wrong.

"It starts with watching the film," Carter said. "We have to learn from our mistakes. You carry that into your workouts. You carry that into all areas of life. You never want to feel this feeling again. We have to watch the film, see what went wrong and carry that into the off-season, carry that into all of the workouts, and we'll bounce back from it."

Toriano Pride – the freshman cornerback from St. Louis, Missouri – is already looking forward to unleashing his frustration in the 2023 season opener.

"Just learn from all the mistakes, Get back to work on the film, grind this offseason and just take all that anger out the next first game," Pride told TigerNet.