ATHENS – Georgia players who had to hang around for postgame interviews at Sanford Stadium this past Saturday were eager to wrap them up so they could watch for the last quarter or so of the Kentucky-South Carolina game.
Imagine their surprise when they finally got in front of television and saw the Wildcats trailing 31-6 in the fourth quarter. That margin held up as the final score and, with it, a little luster was lost on the Bulldogs’ trip to Lexington this weekend.
Maybe even a lot of luster, at least from the standpoint of entertainment value. The rumor going into the weekend was that ESPN’s College GameDay Show was planning to post up in Lexington for Georgia-Kentucky. Instead, the Wildcats’ loss sent college football’s roving circus down the road to Columbia, South Carolina, for the Gamecocks’ Week 3 matchup against LSU.
All of that, the No. 1-ranked Bulldogs (2-0) were careful to emphasize at their media day on Monday, means absolutely nothing ahead of their SEC opener against Kentucky on Saturday. Georgia expects the same tough, physical bunch of Wildcats it encounters seemingly every time it ventures onto Kroger Field.
“They are just as dangerous whether they won or lost that game, in my opinion,” Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart said on Monday. “We’re going to prepare the same way regardless of what happened in that game. A lot of things went wrong quickly for them (against South Carolina), and it snowballed in some ways. But I know what they’re capable of. I’ve seen them on tape. I know the football players they got. I know how physical they are. I know how they’re coached. And I know we’ve got to get ready for a really tough opponent.”
The Wildcats (1-1, 0-1 SEC) feature a pair of starters who played for the Bulldogs the last three years. Junior Brock Vandagriff is Kentucky’s quarterback on offense and middle linebacker Jamon Dumas-Johnson is the quarterback of the Wildcats’ defense.
Dumas-Johnson, aka “Pop,” earned All-SEC honors and was a two-year starter at UGA. He has 6 tackles, 1.5 for loss, 1 pass break-up and 1 QB hurry while starting the first two games for the Wildcats.
Vandagriff entered the transfer portal last year after graduating from UGA and seeing no prospects of overtaking Carson Beck as the Bulldogs’ starting quarterback. The 6-foot-3, 217-pound resident of Bogart, Georgia, who grew up about 15 miles from UGA’s Sanford Stadium, struggled in the loss to South Carolina. He was 3-of-10 for just 30 yards and was sacked four times by the Gamecocks. He will enter the Georgia game with 199 yards on 53.6% passing with 3 touchdowns and 2 interceptions.
“Sometimes games don’t go your way,” said Bulldogs senior linebacker Chaz Chambliss, who roomed with Vandagriff when he was at UGA. “At quarterback, that’s amplified. But each week’s a new week and what he did last week doesn’t have anything to do with this week, same as it is with us.”
That certainly was the message coming out of Lexington on Monday as the Wildcats’ held their weekly media day. Twelfth-year coach Mark Stoops said his team reviewed what went wrong against the Gamecocks on Sunday, addressed it, then flushed it and moved on.
“We have to turn the page quickly. We have to hone in on what we’re going to do and clearly do it better and make sure we’re putting our players in a position to be successful,” Stoops said. “Playing Georgia, the number one team in the country, it’s a great opportunity. I have great respect for Kirby, their staff. Those guys do a great job. And Carson Beck, just a remarkable player. He’s hitting on all cylinders right now. You name it, he does it, a clear leader on a veteran team.”
The mutual admiration between Smart and Stoops is evident in their remarks. Smart said Monday they’ve grown to be really good friends.
One of things Smart admires most is Stoops unwavering philosophy when it comes to playing the game of football.
Year in and year out, the Wildcats are devoted to establishing the run game and seeking to make explosive plays off play-action. They have a similar approach defensively, seeking first to stuff opponents’ ground game and taking their chances against the pass.
Smart operates his program under similar tenets, though he has been considerably more successful while doing so. But their like-minded philosophies have resulted in some grueling and tightly-contested games.
That’s been especially true at Kroger Field, where the Wildcats’ typically pack their 61,000-seat and the fall weather often is unpredictable. It was cold and extremely windy the last time the Bulldogs were there in November of 2022 and Georgia pulled out a hard fought 16-6 victory. The teams are meeting earlier in the season this time around, but early forecasts for Saturday night’s game called for 50 percent chance of thunderstorms with nighttime temperatures dipping well into the 60s.
While UGA has won an 14 in a row against the Wildcats – currently their longest streak against an SEC foes – their last four games in Lexington have been decided by an average of 10 points.
“That’s just a really tough place to play,” Smart said of Kroger Field. “As you can see from every time we’ve played there, it’s been really tough. … You get an opportunity to play at night on the road, and you know the environment is going to be really loud. We’ve got to prepare for a tough, really physical game, which is that way every time we play Kentucky.”
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