What Kirby Smart said about South Carolina after Georgia’s 10-point win
South Carolina’s first-half performance put the top-ranked Georgia and coach Kirby Smart on notice.
Smart had high praise for the Gamecocks following Georgia’s 24-14 over USC on Saturday at Sanford Stadium.
The Gamecocks, who came into the game as 27.5-point underdogs, put together a strong first-half game plan in taking a 14-3 lead at halftime.
But the Bulldogs, who have taken teams’ best shots over the past two years as they won two national titles, responded in the second half and went on to defeat the Gamecocks in the Southeastern Conference opener for both teams.
The Gamecocks were the last team to defeat Georgia at home, when they knocked off the Bulldogs, 20-17, in 2019.
“What a tremendous job they did. They came into a tough environment with some relatively young players and played with great composure,” Smart said of USC after the game. “They started with a really good plan against us and out-executed us for sure in the first quarter. Their kids played hard.”
The Gamecocks played without two of the team’s top three receivers in Antwane Wells and Ahamaren Brown, who didn’t make the trip as he is dealing with a hamstring injury. Wells caught a TD on USC’s opening possession but left the game with a possible broken bone in his foot, according to USC coach Shane Beamer.
Smart said he preached to his team at halftime about winning one moment at a time. He guessed they would probably get six possessions in the second half they would have to score on four of them.
The Bulldogs scored three times in the second half, including the first two drives of the third quarter.
Georgia also got its running game going. Daijuan Edwards rushed for 118 yards and a TD.
The Bulldogs also slowed down Rattler and allowed just six completions in the second half.
“I thought their quarterback was on rhythm. You got to do something to get him off rhythm. He was very effective that first drive,” Smart said. “... We had them off rhythm in the second half. They had us off rhythm in the first half. But momentum is a beautiful thing.”
On how his team responded to being down at the half…
“The message at halftime was: win one moment at a time, win one moment at a time. If you can win one moment at a time, we can get ourselves back in this thing. We knew we were getting the ball, so we really wanted to double-possession them. We wanted to get a possession at the end of the half and score and then we wanted to start the second half and score. Well, we lost out on one of those because we didn’t have our timeouts and we couldn’t do what we needed to do two-minute wise. I told them at halftime, ‘Look guys, it’s going to happen very simply: one moment at a time. And they believed it. They kept saying “one moment. One moment. One moment.” We gained so much momentum in the second half, thanks to our fans and thanks to our players making some plays.”
On getting to Spencer Rattler in the second half
“I thought we rushed the passer better, we geared up and came after him some. We made a couple of adjustments there. He made a couple of good throws early, he made a corner route over on our sideline and they hit us on the screen. If they don’t hit us on the screen, I don’t think they get a lot in that first half because we would have had more momentum there. He’s a good player. When he gets out of there, he can hurt us scrambling.”
This story was originally published September 16, 2023 at 9:36 PM.
