Posts Tagged ‘Georgia Bulldogs’

Aaron Murray and Chris Conley after the completion that wasn't supposed to be. (AJC photo by Curtis Compton)

Fifteen seconds left, eight yards from victory. We know how the epic SEC championship game played out – for late tuners-in, Alabama beat Georgia 32-28 on Dec. 1 – but what exactly went into those 15 overstuffed seconds? Why did what happened happen?

We begin at the end, or very near it. (All the voices heard below spoke at a Georgia media session this week in Athens.) An apparent clinching interception by Dee Milliner with 45 seconds remaining was overturned by video review, handing the Bulldogs a glimmer of life that would become a starburst. Quarterback Aaron Murray found tight end Arthur Lynch for 15 yards, then wide receiver Tavarres King for 23, then Lynch again for 26.

In 30 seconds the Bulldogs traveled 64 yards against the nation’s top-ranked defense. A game that had seen five lead changes was eight yards from a sixth.

Murray: “We’d gotten a little break …

Continue reading Fifteen fateful seconds: The Bulldogs look back in anguish »

For the Bulldogs, getting over the Alabama game won't be easy. (AJC photo by Brant Sanderlin)

Athens – Depending on the index, Georgia is ranked No. 5 (USA Today coaches’ poll), No. 6 (Associated Press) or No. 7 (BCS) in the land. Counting the national championship game, the BCS fits 10 teams into five postseason games. Georgia, alas, is not among them.

The Bulldogs are bound for the Capital One Bowl, which is essentially the consolation game for losers of conference championships. (Georgia’s opponent is Nebraska, which lost to Wisconsin 70-31 in the Big Ten title tilt.) With three losses, the Cornhuskers probably belong in the Capital One. Georgia does not.

At worst, Georgia is the nation’s third-best team. It went 11-1 in the regular season and won the SEC Eastern Division, which this time around was no junior circuit. (Florida is ranked No. 3 in the BCS standings, South Carolina No. 10). But the Bulldogs were penalized for falling five yards short in one of the …

Continue reading Isn’t UGA better than the Capital One Bowl? Why, sure it is »

Carolina coach Ron Rivera is apparently peeved, while Mike Smith is perplexed. (AP photo)

Our weekly Heat Check arrives, perhaps inappropriately, on a chilly morning.

FALCONS: The good news — well, to some ears — is that they’re getting a new stadium. The bad news is that they stunk out Bank of America Stadium on Sunday, losing by 10 points to the last-place Carolina Panthers. Atmospheric reading: The Falcons are in a really weird place, and by this we don’t mean Flowery Branch or the doomed Georgia Dome. They clinched the NFC South with a month to spare, which essentially thrusts them into another preseason. They know they’re going to the playoffs and they know they’ll need to play well once there, but the reality is that these final regular-season games mean next to nothing.

HAWKS: Had a chance to nose ahead of the Miami Heat in the NBA Southeast. Didn’t do it, losing by nine after a pretty stout first half. This came two days after an eye-opening road victory at Memphis. …

Continue reading Heat Check: Division-winning Falcons are in cold storage »

The final moments of a fabulous game: Chris Conley catches the ball. (AJC photo by Curtis Compton)

There are people who say that only championships matter, that finishing second is the same as finishing last. To those people, we say this: Go away now. Go away while we honor — and yes, that’s the proper word — as gallant a runner-up as we’ll ever see. Go away and let us speak of the Georgia Bulldogs.

They’d waited 30 years for a game this big, and they came as close as you could come to winning it without actually winning. Three times they took a lead over the mighty Alabama, and even after what should have been a crushing Tide touchdown with 3:15 remaining, even after what seemed a clinching Bama interception inside the final minute … even then, these Bulldogs found themselves with first-and-goal and time flying.

That they fell five yards short, that a tipped Aaron Murray pass for Malcolm Mitchell was caught by a falling Chris Conley and the final five seconds ticked away, …

Continue reading Five yards short: In bitter defeat, a winning Georgia effort »

Georgia's Marshall Morgan's toe meets leather to start the SEC title game. (AJC photo by Ben Gray)

This post is an adjunct to the game column, which can be found here.

1. Alabama shattered the SEC Championship game record for yards rushing. The Tide ran for 350 yards, with two backs — game MVP Eddie Lacy and backup T.J. Yeldon — each going way over 100. (Lacy had 181, Yeldon 153.) And it was, almost inevitably, the fear of the Alabama ground game that spawned the Tide’s winning touchdown. AJ McCarron threw deep to Amari Cooper, who had run past Damain Swann, for the winning touchdown with 3:15 to play. But Alabama couldn’t run out the clock inside the final two minutes, and it nearly cost the Tide the game.

2. Even the best in the business sometimes whiffs. Alabama coach Nick Saban waited until five seconds remained in the first half to use his first timeout. After converting on third-and-2 at the Georgia 39 with 42 seconds left, the Crimson Tide allowed the clock to tick …

Continue reading Bama’s runners, Saban’s gaffe and a classic SEC title game »

That famous jokester Nick Saban leaves Mark Richt in stitches Friday. (AJC photo by Brant Sanderlin)

At the SEC Coaches’ Luncheon at the Hyatt on Friday, emcee Dave Neal asked Nick Saban if it was easier to keep a team motivated as a favorite, or if being an underdog was preferable. Whereupon Mark Richt said, “What does he know about being an underdog?”

Saban’s Crimson Tide is favored today by eight points over Richt’s Bulldogs, but an awful lot of folks — this correspondent included — are picking Georgia. Still, this matchup couldn’t have caught Saban unaware.

“Last summer I was at the lake (Burton, where every  big-name college football coach has a summer house) and I was fooling around in the yard, and two guys rode up on JetSkis,” Saban told Richt at the luncheon. “One of them was your quarterback Aaron Murray and the other was your center (David Andrews). And they said, ‘We’ll see you in the SEC championship game.’ ”

And here both teams are, Alabama ranked No. 2 to …

Continue reading Live from the Dome: Favored Bama meets hungry Dogs! »

Twelve years a Bulldog, Mark Richt's breakthrough chance comes Saturday. (AP photo by David Goldman)

Mark Richt apprenticed at Florida State when the Seminoles played for five national championships in eight seasons, and he came to Athens expecting more of the same. “That was the plan coming in,” he said Friday, “but it hasn’t happened yet.”

It could well happen Saturday. If Richt’s team wins the SEC championship game, the plan will have come to fruition. Twelve years Georgia’s coach, Richt has never been so close to playing for the BCS title. Twelve years Georgia’s coach, the path finally is clear.

A coach can never know when, or if, his moment will arrive. Richt had great early success – three division titles and two SEC championships in his first five years – and then he had rather less. We began to wonder if a fine career could ever bring the ultimate validation. Well, it’s there to be seized under the off-white roof of the Georgia Dome, there to be …

Continue reading For Mark Richt and Georgia, the moment is finally at hand »

The men of Saban get emphatic in the Blackout wipeout of 2008. (AJC photo by Brant Sanderlin)

Nick Saban has coached only five games against Georgia (winning three), but two rank as watersheds. As Alabama readies to play the Bulldogs for the SEC championship, we pause to reflect on the role this infrequent opponent has played in the career of the man considered college football’s best coach.

Georgia at LSU, Sept. 20, 2003: This game came early in Saban’s fourth season at LSU at a time when he was considered just another good football man. He had worked five seasons at Michigan State without winning the Big Ten or gracing a significant bowl. His first three years in Baton Rouge had showed promise — the 2001 Tigers won the SEC Western Division with three league losses but upset No. 2 Tennessee for the league title — but LSU went 8-5 in 2002.

Coming off a 13-1 season and its first SEC championship since 1982, Georgia arrived at Tiger Stadium ranked No. 7 to LSU’s No. 11. The …

Continue reading Without two key wins over UGA, would Saban be Saban? »

Believe it or not, both of these teams could land in Miami come New Year's. (AJC photo by Curtis Compton)

Georgia Tech could wind up in the Orange Bowl, or it could grace no bowl at all. At this moment, the Jackets are bowl-eligible; come Saturday night, they might not be. Got that?

“It’s been a different year,” Paul Johnson said Tuesday, which is an understatement on a par with, “Bill Gates isn’t hurting for money.”

After a full regular season, Tech is neither a winning or a losing team — but it might yet be a conference champion. Generally speaking, when serendipity takes a hand it lifts a good team to greater heights. Somehow serendipity seems to have taken a shine to these middling Jackets, who lost by 21 points to Middle Tennessee and by 32 to Georgia.

The Jackets have played 12 games, losing half. They have beaten one team (North Carolina) that finished above .500. Carolina was one of three teams that tied for first place in the ACC Coastal Division, but the Tar Heels …

Continue reading This nutty Tech season could yield a truly hilarious ending »

Surrounded by the enemy: The Georgia Tech band in Sanford Stadium. (AJC photo by Johnny Crawford)

Our Heat Check arrives just in time to warm what promises to be a chilly week. Face facts, folks: There’s not much happening in local sports.

Kidding.

GEORGIA: Will play for the BCS title — some guy I know predicted they would — with a victory over Alabama on Saturday. Barometric reading: Three weeks ago, people were saying the Bulldogs would have no chance against the mighty Tide. A lot of those same people seem to have changed their minds, and I’m not just talking about Georgia fans. I’m talking about neutrals who see the Dogs as no less talented as Bama. Just as Bacarri Rambo said.

GEORGIA TECH: Paul Johnson now believes his Jackets didn’t give much of an effort in Athens. (Who knew, huh?) But if Tech can rouse itself to topple Florida State — maybe the nation’s most overrated team — in Charlotte on Saturday, the Jackets will be headed for what Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports calls

Continue reading Heat Check: Destiny’s Dogs? No-bowl Jackets? Whoa, Nelly »