Georgia wins regular season home finale, turns attention to Georgia Tech

ATHENS — Georgia made short work of Charlotte on Saturday, winning 35-3 in Sanford Stadium in what amounted to a warm-up game for rival Georgia Tech.

The No. 4 Bulldogs (10-1) led 28-3 at halftime, despite resting starting center Drew Bobo and starting right tackle Earnest Greene lll — both healthy scratches — before pulling Gunner Stockton after the team’s first series of the second half with Georgia up 35-3.

Stockton, who drew the ire of Kirby Smart for taking a second-quarter sack running the hurry-up offense the play before throwing an interception, finished 17-of-21 passing for 196 yards and had five rushes for 11 yards.

“Gotta make better decisions, he held the ball too long,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said in his SEC Network halftime interview. “It wasn’t (the interception), it was the play before when he took the sack — you never take the sack in a two-minute situation.”

Georgia, a 43 1/2-point favorite, was otherwise dominant on a Senior Day that saw 12 scholarship seniors honored in the pregame, outgaining the 1-10 American Athletic Conference school 449 to 169 yards.

Backup quarterback Ryan Puglisi played three offensive series for Georgia and was 7-of-11 passing for 49 yards but was unable to lead the team to any points.

Third-string quarterback Ryan Montgomery played the final offensive series and completed his only pass for 12 yards.

UGA tailback Bo Walker, a freshman who played at Cedar Grove High School through his junior season before transferring to the Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School, scored the first three touchdowns of his career and rushed for 48 yards on nine carries.

Sophomore Nate Frazier led UGA with 12 carries for 54 yards and scored the team’s other two touchdowns.

Smart said the Bulldogs’ practice schedule this week will be changed up with respect to the short academic week and the 3:30 p.m. game on Friday against Georgia Tech in Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

“It’s a little different. It’s more different because of the Friday game than anything else, but when you combine the Friday game with the Thanksgiving week when the guys don’t (all) have classes, it makes it a little weird,” Smart said on his ‘Bulldogs Live’ weekly show last Thursday.

“We pre-planned for that; we put things on schedule and we have things mapped out for next week to be a very different week.”

Smart is likely hoping his team will have a very different level of success against the Yellow Jackets than last season, when they needed eight overtimes to squeeze out a 44-42 eight-overtime win at Sanford Stadium.

The Bulldogs rallied from 17-0 down at halftime and 14 down with 5:37 left, tying the game 27-27 on Carson Beck’s 3-yard pass to Dominic Lovett with 1:01 left in regulation.

“We have a quick turnaround, tough prep, hard team to prepare for,” Smart said in his postgame interview with the SEC Network. “They have a really good team.”

Yellow Jackets coach Brent Key, who beat UGA three of the four years he was a player and team captain at Georgia Tech (1997-2000), said his team would use the loss as motivation for this year’s game.

“What I know about these kids, this team, this school,” Key said, “this emotion will turn into fuel, and we’ll use that fuel.”