Rinse and spit.
That’s pretty much the mentality of the Georgia Bulldogs as they get set to kick off against Louisville in the Belk Bowl Tuesday night here at Bank of America Stadium. It’s a chance, they say, to get a bad taste out of their mouths.
A team couldn’t finish the regular season on a much more sour note than Georgia did. The Bulldogs got knocked out of the SEC championship game on a Friday, lost in dramatic fashion to archrival Georgia Tech on Saturday and watched their Big Six bowl aspirations go up in smoke at the same time.
Hence, the No. 13-ranked Bulldogs (9-3) were saying on the eve of their bowl matchup with No. 21 Louisville (9-3) that their primary motivation is not beating Todd Grantham or Bobby Petrino or even tracking down a 10th win. It’s to rid themselves of the foulness of defeat.
“Losing to Tech is really not an option at Georgia,” senior defensive back Damian Swann said. “That’s not what’s supposed to happen. But it did, for the second time in 14 years. So it goes back to we’ve got to find a way to get a ‘W’ here so we can feel better about this program and we can get that bad taste out of our mouth.”
Said senior quarterback Hutson Mason: “Anytime you lose the last game of the year and it’s to that team from Atlanta, you have to deal with that for a long while. In college football, the only way to get that bad taste out of your mouth is to win the next one. Unfortunately, we’ve had to wait a while to get that opportunity.”
In fact, it will be exactly a month – 31 days – when the Bulldogs finally kickoff against Louisville at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday (ESPN). A lot has happened in the interim.
Not only was there the off time for final exams and holidays, Georgia lost its offensive coordinator, Mike Bobo, to Colorado State, and its offensive line coach, Will Friend, who is going with him.
Fortunately for the Bulldogs, Friend agreed to stay on through the bowl game. But the offense will have a different person calling the plays for the first time since 2006 and just the second time since Georgia coach Mark Richt showed up from FSU for the 2001 season. Tight ends coach John Lilly is handling that duty as well as the temporary responsibility of coordinating the offense for this game.
Nobody’s exactly sure how that might affect the UGA offense, which at 41.7 points per game is on pace to finish as the most prolific-scoring in school history.
“It’s hard to say,” Louisville coach Bobby Petrino said. “I’m not sure if it changes anything. … I have a lot of respect for Coach Bobo and the way he operated their offense. But I also understand that part of that is Coach Richt and his influence. So it’s not like they don’t have coaches there that understand what they’re doing offensively.”
Bobo’s absence certainly takes some of the pizzazz out of what was expected to be the main storyline for this game: his offense going against the defense of the Bulldogs’ former coordinator Todd Grantham. Grantham and Bobo had some legendary battles on Woodruff Practice Fields while Grantham was in charge of the defense the previous four years. Then Grantham bolted Athens to accept Petrino’s five-year, $5 million offer to coach the Cardinals’ defense.
That has worked out pretty well for Grantham. Louisville comes into tonight’s game ranked sixth in the nation in total defense (293.2 ypg) and third against the run (93.7). The Cardinals are also one of the best teams in the country on third down (28 percent), an irony considering the troubles Georgia had under his watch on that down. And they’ve produced an NCAA-best 25 interceptions.
Grantham also comes in with more than a little familiarity with Georgia’s scheme and personnel.
“There’s no doubt he’ll have some familiarity with what we do offensively,” Richt said. “But we have some familiarity with what he does defensively, too. So that’s probably a wash.”
The level of motivation for these two teams is probably a wash as well. Both teams have a laundry list of incentives, including ACC versus SEC, 10-win seasons, program perceptions. The Bulldogs’ seniors will be seeking their 40th victory as a class.
“For me personally, it’s been a disappointing year,” Mason said. “But we can still do something pretty special if you think about it. If we win this game there’s a pretty good chance to finish in the top 10. Anytime you get a chance to finish in the top 10 that’s pretty awesome, no matter how your season went. It’s something you can cherish the rest of your life. But we’ll always remember what we could have been able to do.
“I really don’t want to lose this game, man.”
About the Author
