ATHENS — It looks as if the Georgia Bulldogs will have to handle winning the SEC East thing themselves. After Saturday’s showing against Auburn, they probably prefer it that way.
The Bulldogs won their eighth consecutive game — the most during a season since the championship year of 2002 — and got four touchdown passes from quarterback Aaron Murray to steamroll their oldest rival 45-7 before a sellout crowd of 92,746 at Sanford Stadium.
“It’s by far the best game we’ve played,” said Murray, who established the Georgia record for touchdown passes in a season with 27. “We’re a young team and we’ve made baby steps all year. I think today we made some big, big strides.”
It was Georgia’s fifth win in its past six games against its neighbors to the west. Auburn leads the 115-game series 54-53-8.
The Bulldogs attacked the defending national champions by air early, stuffed the Tigers’ vaunted running game throughout, then grinded out the clock in the second half. In the end, Georgia left with a pair of 100-yard rushers in Isaiah Crowell and Carlton Thomas and held the SEC’s second-leading running team to 51 yards on the ground.
Georgia sacked Auburn quarterbacks five times and limited the Tigers to nine first downs and 195 yards. The sum total was the most lopsided SEC victory for Georgia since beating Vanderbilt 43-0 last season.
“I’m just proud of everybody,” Georgia coach Mark Richt said. “I can’t hardly think of another game in this stadium where we’ve played as well as a team, offense, defense, special teams. Everybody kind of fed off each other.”
The victory allowed Georgia to remain in first place in the SEC East heading to next Saturday’s conference finale against Kentucky. If the Bulldogs can get past the struggling Wildcats (4-6, 1-5), they will make their fourth trip to the SEC championship game under coach Mark Richt, and their first since 2005.
Georgia could have clinched the East on Saturday had it gotten some cooperation from Florida and its UGA-matriculated head coach Will Muschamp. But the Gators fell to South Carolina 17-12 in Columbia. The Gamecocks (8-2, 6-2) defeated Georgia 45-42 in the season’s second week and owned the tiebreaker had the Bulldogs lost.
“I honestly didn’t know what happened in that game until I saw it on the scoreboard after we were on the field,” Richt said. “I don’t know how many of our guys really knew.”
But the Bulldogs quickly eliminated any suspense about the day’s proceedings. They got four touchdown passes from Murray and an interception returned for a touchdown by Bacarri Rambo on the way to a 35-7 by halftime.
Twenty-one of those points came in the second quarter. The 35 points in the first half were the most by a Georgia team in an SEC game since 2003 when it led Alabama 37-10.
“There isn’t a whole lot I can tell you that you didn’t see,” Auburn coach Gene Chizik said. “It was a disappointing loss for us. We got beat at every phase of the game tonight.”
Armed with a sizeable lead, the Bulldogs were able to fall into milk-the-clock mode midway through the third quarter. Of Georgia’s 304 rushing yards, 194 came after halftime, including 114 of Crowell’s game-high 132.
Thomas, who like Crowell was suspended last week, gained 127 yards, giving the Bulldogs dual 100-plus-yard rushers for the first time since Washaun Ealey and Caleb King versus Georgia Tech in 2009.
The Bulldogs did their best work on third down, converting seven of eight into first downs in the first half and reserving that down for some of its biggest plays. Georgia had a 44-yard completion on third down to set up its first touchdown and scored touchdowns twice on third-and-long after that.
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