The last time Alabama and Georgia faced each other; there was comparable hype to their SEC Championship Game meeting this Saturday. But Alabama delivered one of the first signature beat downs of the Nick Saban era during the teams’ 2008 meeting in Athens, taking down the then-No. 3 Bulldogs 41-30 in the “Blackout game” that was over by halftime. Georgia head coach Mark Richt said he learned a valuable lesson that night that he’ll apply to their 2012 de facto national championship semi-final in Atlanta.
“Yeah, don’t wear black,” Richt said. “We’re wearing red tomorrow.”
The Bulldogs haven’t exactly thrived in pressure circumstances under Richt, and Saturday presents another opportunity to fall under heavy expectations.
Last season, Georgia dropped its first two games to Boise State and South Carolina, both played under the limelight of a national television audience against top-15 teams. But Richt’s Bulldogs bounced back, reeled off 10 straight wins and returned to Atlanta to face then-No. 1 LSU.
But once again with the lights shining brighter than ever against a top opponent, Georgia slipped up, surrendering a 10-point, first quarter lead on their way to a 42-10 trouncing. “You just never know how a game is going to start. You don’t know,” Rich said Friday. “The bottom line is, I always tell them, if we start out 10 0, so what? Because we know how fast that could evaporate.
“If we start out behind 10 0, we have to just keep our poise and keep playing the game. It is a 60 minute game. We have to understand that. I think they do. But then when you begin to live it out, it’s tougher sometimes.”
The trend continued in 2012, when Georgia, playing in arguably its biggest game of the season, was stomped by No. 6 South Carolina 35-7 for its one and only loss of the season. The Bulldogs were out-worked in every facet of the game in a loss that would normally demoralize most teams.
Richt’s message afterwards was simple.
“The thing I said to the team is: The bad news is we got whipped pretty soundly. The good news is, we got whipped together,” Richt said. “It was not a situation where the offense played good and the defense played bad or vice versa, or the special teams blew it quote unquote, or the coaching staff made a bunch of mistakes that cost the game. It was a little bit of everybody. We all had some ownership in that defeat.”
But Georgia safety Shawn Williams had some candid remarks for him and his fellow defenders. He called the defense “soft,” and said they weren’t playing with the same attitude as 2011.
While many coaches would have been irate with such comments, Richt said it was a turning point in the season.
“You know, when I heard it, I wasn’t really that mad,” Richt said. “I kind of grinned because I knew something was about to give here. And I think some of the guys got their feelings hurt and some guys got mad. But I think everybody understood that Shawn’s heart was he wants us to play better. He wants us to win. He didn’t come back to Georgia for his senior year for that type of performance, especially on the defensive side of the ball.”
The Bulldogs, like in 2011, came back stronger. The signature win came against then No. 2-Florida and set the stage for a potentially historic season. Now, Georgia finds itself in position to play for a conference and national championship, more than it could say last year.
And so Georgia will come into Saturday’s game ready to make a program statement. The stage couldn’t be any bigger and the lights couldn’t be brighter. The winner goes to the national championship, while the loser will drop out of BCS bowl consideration all together.
“Our goal has been to on a daily basis, stay in the moment, focus on today, focus on what can we do today to get better,” Richt said. “Even throughout the year, our goal was to get back to Atlanta. We were here last year and didn’t finish very well obviously so, we wanted to come back and have a better showing than we had a year ago.”
