COLUMBIA —Through five games it was the most potent offense in Georgia football history, scoring almost at will and racking up staggering amounts of yards.
Then it left the tracks after colliding with No. 6 South Carolina’s smothering defense.
The No. 5 Bulldogs met their match on Saturday at Williams-Brice Stadium, looking alternately bewildered and bullied against a unit that set the tone early and took Georgia out of the game in the first quarter.
“I told our guys the bad news was that we took a whipping,” Georgia coach Mark Richt said. “The good news is we took it together. It was a team loss to a very good football team.”
Brison Williams led the Gamecocks with seven unassisted tackles but Shaq Williams and Jadeveon Clowney stayed busy as well.
The final score was 35-7, with the visitors’ points coming after USC was up 35-0 and playing out the string of a dominating victory.
“Those were consolation points there at the end,” Richt said.
In the end the Bulldogs mustered only 224 yards of total offense, much of that coming when the line of cars that came from Athens were headed back to the Peach State.
The game started out badly and stayed that way for the defending SEC East champions.
Trailing 21-0 with 5:18 still to play in the opening frame, Georgia’s offense was faced with a dire situation that required a rapid response.
They couldn’t deliver.
After 15 minutes the team that was averaging more than 48.2 points per outing and had piled up 1,840 yards over its last three games was held to two first downs and only 39 yards.
And in the second quarter when the Bulldogs were six feet away from denting the scoreboard and making this a game, the USC “D” rose up yet again.
A drive that began at the Georgia 19 ended at the Gamecocks’ 1, with Rantavious Wooten reeling in an Aaron Murray pass on a fourth-and-goal play at the 2 but failing to get it to — or past — the South Carolina goal line.
When the teams headed to the locker room the score still stood at 21-0 and UGA had accounted for only 67 yards.
It was the first time since the 2009 game against LSU that Richt’s team had failed to score in the first half, and it was UGA’s largest halftime deficit since trailing Alabama 31-0 in 2008.
“We killed ourselves with too many third and longs,” Murray said. “We’d faced adversity all year and we weren’t going to give up, but we have to go back and look at the film and see what we did wrong.
“We’ve still got a long season to go.”
While Georgia was amassing plenty of points and plenty of yards prior to Saturday the rushing tandem of freshmen Todd Gurley and Keith Marshall was a major reason for the successful run.
They, too, struggled on Saturday, with Gurley netting 39 yards on 13 carries and Keith Marshall running for 37 on 12 totes.
Murray was 11-31-1 for 109 yards in one of his worst outings as a collegian.
link: http://www.independentmail.com/news/2012/oct/06/georgia-offense-crumbles-against-south-carolina-de/
Then it left the tracks after colliding with No. 6 South Carolina’s smothering defense.
The No. 5 Bulldogs met their match on Saturday at Williams-Brice Stadium, looking alternately bewildered and bullied against a unit that set the tone early and took Georgia out of the game in the first quarter.
“I told our guys the bad news was that we took a whipping,” Georgia coach Mark Richt said. “The good news is we took it together. It was a team loss to a very good football team.”
Brison Williams led the Gamecocks with seven unassisted tackles but Shaq Williams and Jadeveon Clowney stayed busy as well.
The final score was 35-7, with the visitors’ points coming after USC was up 35-0 and playing out the string of a dominating victory.
“Those were consolation points there at the end,” Richt said.
In the end the Bulldogs mustered only 224 yards of total offense, much of that coming when the line of cars that came from Athens were headed back to the Peach State.
The game started out badly and stayed that way for the defending SEC East champions.
Trailing 21-0 with 5:18 still to play in the opening frame, Georgia’s offense was faced with a dire situation that required a rapid response.
They couldn’t deliver.
After 15 minutes the team that was averaging more than 48.2 points per outing and had piled up 1,840 yards over its last three games was held to two first downs and only 39 yards.
And in the second quarter when the Bulldogs were six feet away from denting the scoreboard and making this a game, the USC “D” rose up yet again.
A drive that began at the Georgia 19 ended at the Gamecocks’ 1, with Rantavious Wooten reeling in an Aaron Murray pass on a fourth-and-goal play at the 2 but failing to get it to — or past — the South Carolina goal line.
When the teams headed to the locker room the score still stood at 21-0 and UGA had accounted for only 67 yards.
It was the first time since the 2009 game against LSU that Richt’s team had failed to score in the first half, and it was UGA’s largest halftime deficit since trailing Alabama 31-0 in 2008.
“We killed ourselves with too many third and longs,” Murray said. “We’d faced adversity all year and we weren’t going to give up, but we have to go back and look at the film and see what we did wrong.
“We’ve still got a long season to go.”
While Georgia was amassing plenty of points and plenty of yards prior to Saturday the rushing tandem of freshmen Todd Gurley and Keith Marshall was a major reason for the successful run.
They, too, struggled on Saturday, with Gurley netting 39 yards on 13 carries and Keith Marshall running for 37 on 12 totes.
Murray was 11-31-1 for 109 yards in one of his worst outings as a collegian.
link: http://www.independentmail.com/news/2012/oct/06/georgia-offense-crumbles-against-south-carolina-de/