UGA Sports Communications
Coach Kirby Smart
Opening Statement …
“You know, I think I’ll open with immense amount of respect for Coach Stoops. The atmosphere, the culture he created here. I tried to tell everybody all week, nobody listened to me. I know what this teams made out of, I know how tough he coaches, I know several coaches on the staff, I’ve known them for a long time. I have tremendous respect. When they get disrespected like they did last week and they listen to it for a week, they come out ready to play. I think our kids listen to that; they understood it but also think it’s a tough environment to play in. So proud of the resiliency our kids showed. They never flinched. We thought this would be a blow-by-blow game. We talked all week about blow-by-blow, we had more blows than them. And we said that the first chop of the tree doesn’t chop the tree down, it takes sometimes two other sets and two axes. It took every single one tonight to get the job done. What I will say, I’m proud of our team, proud of our leadership. Honestly, we even won this game, the culture. The culture of our team never panicked. I saw more leadership tonight than I’ve seen all season. And you guys asked me a thousand questions about what about this team this, this team this, I don’t know much about this team, but I found out more tonight than I’ve known them this morning. That makes me extremely proud of how they responded, how they handled some difficult situations.”
On how important for them to face adversity and overcome it …
“I’d rather not face it. I mean, I didn’t, I’d prefer to be that way. But I also told people all week. We played on the road to Missouri two years ago I guess, three years ago.? I don’t know, we’ve been on the road to Auburn. I get it. When you go on the road for the first time in the SEC at night, and you keep a team in the game, you don’t start fast. It’s going to be a challenge, and we responded to the challenge. The best thing is we got a lot of things to work on.”
On Georgia's offense playing with fire …
“Playing with fire or not scoring first? I wouldn’t call that playing with fire, I would call that not playing. Playing with fire is like playing with your hair on fire and playing hard. I do think they play hard. I think we have a really good offensive staff, we have a really good offense, we have people around them, we have a good quarterback. We’ve got to do a good job and go out and execute. I mean say what you want about Kentucky's defense, but Kentucky's defense is pretty good to me. We’ll judge that at the end of the year, and I think people are looking at that the wrong way of the South Carolina game. I think Kentucky has a really good defense and I think Clemson’s got a really good defense. We’ve got to do a better job at starting faster.”
On how playing in Kentucky’s atmosphere will help the team and young guys …
“It will be an adventure every time we go on the road. It’s a tough schedule guys, when we got it, I knew it. The first game I pointed out was Kentucky because everybody was talking about the other three on the road, but I was like guys we’re going to Kentucky on the road. And people don’t credit them because they had turnovers against South Carolina, and they didn’t play well against South Carolina. But that team was going to play well tonight, and they did. And we responded.”
Carson Beck, Redshirt Senior, Quarterback
On making adjustments to pull off the win….
“Like you said, it’s not easy. Especially on the road. You go back and look at two road SEC games in the past three years. Missouri 2022, dog fight. Last year, Auburn, dog fight. This year, dog fight. We knew it was going to be a dog fight coming in. We knew it was gonna have to be blow by blow. I think there’s a thing we have to fix. Going to watch the film and improve on those. They’re a physical team and a lot of respect there, but we were able to pull it out.”
On defense still not allowing a touchdown…
“It’s unbelievable. You look at our defensive-line, freshmen are stepping up. We got freshmen all over the field. Guys are being put in places, fighting through injuries, all the above. I’m super proud of them and how they played tonight.”
On seeing Brock Vandagriff…
“Awesome for him. Really proud of him. He played a pretty good game tonight. Haven’t seen him in forever. Actually, I didn’t even get to talk to him or see him after the game. But obviously proud of him and best of luck to him in the future.”
Damon Wilson II, Sophomore, Outside Linebacker
On assessing the defensive performance today…
“Gotta get better. Coach Smart said, ‘We’re going to have teams that are going to have guys we will compete with’, so we just got to get better from here. This was not our best game. Just got to do more. Monday’s a recovery day.”
On not playing the best, but winning on the road…
“Composure, connection, resiliency. All of those going in. When it gets hard, you have to come together. Can’t separate, can’t fold. CJ was telling us ‘We got to stay connected, stay together.’ Those are our traits. We live by those, abide by those.”
On what the defense would say in order to hold UK to only FGs in the red zone…
“Strike. We got to strike. We got to fight. I mean, we get to the red zone, I think it was 92% run, and we knew they were going to run the ball. So, there was no other thing besides run, run, run. Put our big boys in, they got a strike.”
Julian Humphrey, Redshirt Sophomore, Defensive Back
On some key players missing …
"That's how it is in practice, we prepare for this, and we all rotate if one can't play. I pretty much knew what was going to happen going into this game. I just had to prepare myself for it."
On bigger games ahead…
"The thing about those teams is we have to see what they do. What is their game plan moving forward? How they hit their targets and all that they do."
On what they learned about themselves today…
"I'll say that obviously, a big part of our downfall today was how we were missing a lot of guys. I think once we get them back we’ll be more successful. With those guys back well be more up there and better."
Dominic Lovett, Senior, Wide Receiver
On Kentucky…
"They played with energy and physicality; they played a great game. Props to them. I'm not going to say that we couldn't get in a rhythm that is simply just a very good team."
On the lone touchdown…
"That was big, Trevor Etienne had been working all week. When there were other numbers off, he stepped up and played big. He did so good."
On what the team needs to work on in the bye week…
"Everything, we got to go see the doctor we have to get better in all aspects and phases."
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