Kirby Smart hopes Georgia fans prove they are elite to Tonka Hemingway, South Carolina

This Saturday, South Carolina is going to travel to Athens to take on the Georgia Bulldogs. Ahead of that game, head coach Kirby Smart said that Georgia fans will prove they’re elite to the Gamecocks’ players come game time.

Smart said this in response to one South Carolina player in particular, Tonka Hemingway. At SEC Media Days, Hemingway was asked about the toughest road environments to play in. He praised the environments at Tennessee and Texas A&M but didn’t bring up Georgia as a tough environment.

“I’m expecting it to be that,” Kirby Smart said. “If people want to question whether our fans are elite, we’ll find out Saturday, right?”

Smart also added that the fans will have to use Hemingway skipping them as a top-tier road trip as a form of motivation.

“It sounds like Tonka called them out. Maybe use Tonka for motivation and let him be the one that spurns our group to come out there at 3:30 and be really loud and fired up. I certainly hope our fan base will. They’ve answered the bell every single time. I don’t know why they wouldn’t now.”

With all due respect to Tonka Hemingway, he didn’t seem to leave Georgia off his list for any malicious reasons. He was just praising the other schools. After all, at SEC Media Days, Hemingway also said that he thinks Georgia and South Carolina should be permanent rivals in the new scheduling model.

“Conference game? I definitely probably say that Georgia game,” Tonka Hemingway said. “I feel like even the fans love that game. It’s always a good turnout. Not that far from South Carolina, so…”

Georgia has dominated the all-time series with South Carolina, holding a 54-19-2 record in the series. South Carolina has only beaten Georgia once during the Kirby Smart era.

Kirby Smart says the offense still has work to do

Despite scoring 48 and 45 points in their first two games, Kirby Smart thinks that the Georgia Bulldogs still have work to do on the offensive side of the ball.

“Been proud of them,” Smart said during the Ball State win. “We missed a couple things that we wanted to improve on, but at the end of the day they’re being efficient, doing a good job. We’ve got to continue to work on the run game and be more efficient in the run game, but we’ve got a quarterback that’s an accurate passer, we’ve got some explosive players around him and we’re still trying to figure all that out.”