Georgia opens as four-score favorite over South Carolina
Georgia is 2-0 on the 2023 season and is set to open league play on Saturday. South Carolina will come into town to take on the No. 1-ranked Bulldogs and it will do so as a heavy underdog. Draft Kings has UGA as the 27-point favorite.
Georgia is going for its fourth straight win over South Carolina and it’s third straight since Shane Beamer became the head coach. The Gamecocks were the visiting team to enter Sanford Stadium and come out with a win. That happened in 2019 when South Carolina picked off three Jake Fromm passes and got a missed field goal from Rodrigo Blankenship in overtime to win 20-17.
Since then the Bulldogs have reeled off 20 straight wins at home and they’ll be looking to keep another streak going. Dating back to the 2021 College Football Playoff Georgia has won 19 games in a row. If you take it back to the four-game win streak to end the 2020 season, a time period that included a blowout win over the Gamecocks in Columbia, Kirby Smart and company have been victorious in 35 of their last 36 games.
South Carolina is coming off its first win of the season against Furman. It took the Paladins down by a score of 47-21 at Williams-Brice Stadium. The season opener didn’t go so well as North Carolina beat the Gamecocks 31-17 in the Duke’s Mayo Classic.
Georgia has played a one FCS and one Group of Five opponent to begin the season. It got off to slow starts in both games but took down UT-Martin by a score of 48-7 and Ball State by a score of 45-3. The Bulldogs rank No. 1 in both the AP and coaches’ polls.
“I challenged our guys to be honest with yourself last week, assess your performance and then come out this week and get better,” Smart said after Georgia’s win over Ball State. “I thought our guys had an unbelievable week of practice. I thought our Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday may have been the best in seven or eight years. I was very impressed with the way they handled the practice, regardless of who it was. We needed to practice better than the previous week and we did that. I was proud of the energy and enthusiasm that sparked us. I was really excited about aht. Mews continues to do that and he provides energy. I think it’s kind of like basketball where you play really good defense and it helps your offense. You play really good special teams and it helps your offense. So we’re able to do that today. A lot of guys contributed. Our goal is to have a lot of guys be able to contribute and I was proud of that. A lot of good. A lot of things we can continue to work on and we definitely need to be better.”
