Kirby Smart knows challenge that awaits at South Carolina

It’s another week in Athens and that means another game for the Georgia Bulldogs. This Saturday the challenge is an SEC opener at South Carolina. Head coach Kirby Smart understands how difficult that can be — playing a team that knows you well in what is always a tough environment.

“It’s on to South Carolina for us, an SEC East rival that we get to play each and every year. Going into an extremely tough environment to play in with a lot of guys that haven’t played in any kind of environment like that,” Smart said. “You know, the Mercedes game (against Oregon) was probably 70/80 percent Georgia fans. So it will be our first chance to play on the road, first chance to play SEC opponent. And looking forward to an opportunity to play these guys.”

As Smart pointed out, Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia is no friendly place to go play. Holding over 75,000 fans on what typically is a hot, September Saturday (although the forecast looks more promising than usual this week), Smart and everybody else in the Georgia building is expecting it to be hostile.

“The only asset to going into an environment like this is experience,” Smart said. “We’ve probably got 20 or 30 guys that have experience going into Auburn, Tennessee, places similar in terms of fan experience. So we’ve got some guys that can draw on experience. We’ve got some guys that will lean on those guys because they’ll be new. Any time you go on the road for the first time, guys have to get comfortable with that. We had that a little bit in Atlanta in terms of not being on our own field. But it certainly wasn’t the same kind of environment we’re going into this time. And we’ll have some guys that are young guys that will have to lean on those older players.”

Among those older players are offensive linemen Sedrick Van Pran and Warren McClendon. Both have been on teams that played at South Carolina, granted it came during the 2020 COVID-impacted season with a limited capacity on hand. Still, Van Pran and McClendon – and a large majority of the offense – started in those games last season at Auburn and Tennessee and can share with the others what to expect. As for the defense, they might be young, but nobody is expecting it to be all too loud when the home team is on offense, a changeup for that unit.

Smart also understands where the South Carolina program is at and where it’s headed. Second-year head coach Shane Beamer was on his original staff in Athens. They had known each other a long time before Beamer went to Oklahoma from Georgia after the 2017 season. Then, he was hired as the head coach of the Gamecocks in late 2020 and has instilled energy into the program the last two seasons.

“When I hired Shane, I’d known him for a long time. He was interested in coming and I thought it would be a great opportunity to jump into SEC and be part of our program, and he did,” Smart said about Beamer. “He’s created a lot of energy through his program through enthusiasm, their staff, they have an excellent staff at South Carolina. And just creating an environment of competition for their program to compete at a high level, which South Carolina’s always historically played Georgia, you know, really hard. It’s usually the first SEC game most years. They recruit our state hard. We recruit their state hard. So there’s a lot of things to that.”

This first SEC game of the season is by no means expected to be a cakewalk within the walls of the Butts-Mehre Building in Athens and Kirby Smart made that known on Monday, but Vegas sees it differently. Georgia opened as a 13.5-point favorite in May when the line first became available and has risen to a 24.5-point favorite according to Vegas Insider. That number has jumped over a touchdown since the season began.

Kickoff time on Saturday is set for 12:00 p.m. ET on ESPN. Sean McDonough, Todd Blackledge and Molly McGrath are on the call.