Kirby Smart 'counting on' Georgia crowd to influence Saturday
Kirby Smart is never one to mince words, and the Georgia head coach did not begin to do so this week when discussing what he expects from the Bulldog faithful for Saturday’s night game against the Ole Miss Rebels.
“We need it to be as great an atmosphere in Sanford Stadium as it’s ever been to help take care of our home-field advantage that we need to have,” Smart said during the week’s opening press conference on Monday.
In his mind, there’s no denying the influence that almost 93,000 screaming Dawg fans can bring to the table when it comes to throwing Lane Kiffin’s squad off of their game.
“Yeah, they can have a huge impact, and we need them to. I’m counting on them to have a huge impact,” Smart said. “Look, Ole Miss has played in some tough stadiums, not only this year but last year. They’ve gone across the SEC West and seen all the tough places to play, and it’s not going to be foreign to them to play in a tough environment. We certainly need to create it for them, and we need to create problems for them on defense and make it hard for them to play against us, along with the crowd. The crowd needs to have an impact and pull in the same direction for our players.”
Georgia crowd shaped a similar contest just last season
For Smart, the opportunity harkens back to another late-season matchup of major implications in which the crowd’s effort shifted the outcome.
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“Yeah, the Tennessee game was probably the most impactful game since I’ve been here. I felt like they impacted the game the most,” Smart said. “I feel like our crowd is really good for all our games. I mean, I don’t know — if you separate it in ratings, I don’t know where it fits. I definitely think it was very impactful at Tennessee, and I do think that we need that same impact for this game in terms of the way they go about things and how you can affect the game.”
His sentiments were echoed by sophomore safety Malaki Starks, who recalled the atmosphere against the Vols quite fondly as well.
“That Tennessee game last year was different. We fed off their energy and we communicated very well. The whole point of defense if verbally or nonverbally, being able to communicate,” he said. “That is something that when the noise does pick up, we have to be able to handle it. I think last year versus Tennessee we did that very well, so we have to be able to do it again because I know our fans are going to show up just like always.”
Georgia will host Ole Miss at 7 PM on Saturday night with the matchup broadcast on ESPN.
