What Was Said: Kirby Smart joins College GameDay before Peach Bowl
ATLANTA — Georgia head coach Kirby Smart joined ESPN’s College GameDay the morning before his Bulldogs take on the Buckeyes of Ohio State in the College Football Playoff semifinals tonight at the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl. Smart was asked about the defensive overhaul that occurred during the offseason and allowed Georgia to get back to the Playoffs as well as a couple of questions about the motivation of his team both coming into the season and into Saturday’s matchup. Here’s what Smart had to say.
Rece Davis: Kirby, we just heard your players and you talk about being the hunter not the hunted, and you’ve challenged them to find motivation during this month or so layoff in preparation for this game. What kind of hunters do we expect to see tonight?
Smart: Hungry hunters. I think that’s the only way to hunt. You’ve got to eat, and when you attack a game, you’ve got to attack it that way. I’m sure Ohio State feels the same way. There’s one way to go about playing in a semifinal game, and that’s as if it’s the only game and the only game you’re guaranteed. You’ve got to come out aggressive and come out swinging like I know both teams will.
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David Pollack: Coach, how do you, last year you had the Bama game in the SEC Championship Game so you had a reason to kind of create that. You had the revenge, you had the loss. How do you do that with a team that has been undefeated and what’s been the emphasis that you’ve placed in practice and on the guys?
Smart: You show them. You show them the tape. You show them the things we’ve done wrong. We didn’t exactly have a perfect SEC Championship Game. We had a lot of things to work on. We talk all the time about how the mighty fall, and what things bring people down. Our team’s well connected. We don’t think that you have to have a loss to play your best. Sometimes that does help. I certainly think that helped our team last year. But for us, it’s about how we play and how we do things. Our guys have practiced really physical the last couple of weeks, and I’m excited to see them go out and play tonight.
Pat McAfee: Coach, congratulations on all the success. Obviously being the reigning, defending National Champions there’s going to be a target on your back all season. You have performed fantastically. We saw a video of you picking off Peyton Manning back in the day so we know that you’re a defensive mastermind but you lose eight guys to the NFL Draft last year. At the beginning of the season I think a lot of people were wondering how this defense was going to come together. Chris Smith, Jalen Carter, what was it about this season that this defense really took shape, and what did you see from them? At what moment did you know that they could be a National Championship defense?
Smart: Well that moment was not in spring practice because we struggled through that area. We had some holes. Our offense attacked us and we knew we had some ground to make up. It made for a great offseason, a great conditioning season over the summer. Our players took a lot of ownership in getting better. Our players owned that on the defensive side of the ball, and our offense made us better. Our defensive staff, Glenn Schumann, Coach Muschamp have done an incredible job to get us in this position, and our kids have come out and played really hard. We didn’t play our best game last time out defensively, but our offense picked us up.
