Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity sees Year 2 magic in the Bulldogs’ future.

McGarity sees Kirby Smart’s debut season at UGA as a season of “almost,” according to the Athens Banner-Herald’s Nicole Saavedra, pointing to the team’s close losses (Vanderbilt, Tennessee and Georgia Tech). McGarity told the Rotary Club of Athens that he predicts more wins in Smart’s second year.

“We were so close, but I really, truly now feel this is the year we’re going to get over that hump, because we have so many good things in place and we’ve got a lot of momentum building in our program, inside our world,” McGarity said.

A big part of that momentum comes from the recruiting trail. While transition-year classes sometimes suffer, Smart signed the No. 8-ranked class headlined by 5-star prospects Jacob Eason, Isaac Nauta and Mecole Hardman Jr. This past February, Smart brought in even more blue-chip talent with the No. 3-ranked class.

To many, getting over the hump is getting back to Atlanta. Since the Bulldogs’ 2012 appearance in the SEC Championship Game, the SEC East has been won by Missouri (2013-14) and Florida (2015-16).

Once things wrap up in Hoover, the SEC will release media members’ votes on which team will win each division and the SEC championship game, and the media buzz this offseason has been that Georgia will be the favorite in the SEC East. A year from now, McGarity obviously does not want to be looking back at the 2017 season as another year of “almost.”