5 most important things Kirby Smart said ahead of South Carolina game
By Keith Farner
Published:
Georgia coach Kirby Smart held his weekly press conference on Monday to preview the South Carolina game and reiterated the upgrade in the opponent that will be present in the Gamecocks in Williams-Brice Stadium at 3:30 p.m. ET on Saturday on CBS.
Smart deflected a question about the “growth” of the rivalry with South Carolina, and simply said, “They’re all significant. That’s all I can say.”
But he praised one of South Carolina’s best players.
“Deebo Samuel may be the most underrated player in the country,” Smart said of the Gamecocks wide receiver who missed last year’s game with a broken leg. “The rest of the country doesn’t know what we in the SEC know.”
Smart described South Carolina’s receivers as a group as big and physical and that QB Jake Bentley does a tremendous job throwing the fade pass and touch passes and throwing vertical patterns with a high percentage.
Speaking of wide receivers, Georgia expects to get veteran WR Terry Godwin back after he’s missed several weeks with a lingering knee injury.
“He’s run the last few days,” Smart said. “He’s had a couple times where he’s come back and we thought he was going to be back, he just hasn’t been able to push it over the edge. He was able to work out Saturday prior to the we’re expecting to get him back. I won’t know that until later in the week. What he brings is experience and confidence. He’s got a really good feel with the quarterbacks. He’s a really good route-runner and he’s got great hands.”
Smart was pleased with freshman cornerback Tyson Campbell, who started against Austin Peay.
“He communicated more, and settled down more as the game went on. He’s got a lot of speed, he’s got a lot of toughness, he’s a competitor. … A lot of teams have young DB competitors, and the only way they grow up is to go play, so he needs to go play. We’ve got other guys that can roll in and play. Eric Stokes came in and played well, so did Mark Webb. So I feel a lot better about where we are at corner this year right now than at times in the past. Those guys have to play well this week, because they’ve got some really good wideouts.”
Smart on using both QBs Jake Fromm and Justin Fields Saturday:
“There’s no plan. We’ve got to go how things go and how the flow of the game goes. I thought he did a good job on Saturday and handled things well, but I don’t know what this game’s going to dictate or bring, so we’ll see.”
A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.
