FOOTBALL
Coach Mark Richt
Opening Statement…
“We’re playing Georgia Southern this week, and we normally play them about every four years. That’s been the routine. Every time they show up I kind of wish we didn’t set it up. They’re just a very good football team – one that causes all kinds of problems for us, especially defensively to try to defend their running game and their offensive team. They mostly run the ball. When they do throw it they average about 22 yards a completion, so they’re very effective when they do throw it. They’re a running football team. They average over 400 yards a game rushing. They actually had 529 yards rushing last week, so they’re just very good at what they do. Up front, both lines are not the biggest guys that we would normally run up against, but they are very athletic. They are perfect for what they do. They do a lot of zone blocking, but they’ll get to the second level and work on the cut blocks. They do a lot of speed sweeps, and they need a lot of guys who can run and hit, and they have a bunch of those. They do just a great job overall.”
“Georgia Southern is led by Coach Jeff Monken, who has done a super job. They have the third-best winning percentage in the history of college football behind Michigan and Notre Dame. They’re used to winning, and I’ve been saying it all along: when you play teams that are used to winning, they are very difficult to beat. They show up with a great plan, they have tremendous habits, and they’re used to winning. They’re coming here to win the game. I know that’s their plan. I’ve actually looked at some of their comments from the last ballgame, and what they are thinking about coming into this game. You could tell they’ve got a mind to come and upset Georgia, so we know we have a great challenge ahead. It’s good to be back home between the hedges, and we’re looking forward to seeing our fan base at the Dawg Walk. We’ll be ready to play.”
On preparing for Georgia Southern and Georgia Tech prior to the SEC Championship…
“We just have to worry about that when the time comes. We can’t do anything other than defend who we are going to play. So that’s what we’re doing. When that’s through, we’ll have to change gears again certainly as far as the mentality. Some of the schemes and responsibilities will be vastly different, there’s no doubt about that. If we don’t focus on this we’ll get embarrassed badly.”
On whether it’s an advantage to play Georgia Southern before Georgia Tech…
“A lot of time it’s a matter of making it fit everybody’s schedule. We had the open date there, and we have to make sure it fits Georgia Southern’s schedule as well, and it just ended up working out that that’s where it got placed. I think if you’re going to play that type of offense twice in a season it’s probably better to do it back-to-back rather than in game four and game nine. You kind of go back and forth on a certain mentality, and if we can maintain the same mentality for two weeks in a row instead of having to go back and forth, it’s probably not a bad thing, but we’ll see how the results end up.”
On Georgia Tech being able to see how Georgia defends against Georgia Southern this week…
“I’m not worried about Tech right now. We can talk about that next week. We know obviously that these teams are similar in their offensive styles, but all we can do is line up and defend whomever we’re playing. That’s all I’m worried about right now.”
On not letting football define who he is…
“That’s part of what helps keep my sanity sometimes because the job can consume you and the job can become everything to you, and then all of the sudden there’s nothing else. We sacrifice and we work, but I’m not going to sacrifice my relationship with my wife and my children. I want to have some time with my family. I get up and have breakfast every morning with my wife and my kids, and we actually have a little devotional every day. If I got in any earlier than that, I’d miss them in the morning, I’d miss them at night, and I’d never see them. I don’t want it to consume me to the point where that’s all I’ve got in life is my job because we know that our jobs can come and they can go. You can have great times or you can have bad times, and if all of your well-being is tied in to what you do, I just think it’s a dangerous place to be. I don’t think it’s a healthy place to be.”
On not getting distracted with the current BCS race…
“I don’t worry about it. I don’t because I can’t control it. If you worry about stuff you can’t control, you’re really wasting your time and you’re going to make yourself crazy a little bit, so I can’t control it. I can only control what we do on a weekly basis. It’s just like when we lost the first game to South Carolina. Once we lost it, we couldn’t do anything other than control trying to win and hope something good happened, but we weren’t going crazy about it. Of course it happened pretty fast this particular year. Last year it took a long time, but it’s the motivation of still having your goals out in front of you. When it’s mathematically possible to win the East, there’s still hope, so you keep grinding and trying to reach your goal. If it came a time where we could not possibly win the East, then it takes a little esteem out of you and we would have had to find ways to motivate in new ways to reach our goals.”
On whether or not he speaks to his players about not getting caught up in BCS conversation…
“No, I haven’t talked to them about it. We just talk about focusing on Georgia Southern. I don’t know how often they look at that or think about that.”
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