Michel and Bulldogs grind down Georgia Tech — Sony Michel

The Yellow Jackets also avoided the embarrassment of their first home shutout since a 7-0 loss to Georgia in 1957.

Oliver, a redshirt senior, played at Lithia Springs before signing with Georgia Tech.

Sony Michel had 24 carries for 149 yards, including a 34-yard touchdown run to cap Georgia’s opening drive.

“I want to be at Georgia, the whole staff wants to be at Georgia”, Pruitt said.

“Sometimes when you win as many as we were winning you tend to forget the rivalry hatred, but it’s real again….” “We fought our way back and had an opportunity to win at the end”. Georgia was picked to win the Southeastern Conference’s Eastern Division.

For Georgia Tech (3-9), it was the fitting close to a dismal season. Head coach Mark Richt had this to say about his team’s current philosophy: “We’ve chose to slow the game down a little bit”, Richt said”.

“A microcosm of our season”, Johnson moaned. He acknowledged he had no answers following last week’s 38-21 loss at Miami. “I think the Lord is in charge of everything, so I don’t worry too much about it”. Overall, Tech was held to a season-low 7 points today and had just 194 yards on the ground after averaging 31 points/game and 261 rushing yards/game.

“It’s kind of been like a dyke”, he said.

While Georgia’s stellar defensive numbers are skewed somewhat due to playing in the offensive inept SEC East, the Dawgs are still one of the better stop units the Yellow Jackets will have faced this season. As wide receiver Brandon Oliver will be making his last appearance in the game as a senior while freshman running back Mikel Lands-Davis will see his first game against the Bulldogs. “It’s a hate game”. “You have got to pay attention to him because he was the leading scorer at Virginia Tech and now he comes to a team that really needs him that has the big guys inside”.

“They are an outstanding football team and everybody knows that”, said Richt. He practiced on Wednesday and is expected to play. “We had two wide open threes with our two best 3-point shooters, but we just weren’t able to get it to go down”.

Kaaya joins Paxton Lynch (Memphis) and Dak Prescott (Mississippi State) as the only quarterbacks in FBS – and the lone sophomore – to throw for at least 2,500 yards and 14 TDs and for fewer than five interceptions. He’s up to 1,075 yards and six touchdowns on the ground as well as 25 catches for 270 yards and three scores through the air.

“It’s been a great weekend”, said Richt. I don’t think he played as well as he did a year ago, but I’m not sure that was all his fault … Richt said the offenses “are very different” but still provided his defense a chance to practice “the fundamentals of assignment football”. But the Jackets could rush for only 216 yards against Notre Dame and 71 against Clemson, two opponents that – like Georgia – had both the manpower and the coaching to limit this offense. Johnson seemed certain there would be changes coming fairly quickly to the program, which, I can only hope, means some coaching staff changes.

“They did a good job protecting the ball”, White said.