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Tuesday, September ai, aoio | The Rbd a Black
Sophomore safety set to erase memory of Arkansas mistake
By NICK PARKER
The Red & Black
Greg Childs caught Ryan Mallett’s pass on the side
lines, turned up field and avoided a missed tackle from
Georgia safety Shawn Williams before scoring the go
ahead touchdown.
On Monday, Williams took all the blame for the final
play.
“It was my fault,” Williams said. “I missed a tackle, so
that one’s on me.”
Childs said Monday that he thought Williams just
guessed incorrectly on which side of the field he was
going to turn up on when he caught the ball, but
Williams deflected that notion.
“It’s not a guessing game. It’s just a matter of how
you react," Williams said. “I guess I just overran it or
whatever. I should have [that tackle]."
Now that the play is in the past, though, Williams is
trying not to dwell on it. The sophomore was able to
gain some crucial in-game experience against the
Razorbacks, and he knows little good will come from
replaying the final defensive play over and over.
“I’ve watched the play, but after a while you have got
to move on because there’s nothing I can do about it,”
Williams said.
The fact that Williams was in the game in the first
place was due to the fact that Jakar Hamilton, who
started the game, got two first-half personal foul face
mask penalties and was pulled from the game for the
entire second half by the coaching staff.
“After the first half, I got those two penalties, and like
the old saying goes ‘the way you practice is the way you
play in the game,’ and I missed a day of practice last
week and it kind of threw me back, threw me off,”
Hamilton said. “I wasn’t really prepared like I should
have been because of that one day.”
Although Williams is heavily involved in the special
teams units, before Saturday, he had only received
about “15 snaps or so" on defense all coming in the
opener against Louisiana-Lafayette.
“I played the whole second half, and that was my first
time getting a lot of time on defense,” Williams said.
“But that’s not an excuse.”
Team remembers 2007, remains optimistic
Aron White admitted it’s “never as fun” coming in on
Monday after a loss as a win, but nevertheless, Georgia’s
focus remained the same Monday: turning its season
around.
“We approached it like we did any
other Monday. Of course guys got to
shake off the loss, but at the same time,
we know it’s a business, and we got to
get down to business when we’re here,”
White said. “It’s not time to wallow in the
past or to have self pity or anything like
that. We got to go out and keep our
heads high because we know we’re a bet
ter team than we’re showing. And at
times I think we played really well, but
we just got to put it together and play 60
minutes.”
One thing Georgia won’t do is blame each other for
the 1-2 start.
“A lot of locker rooms you’ll hear when they lose, peo
ple start pointing fingers. You don’t see that here,” tight
end Orson Charles said. “We lost, but we’re going to
watch film the next day, correct the mistakes, and later
that day start on the game plan. So it’s not really any
pointing fingers. We have strong enough leaders to say
‘Look, we’re not going to do that here.’”
And it’s that senior leadership that has been fre-
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quently reminding everyone of the 2007 Georgia team,
which lost two early games, but rallied to a No. 2 final
ranking and a berth in the Sugar Bowl. It was the efforts
of that 2007 team that led to Georgia’s No. 1 preseason
ranking in 2008.
In addition, in 2007, LSU lost two games within the
conference, but still came away with a national champi
onship trophy —a fact not lost on the Bulldogs.
“One thing that Coach [Mark] Rlcht did remind us is
it’s not over. We lost two early in 2007, and we ended up
being No. 2 in the nation. I feel like we have a similar
amount of talent on this team,” White said. “As long as
we approach it the right way, it’s not going to be insur
mountable to achieve a lot of our goals.”
Another driving force to turn it around is the
improvement the team has seen on the field in the last
two weeks, even if it hasn't resulted in wins.
After a first half in which the Georgia defense did lit
tle in the way of stopping Mallett or the Razorback
offense, the defense played substantially better in the
second half, even forcing the Razorbacks into three
straight three-and-out series in the fourth quarter.
The difference in the two halves allowed the offense
to develop a rhythm and claw back into the game.
“To me, the way we came out as the games go on, it’s
like were getting better and better,” Hamilton said of
the defense’s second-half improvement. “Every week
we’re competing, we're getting better and better. We
stopped the running game pretty good [against
Arkansas), but we just have minor mistakes that we can
fix. There’s nothing that we can’t fix.”
WHITE
SPORTS
FOOTBALL NOTEBOOK
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PHOTOS BY WES BLANKENSHIP Tut Kid * tun
▲ (Top) Quarterback Aaron Murray and his
teammates are confident the team will rebound
this season. (Above) Safety Shawn Williams
plans on putting the Arkansas game in the past.