Georgia holds - somewhat surprisingly - at No. 2 in AP Poll
Just as the Coaches Poll did earlier in the afternoon, Georgia is staying at No. 2 according to AP Poll voters. The Bulldogs escaped an upset effort of Florida Saturday in Jacksonville, beating the Gators 34-20, and remain behind Oregon, who received all 62 first place votes.
We say somewhat surprisingly on Georgia’s hold at No. 2 though for a couple of reasons. It wasn’t a pretty win for Kirby Smart’s squad, trailing at halftime without a touchdown to show for and being tied at 20 with 5:00 to go in the game. Dominic Lovett gave Georgia the lead with 4:01 remaining before an interception by CJ Allen and ensuing touchdown from Dwight Phillips less than a minute later put the game on ice.
Only adding to the surprise though was the win of Ohio State over previously third-ranked Penn State. The Buckeyes – along with Miami and Texas – moved up one spot to No. 3, coming in just seven voting points behind Georgia.
“That was a tough one guys. We didn’t play our best game. I thought maybe the difference in the game obviously was in the second half. The difference in the game was our fans gave us some momentum, gave us some energy there, had some big defensive stops,” Kirby Smart told reporters after the win. “Obviously you cannot turn the ball over and beat good teams. And make no mistake about it, Florida’s a much improved team. I told Billy before the game that they’re playing really well, playing really good football and have been for four or five weeks now. They’ve avoided turnovers and they’ve run the ball well. The recipe for winning football is don’t turn the ball over, run the ball, and play good defense. And for the most part we’ve done that most of the year. We didn’t do that for a little bit of the half. We dominated most of the field position, most of the stats in terms of yards, but we all know turnovers. And some of those are on Carson, some of them aren’t, and we’ve got to do a good job helping him because when he’s needed to play well and we needed him to step up once again tonight, backed up, third down and — I don’t know what it was, third-and-5 maybe — he made plays. He did a great job.”
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Rounding out the top 10 are Penn State, Tennessee, Indiana, BYU and Notre Dame. Elsewhere in the top-25 are Georgia opponents Alabama (No. 11 – 41-34 L), Ole Miss (No. 16 – Nov. 9) and Clemson (No. 19 – 34-3 W). UGA takes on Ole Miss this weekend in Oxford followed by a date at home against the seventh-ranked Volunteers of Tennessee.
Of course the Coaches Poll and AP Poll won’t mean much come Tuesday. The first release of the College Football Playoff rankings will be announced at 7:00 p.m. ET on ESPN. Subsequent releases come on each Tuesday thereafter until Selection Sunday (December 8th) when the full 12-team Playoff bracket will be shared and attention turns towards the pursuit of a title in Atlanta come January.
