Top-ranked Georgia and Missouri square off Saturday night in a Southeastern Conference battle. The Bulldogs come in with a record of 4-0, and 1-0 in Southeastern Conference play. The Tigers are 2-2, and 0-1.
Georgia defeated Kent State 39-22 this past Saturday, holding off a tough Golden Flashes team that played for the Mid-American Conference Championship last year. Kirby Smart, in his seventh season at the Georgia helm, would be the first to say that his Bulldogs didn’t look like the No. 1 team in America last week. Georgia, which didn’t have a turnover in the first three games of the season, turned the football over three times in the first half against the Golden Flashes. All-American Brock Bowers had another sensational performance, scoring a pair of touchdowns and setting up another.
Mizzou is coming off a crushing loss to Auburn, falling to the Tigers from the Plains 17-14 at Jordan-Hare Stadium in overtime. Missouri had a couple of golden opportunities to pull out the win on the road but came up short. The Tigers fell behind 14-0 and fought back to tie Auburn, then played stout defense the rest of the way.
Georgia leads the all-time series with the Tigers 10-1, including last season’s 43-6 Bulldogs victory over Missouri en route to the 2021 National Championship. The first meeting between the teams took place on New Year’s Day 1960, as the 1959 Southeastern Conference champion Bulldogs, led by Fran Tarkenton, defeated Missouri in the Orange Bowl to finish 10-1 and No. 5 nationally.
Since Missouri joined the SEC in 2012, the Bulldogs have won nine of 10 meetings. The Tigers win came Between the Hedges in 2013, as Missouri downed the Dogs 41-26 at Sanford Stadium. That Mizzou team went 11-1 in the regular season, played in the SEC Championship Game and finished 12-2 with a Cotton Bowl title.
The Bulldogs have won eight straight in the series, with some tightly contested matchups. That includes a closing minute 28-27 victory over the Tigers in CoMo in 2016, Smart’s first intra-conference game as the head coach at his alma mater.
Miscues from this past weekend – likely a good cure of that famed “rat poison” – reiterates Smart’s push to “play to a standard,” along with the respect for the opposition. Which Georgia has a full dose of for the upset minded Tigers.