How Georgia football is keeping focused on its CFP game, avoiding distractions

NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos...

NEW ORLEANS – Confetti fell on the Georgia football team in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Dec. 6 after the Bulldogs celebrated an SEC Championship victory.

Then it began preparations for a Sugar Bowl matchup in the College Football Playoff quarterfinals.

Just like last year.

This isn’t a rinse and repeat scenario.

Georgia is heading into Thursday’s showdown with Ole Miss at the Caesars Superdome with lessons learned from last season’s 23-10 loss to Notre Dame.

“It wasn’t necessarily a mindset issue last year, I just feel as though we didn’t attack the prep with everything we had,” tight end Lawson Luckie said. “I feel as a whole, the team was, I wouldn’t say burnt out, but it got repetitive I would say. There wasn’t the same fire, passion and energy and that’s a big thing we looked for going into this year. And I feel like that’s been the major difference going into this bowl prep.”

Georgia embraced those buzzwords — fire, passion and energy— in the offseason and have lived it during a 12-1 season to this point.

Oscar Delp, the senior tight end, said coach Kirby Smart came up with a plan to minimize distractions this go-round.

“There’s a lot of things last year that we could have handled better that we didn’t,” Delp said.

Georgia players have called this a business trip. They arrived late Monday afternoon and kickoff is at 8 p.m. ET Thursday, Jan. 1.

“We’re locked in for our guys,” Smart said.

Linebacker CJ Allen has told teammates to focus on the game ahead.

“My message has been you can come to New Orleans another time, any time you want to come,” he said. “So just be here for the reason, play your role, and understand why we are here.”

Smart said players were able to grab dinner on Monday night and get out and see New Orelans, but the bowl has brought some New Orleans flavor that they might see on Bourbon Street to the team hotel.

“It’s always a business trip for us,” Smart said. “There’s a bowl game, there’s a reward at the end of season, and then there’s a College Football Playoff game. When you’re part of a CFP, a College Football Playoff game, it’s meant to be a business trip it’s win or go home. I think that requires a certain kind of demeanor when you play in a game like that. That doesn’t change from year to year.”

Smart said his team is always “locked in” for bowl games.

“It’s just the approach to the game that we have here and the culture we have here,” he said. “That’s important to me that our guys approach that the right way, and they have thus far.”

Said Delp: “There’s some things we might have done last year and players might have done and kind of distracted ourselves and I think he’s going to help us stay away from that. We trust him and everything he’s got planned.”

Last year, of course, was unlike any bowl game. There was a deadly terrorist attack not far from the team hotel. Smart’s father, Sonny, was hospitalized after falling and died from complications from surgery that followed the game.

“Definitely had a lot of distractions,” safety KJ Bolden said. “A lot of things going on in the organization, that we just had our minds all over. But I’m not making that as an excuse as why we lost the game, because Notre Dame had the same distractions as well. I just feel like this year, we just got to come out faster, start better. …We have to come down here and focus and lock in and know what we got to get do.”

Ole Miss coach Pete Golding is spreading a similar message to his team.

“We understand what the mission is,” he said. “This isn’t a normal bowl game and here’s the vacation and the experience of a long year, and this is your last game. They’re all well aware that they’re playing for the opportunity to play again.”

Luckie said this game “isn’t going out in New Orleans and looking to make memories out in the city.”

“It’s making memories in the Superdome,” he said.

Players weren’t kept from going to the casino in the city last year, he said.

“It was a little more lax I would say,” he said. “Definitely not this year.”

Luckie said the proof of Georgia’s preparation will be shown come Thursday night.

“It’s all lip service,” Luckie said, “until we actually play and go out and put it together.”

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: How Georgia football’s focus could be a difference in this Sugar Bowl

More at NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos