Nowhere to go but up: what 0-2 sounds like.

Remarkably similar sentiments expressed by two coaches at winless major programs –

Brian Kelly:  “I like our players. I like where we’re going. I know you’ve got to win; I get that,” he said. “We should have obviously taken care of the football better, made a couple plays here or there, coached a little bit better. We’re all disappointed. It’s not acceptable to lose, especially at Notre Dame.”

Mark Richt:

“That hasn’t changed one bit,” Richt said. “Let’s face it, could that game Saturday have gone either way? I think it’s pretty obvious that it could have. Did we improve tremendously in a lot of areas? There’s no doubt about that.

“I left the field sick about losing but encouraged about the team — encouraged about so many things that are important to winning.”

There are only so many ways for a coach to spin the hope that his team will get buttah.

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A last (statistical) peek back at Georgia-SC

Bill Connelly’s chart holds few surprises.  Georgia lost, despite being the superior offensive team, because of brutal turnovers, Marcus Lattimore and an inability to cash in on a dominant first quarter beyond two field goals.  If there’s an unexpected positive to take away from his post, it’s that the offensive line managed to get a decent push in the running game.

And one other note, courtesy of Matt Hinton:

… the offense itself hasn’t suffered at all in Richt’s absence — in fact, scoring, total offense and pass efficiency averages from 2008-10 were slightly better than the averages in the salad days, and are already on a similar pace through the first two games this year. Saturday’s 436-yard, 42-point outburst against South Carolina was UGA’s sixth 40-point effort in its last eight games.

It’s frustrating.  You get the sense that in some ways the team is very close to success, but there’s no denying that it continues to suffer from an inability to close the deal.

Sometimes, even when you learn from history, you can be doomed.

We all take our shots at him, but Mike Bobo is far from clueless, at least judging from this comment about Isaiah Crowell:

“I’d say he’s 20-25-carries-a-game guy and certain games it might be more,” Bobo said. “And then you’ve got about 15 or so for the other guy. You’d like to run it around 40 times a game, the way I see things. He might be able get 30 of them.”

Even better, it sounds like the coaches were ready to do that against South Carolina.  Unfortunately it turned out to be one on those situations where the spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak.

“As the game was going on, I thought he was running well,” Richt said. “But when I looked at the film, he really made some great runs. He did take a shot in the ribs and was having trouble breathing. I think his energy level and his excitement level got to where he’d raise his hand and want to come off. You say, ‘Stay in there,’ but you don’t know why he wants to come out to begin with. So when he wanted to come out, he came out.

“But I think he’ll stay in a little bit more than a couple of runs, although there were a couple of relatively long runs. It was relatively hot at that moment. I think his endurance will build as we go, too, and as he prepares and as the weather cools throughout the season.”

If you’re like me, you’ve seen a certain amount of chatter about how this year’s team can try to take some inspiration from how Georgia was able to turn its 2007 season around.  If a parallel develops between the two seasons, it won’t be without some potential irony.  The what-could-have-been part of that season was not feeding Knowshon Moreno the ball enough in the South Carolina loss.  That was by design.  You wonder how Bobo and Richt will feel if, knowing that they weren’t going to make the same mistake twice, Georgia still comes up just short of an SEC East title in 2011.

One less thing to worry about

This sounds pretty definitive.  And may be proof that Isaiah Crowell doesn’t spend much time on the Internet.

… Crowell said he’s never been approached by anybody within the program about the number issue.

“Nobody. That’s a non-issue,” Crowell said. “I don’t really hear too many people saying anything about it. … Nobody else besides the media says anything about it.”