Rivalry is known for its upsets

COLUMBIA --- So many championships and victories later, Georgia icon Vince Dooley still can't fully figure it out: Why'd his Bulldogs struggle so much with South Carolina?

It's a legacy that's stuck with the Bulldogs from Dooley all the way to current coach Mark Richt. South Carolina can't match Georgia's championship history nor its top-level recruiting in most years. Yet the Gamecocks have sprung more than their share of surprises on the confident Bulldogs through the years.

Georgia lost just twice last season. One of the losses was a 16-12 upset by South Carolina, which finished 6-6, as the Bulldogs went on to the Bowl Championship Series.

No. 2 Georgia (2-0) expects another tight one Saturday, when it opens Southeastern Conference play at South Carolina (1-1, 0-1).

"We've had some great teams that ended up being champions of the SEC that struggled" with South Carolina, Dooley said this week. "It's a good rivalry that's had a consistent history of that."

It didn't take Dooley, who coached 25 seasons, long to discover that.

The Gamecocks were in the midst of a 15-game nonwinning streak when they tied Dooley's first Georgia team 7-7 in 1964. Two years later, a South Carolina club that finished 1-9 and scored fewer than 10 points a game gave Dooley's SEC champions everything they wanted before Georgia got out with a 7-0 win.

Richt knows how Dooley feels.

South Carolina handed Richt his first loss at Georgia, a 14-9 defeat in 2001. Georgia won at least 10 games a year and three SEC titles the next four seasons, but only once beat the Gamecocks by more than a touchdown.

Georgia owns a 44-14-2 edge in the series, including winning five of the past six.

Georgia began the year No. 1 and leads the SEC in points scored and total offense. Knowshon Moreno, a high-profile Heisman Trophy contender, has six TDs in two games, almost halfway to last season's total of 14.

Then there's South Carolina, which is coming off a second loss in a row to Vanderbilt and has had trouble with quarterback play.

Spurrier believes his club has improved since last year's game, despite losing its past five SEC games.

"So, hopefully, we'll start playing a lot better," he said.