Last year's loss motivates Bulldogs

ATHENS, Ga. --- In the past year, Michael Moore and his Georgia teammates have been reminded often about the most lopsided defeat in coach Mark Richt's nine seasons in Athens and the way Florida prolonged the Bulldogs' agony.

"All I want to say about that is we thought about that every single day we worked out and every single day we had mat drills," said Moore, a senior receiver. "I'll just keep it at that."

Georgia players haven't forgotten the final score from last year's game in Jacksonville: Gators 49, Bulldogs 10.

"It's posted up everywhere," linebacker Rennie Curran said. "That's been motivating us, that score and what happened at the end of the game.

"That's something ... we don't want to let happen again."

If the 39-point loss wasn't hard enough to swallow, Georgia had to endure Florida coach Urban Meyer calling a timeout with 44 seconds to play, then another with 30 seconds left.

"That's motivation for me when he called that timeout," Georgia receiver A.J. Green said. "That's a sign of disrespect. I'm going to go out there and play my heart out."

Just like Florida was driven by how the Bulldogs celebrated as a team in 2007 after its first touchdown, when they made the Jacksonville Municipal Stadium end zone their dance floor in a 42-30 Georgia win, the sledgehammer the Gators dropped on the Bulldogs still lingers.

"We were reminded," Moore said. "We were reminded in a big way."

It has provided the Bulldogs added fuel heading into Saturday's game against top-ranked Florida.

"I'm pretty sure it's in everybody's mind, especially if you love to compete," defensive end Justin Houston said. "You don't like to lose, especially by that much."

Gator players had to do 42 repetitions on every weight station and 188 sit-ups, push-ups and crunches during summer workouts in 2008 to mark Knowshon Moreno's rushing total against them the previous year.

"I don't want to get into what we did," Moore said, "but we were reminded pretty well about it and we still are reminded about it every day when we come to practice. We know about it."

Meyer stood with his arms crossed on the sidelines during the timeouts. Quarterback Tim Tebow waved a towel to ecstatic Gators fans in the crowd.

"Well, we'll have something to talk about next year, won't we?" CBS analyst Gary Danielson said on air.

Georgia defensive tackle Jeff Owens watched from the stands because he was out for the year with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his knee.

"It was embarrassing," Owens said. "They tried to run the scoreboard up, call timeouts and try to score more points. A team doesn't forget that. We know we have to get after them."

The Gators had the motivational edge last year, but now it's the Bulldogs who could be more fired up.

"There's always that concern, but there's nothing you can do about it other than what we do to get ourselves better," Meyer said. "I know our players and I know how our coaches feel about the quality of athlete on that team. All of that other stuff's not really a concern."

Reach Marc Weiszer at marc.weiszer@morris.com.