LEXINGTON, Ky. – The game was not pretty.

A 13-12 squeaker on the road at Kentucky was not what the top-ranked Bulldogs were expecting. But Kirby Smart was in a better mood than most thought he would have been.

Although the Bulldogs came within a whisker of dropping their first regular season game in 42 tries, Georgia’s head coach said his team learned more about itself than it had at any other time this season.

“I'm so proud of the resiliency our kids showed. They never flinched. We thought this would be a blow-by-blow game, and we talked all week about blow-by-blow.We said the first chop of the tree doesn't chop the tree down. It takes sometimes 272 axe chops, and it took every single one tonight to get the job done,” Smart said. “What I will say is I'm proud of our team. I'm proud of our leadership. I honestly believe we won this game with culture, and the culture of our team never panicked."

It's a good thing it did not.

A 24-point favorite, Georgia appeared on the verge of its biggest upset in years before the Bulldogs rallied back in the fourth with the game's lone touchdown, a 2-yard run by Branson Robinson.

"I saw more leadership tonight than I've seen all season. I don't know much about this team, but I found out more tonight than I've known up to this point, and that makes me extremely proud of how they responded and how they handled some difficult situations," Smart said. "I'd rather not have faced it. I mean, I didn't prefer it to be that way, but I also tell people all week, you know … I knew it.”

In the first half just about everything that did go wrong for Georgia did.

Although the defense and kicking game did their part, Georgia’s offense sputtered against a Kentucky defense that bore no resemblance to the one that struggled against South Carolina a week ago.

There were several issues.

A pair of missed blocks by tight end Ben Yurosek resulted in lost yardage and subsequent during the Bulldogs’ second drive

But he was far from alone, as Kentucky held Georgia to just 32 rushing yards and just 102 for the game.

Quarterback Carson Beck was unable to find his rhythm, either. The senior attempted 11 passes, completing five for just 32 yards, before finishing 15 of 24 for 160 yards.

“You look at Missouri in 2022, dogfight. Auburn last year, dogfight,” Beck said. “We knew this was going to be a dogfight against Kentucky. We’ve got things we need to fix. We’ll look at the film and see what that is, but we will.”

The Bulldogs had better.

Georgia's schedule becomes much tougher in two weeks when the Bulldogs travel to Alabama. Contests against Texas, Tennessee, and Ole Miss also loom.

“I thought we got on rhythm a little bit. When we hit plays, we were able to do some drop back passing. We hit a couple plays. We hit fastball with it,” Smart said. “But we never really found any rhythm the whole night, you know, and that's disappointing because we're a better offense than we played (Saturday), and I can't answer why. I'll have to watch it and see, but we're better than we played, too.”