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Smart: Dawgs need to play a game

Kirby Smart says he's ready to see his Dawgs play a game. (Radi Nabulsi)

It’s time to play a game.

Those were the words of head coach Kirby Smart, who said the only way he’ll know how much progress his Bulldogs have made is to see what happens Saturday against North Carolina (5;30 p.m., ESPN).

“We need to get to a game. It’s our next step. We need to show the progress we’ve made and I don’t think we can take more steps forward until we have played a game,” Smart said. “When we play a game we’ll be able to say OK, this is how they responded in this adversity, in this situation. Regardless, there’s going to be good and bad things that happen and how our kids respond I don’t really know. I’ll only find that out Saturday night. I’m excited to find out how we’ll respond because I think that’s the only way we’re going to get better.”

Smart’s not the only one who feels that way.

According to junior linebacker Davin Bellamy, he’s simply ready to see another colored jersey.

“You kind of get tired hitting your own guys, so you really want to go turn loose on somebody else,” Bellamy said. “We’ve put in a lot of hard work like a lot of people have said. We lost a lot of guys on defense so a lot of guys have something to prove. Everybody’s very excited.”

Overall, Smart said he’s been pleased with how practice has gone.

The effort has been there, players have listened and been eager to learn.

If only Mother Nature had been more cooperative. Afternoon thundershowers interrupted a handful of practices, but not being able to work out inside to prepare for Saturday’s game at the Georgia Dome has been Smart’s biggest issue.

“My biggest frustration is you don’t get to practice where you play, and that’s inside. It’s not so much just the heat because you can control that by how much you do out there, you can cut back on what you do and how long you’re out there,” Smart said. “But to be able to practice on the same turf inside a building, I’ve always felt there we dropped a lot of balls inside because we were adjusting to the backdrop, things like that. That’s more of a concern for me than the weather. It’s not a perfect world, but we know the ends in sight and we can only control the things we can control.”

Fortunately for Smart, he was able to take his Bulldogs to the Georgia Dome last Saturday for what was basically an opportunity to get acclimated with the conditions, as many of his players had never been there before.

“Here’s my experience. When you go inside, you practice faster, everything’s faster. It was that way in the Dome the other day. Everything’s faster, but the mental toughness of going outside, there’s an aspect to that,” Smart said. “So this group has had to do a lot of that. You may lose in one area but gain in one area but I don’t think you get to sustain in practice as long when you do that. You’ve got to be smart as a coach how much you do out there.”

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