There were no words of wisdom with three seconds remaining in Saturday night's Georgia-Kentucky football game.
Unless "relax" counts.
Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart admitted there wasn't too much to offer Rodrigo Blankenship before the redshirt freshman kicker booted a 25-yard field goal as time expired to lift Georgia to a 27-24 victory over the Wildcats at Commonwealth Stadium in Lexington.
"I didn't have a whole lot to say, because I don't like jinxing kids," Smart said. "He doesn't want to be messed with. He's that kind of kid."
Blankenship went 4-for-4 on field-goal attempts at Kentucky, and the Bulldogs needed every one of them to stop their 1-4 slide that had followed a 3-0 start. The backup to William Ham at the beginning of the season, Blankenship took over when Ham missed four of his first seven attempts.
After missing his first field-goal try at Ole Miss on Sept. 24, the 6-foot-1, 191-pound Blankenship has made nine straight.
"I'm just trying to take it one kick at a time," Blankenship said. "That's the only way to go with kicking. You just take it one step at a time and you move on, and you need to have short-term memory after every kick. Whether it's a make or a miss, you've got to treat it the same way and be able to move on to the next one."
The Bulldogs improved to 5-4 overall and 3-4 in Southeastern Conference play and will be home to close out the regular season against Auburn, Louisiana-Lafayette and Georgia Tech. CBS has announced it will show the Deep South's oldest rivalry between the Bulldogs and Tigers (7-2, 5-1) at 3:30 p.m. Saturday.
Georgia racked up 460 yards at Kentucky while keeping the Wildcats (5-4, 4-3) in relative check with 308, and the Bulldogs got their strongest combined game from Blankenship and freshman punter Marshall Long. Losing three fumbles kept the game tighter than the final statistics, but Smart was happy to take a close win after an October that included the Hail Mary loss to Tennessee and the 17-16 defeat against Vanderbilt.
"It's important for the confidence of these kids," Smart said. "It's important for this program, and it's important for this university. These kids work hard, and you like to get rewarded with victories when you work hard, but you don't always do that.
"I've told the kids that you can't let frustration or anger or anything be an anchor, because if it's an anchor, it weighs on you. We don't need weight."
The Bulldogs spoiled Kentucky's effort to become bowl eligible and clinch a winning record in SEC play for the first time since 1977. Georgia can become an even bigger spoiler this week against Auburn, which opened Sunday as a nine-point favorite and is ranked No. 8 in the latest Associated Press and Amway coaches polls.
Auburn's leading rusher, 240-pound Kamryn Pettway, has amassed 1,106 yards while averaging 6.4 yards per carry, but he pulled a leg muscle late in Saturday's 23-16 win over Vanderbilt. His status for this week is unknown.
"That's another really good team," Georgia receiver Javon Wims said. "There are no breaks in the SEC. We have another tough opponent, so we are going to have a really good week of practice leading into it."
Said Bulldogs tailback Sony Michel: "We're going to keep fighting, no matter what our record is. We play for each other at the end of the day. We may not be playing for anything, but we play for each other."
Smart said Georgia will host a "ton" of recruits at this week's game, and he hopes the win against Kentucky is the start of a special closing run.
"We'll try to use this to propel us to that, but we still have a lot of areas to work on," he said.
The move upstairs
Smart said he and offensive coordinator Jim Chaney met early last week and decided Chaney should move from the field to the coaching booth. The change allows Chaney to see from a better vantage point, with the downside being he no longer has face-to-face conversations with freshman quarterback Jacob Eason during games.
Saturday marked Eason's ninth college game, so the downside may not be as prevalent as it would have been two months ago.
"You guys will make a bigger deal of it than we will," Smart said. "Whether it helped or not, who knows? We thought it would be a good changeup."
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.