UGA 39 Clemson 5
Gainesville, Florida
Sunday February 2, 2003, 11 am
Referee: Hugh Rhodes
This game was a must win for us, with Clemson 1-0 after their win over Florida the day before. We came out strong and scored a try after about 5 minutes when Josh Tedder scored off a pop from Botwin, Marc Petrini converted for the 7-0 lead. We continued to apply pressure and gave up several very good scoring chances, but put in a second try at 18 minutes when Meeks put Blake into space and Tedder was there in support to score the try.
So after 25 minutes of pressure almost entirely in Clemson's end of the field Clemson put a kick down into our corner and camped out there for 10 minutes, threatening constantly but never putting any points on the board. We went into halftime up 12-0.
In the second half we had kicked a penalty for a 15-0 lead. 5 minutes later Hutch scored to make it 22-0. At the 25 minute mark we had a scrum at our own 10 meter line, the ball went straight through the tunnel and popped out the other side (the ref was shielded and couldn't see it), their backs jumped on it and moved it wide, scoring in the corner to make it 22-5. We responded right off the kickoff when Ethan stole the ball and Meeks took it weak off the ruck 35 meters for the try.
After that Clemson seemed to give up and we ran in 2 tries in the last 10 minutes with some quick breaks and good support. Blake popped the first one, then hit Pete in support who took it to 2 meters out, where Blake got it back to score. The next one was a 25 meter crash straight up the middle where Hutch broke a few tackles and touched it down (check out the picture down below).
We played a good first 25 minutes of the game, then seemed to lose heart when Clemson threatened towards the end of the first half. There was sort of a sense that we'd dominated the game but were only up 2 tries and now, who knows? But the second half was good with solid support play to keep our breaks going. Our makeshift scrum again held up well and we had clean ball all day. The forwards did a good job blowing over the ball and giving our scrumhalves plenty of time to get the backs clean ball so they could run.
So all 3 teams end the weekend with 1 win and 1 loss. We come out on top for now with a point differential of +29 while Florida is -12 and Clemson is -17. We all play each other again in 2 weeks at Clemson so it just boils down to whoever wins their games...
| 1 Eric Rogers 2 Brian Sanders 3 Josh Tedder 4 Seth Burrow 5 Rick Crowson (Ethan Beck - 40th) 6 Daniel Van Dijk 7 Pete Bigham 8 Matt Botwin 9 Michael Francis (Josh Price - 75th) 10 Blake Richter (Michael Francis - 75th) 11 Kevin Wilson 12 Scott Hutchison 13 Kellen Montgomery 14 Marc Petrini 15 Julian Harris |
 Tedder and Eric win the ball from a set by Daniel |
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 Bowtin 1 on 1 against their freshman Scrumhalf |
 Kellen came out of retirement but didn't have time for a haircut |
 Julian 1 on 6, which is just about right for us |