I found this interesting, and what’s worse, it came from Gator Analytics. With their upcoming game against Texas, they are desperate to get out of their slump and may have already shrugged their shoulders at upcoming games against two top ten teams and are eyeing the prize for a slump-busting win against their favorite slump buster…Kentucky.
Funny, Florida’s second favorite team to get them out of a slump is Tennessee. The way to read this is to understand what SEC team a fellow member team beats after a loss. For Georgia, our historical favorite team to whip up on after a loss is Mississippi State, by percentage, and Vanderbilt next. Alabama, on the rare occasion that they lose, is undefeated against Ole Miss and Kentucky. And also by the looks of it, Arkansas and Vanderbilt need to take a long, hard look in the mirror and question their existence.
Not surprisingly, if a SEC team has just lost a game, a bout with the Dawgs or Tide isn’t going to work any wonders for them.
71% of the time, an SEC team who lost their previous game can count on Vanderbilt to be their slump-busting win. Kind of surprised to see Missouri as high as they are, but it has been a relative short body of work in the SEC, too.
And how bad is the beat down? Well, they had numbers for that, too.
Georgia has cleared the Admiral by an average of two touchdowns after a loss, and the second team we have beaten after a loss by a wide margin has been Ole Miss at 11.3 average points. There was a time, not too long ago, where Ole Miss was that bad. I can remember it, and you can remember it, too.
Pity, the Gators are resorting to analytics to defend the idea that Texas is going to break it’s losing streak by hosting Florida this week, but that’s another game where the long-awaited meteor needs to just take care of things, for us. If it could take out the Yell Leaders in the blast radius, that would be appreciated, too.
I always found Gamecock girls to be the best slump-busters: unduly confident, low self-esteem…
(I keed, I keed…)
Interesting … I love this kind of stuff because it often leads to additional questions which provides further context. So our slump buster is Mississippi State? Of the teams that were members of the SEC prior to 1992 (before adding Arkansas and SC), UGA has played MSU just 28 times since our first match-up in 1914. That is the least amount of games by five (LSU – 33.)
UGA has beaten MSU 22 times and lost just 6.
In the 22 times we have beaten MSU, we have lost the game prior to playing the other Bulldogs just five times. 1961 (lost 3-0 to FSU), 1967 (21-14 to Ole Miss), 1975 (19-9 to Pitt), 2006 (24-22 to Vandy), and 2020 (44-28 to UF).
I don’t know if it qualifies as irony but we lost that very first match up Miss St in 1914 by a score of 9-0. That game came smack dab in the middle of a 5 game losing streak. We lost to UNC (41-6), UVA (28-0), MSU (9-0), Clemson (35-13), and GT (7-0) before stopping the carnage by playing Auburn to a 0-0 tie.
Proving that times were different back then, Head Football Coach W.A. Cunningham not only survived his only losing season as UGA head coach, he remained coach through the 1919 season. He finished his UGA career with 70 wins (.679) which is good for the 7th most amongst UGA coaches all time. He is behind Ray Goff but ahead of the two coaches that followed him, Herman Stegeman (.741) and George Woodruff (.649).
Stegeman had been assistant to Cunningham and took over when Cunningham went back to the Army. Not only was Stegeman the football coach, he was also UGA’s basketball, baseball, and track coach as well in 1920. He stepped down as baseball coach after one season with record of 31-13-2. He became UGA’s AD in 1922 which led him to give up the head coach role of the football team, but remained as coach in basketball and track. His record as basketball coach was 178-88 and he still has the 2nd highest winning percentage for UGA basketball.
You put a lot of work into all of that..it’s very interesting..thank you!
(Maybe Kirby should be coaching the Basketball team too) 😉
Mark Grace and Nuke Laloosh approve these reports.