SEC Coach plans to discuss calls from Saturday with the SEC Office

[jbcarol]

ATHENS — Mark Richt admitted immediately after Saturday's game that he regretted his team's now-infamous play call on first-and-goal. A day later, Georgia's head coach said that wasn't his only issue with the play.

An intentional grounding penalty on Georgia quarterback Hutson Mason pushed the ball from South Carolina's 4 to the 14, and a few plays later Marshall Morgan missed a field goal that would have tied the game with four minutes left. It was the difference as Georgia lost 38-35.

But upon watching tape Sunday, Richt was convinced that Mason's throw did hit a defender, which would normally nullify intentional grounding. Richt said he would send the tape to the SEC office to ask for an interpretation.

"It definitely hit the defender, and I'm going to be asking the officials what the ruling is on that," Richt said. "I don't know if they saw it while it happened or not. But as it deflected off the defender there was nobody in the area where the ball landed, I know that. But if the ball didn't get hit by the defender it would have landed a lot closer to one of our eligible receivers. So I don't know if we would have gotten called for that or not. It's a good question."

Georgia decided not to make the coordinators available to the media in the post-game interviews.