Georgia’s defense is gearing up to face Arizona State and quarterback Rudy Carpenter, who trails only Texas Tech’s Graham Harrell and Missouri’s Chase Daniel among active players in touchdown passes. Carpenter has 71.

Bulldogs defensive coordinator Willie Martinez answered questions from reporters after practice on Tuesday about the game ahead and a look back at some issues that cropped up late in the game against South Carolina.

Here are some excerpts:
Q: Richt mentioned that Rudy Carpenter’s completion percentage is higher when teams blitz.
A: That could be true. He does a good job when you bring pressure or a four-man pressure. He feels the pressure and does a nice job of pulling out of it. You watch him enough on film, he’s tough.
Q: What concerns presented themselves on South Carolina’s last two possessions? The majority of their yards came on their last two drives?

Georgia practiced with the crowd noise cranked up at Sanford Stadium Thursday to prepare for its first road game of the season Saturday at South Carolina.

“We know they’re extremely loud and they always have been,” coach Mark Richt said. “When that stadium gets rocking, I think you can literally see the thing sway. I’ve been there enough times to know it will be swaying. We’ve got to try to get used to dealing with that.”

South Carolina is ninth all-time in SEC winning percentage with a 48-80-1 record and has an overall record of 522-524-44, but the Gamecocks have quite the loyal fan following. They regularly fill up 80,250 seat Williams-Brice Stadium.

If I had to rank the hardest venues for Georgia to play at in the SEC East, here’s how I’d line them up:

Decision, decisions.
Georgia coach Mark Richt is having a hard time deciding which players are going to be on the Bulldogs’ travel roster to bring for the trip to South Carolina.

The SEC permits 70 players to travel to road games.

The downside of playing 11 first-year freshmen this season is there are more players to include on the trip.

“It’s tougher than usual because we played more true freshmen,” Richt said.
Georgia used 68 players against Georgia Southern. It played 67 against Central Michigan.

Adding to the dilemma is that Darius Dewberry and Fred Munzenmaier are returning from suspensions and Kade Weston is returning from a knee injury.

“Our toughest task this week has been to get to 70,” Richt said. “We can’t travel more. That’s been very difficult.”

As I type this now, there could be a heated debate on the second floor of the Butts-Mehre Building.

Georgia’s defense will be reintroduced this week to the tight end position.
The spread offenses of Georgia Southern and Central Michigan didn’t complete a single pass to a tight end in the Bulldogs’ first two games. The Bulldogs saw their share of four wide, no tight end sets in those games.

That is bound to change Saturday against South Carolina. Its most dangerous weapon in the passing game could be junior Jared Cook now that it looks like wideout Kenny McKinley is probably a no-go because of a strained hamstring.
Cook had eight catches for 111 yards against Vanderbilt, a game that South Carolina played the final three quarters without McKinley.

“He is a tight end, but he’s really a receiver,” Georgia coach Mark Richt said Tuesday. “He splits out a lot. He’s been a go-to guy for them, a big, 6-5, 240-pounder who runs well and has played tremendously well for them.”

You know Georgia’s football team is pretty good considering that one of the biggest beefs out there is the Bulldogs’ kickoffs.

Central Michigan started six of its nine possessions after Georgia kickoffs on at least the 31-yard line. One drive started on its own 40 and another on the Georgia 40.

“If you kick it out of bounds, it’s on the 40,” Georgia coach Mark Richt said. “If you kick it where it’s not supposed to go then they have a much greater chance of crossing the 30 or 40 yard line. I don’t know if we stopped them. We might have stopped them one time inside the 30. Some of it is the kicks and some of it is coverage issues. A lot of it is the hang time and giving our guys the ability to get under the thing.”

South Carolina seems to have a decided advantage in this aspect of Saturday’s game.

I’m going to focus on quarterbacks and take a pass on chiming in on Knowshon Moreno’s leap not making it onto ESPN’s highlights.

Mark Richt was asked about it on his weekly teleconference and it’s a notebook item in the paper for Monday.

Here’s the note:
Knowshon Moreno’s leap over a Central Michigan defender had more than 15,000 views on YouTube by Sunday evening. Georgia fans took to the message boards and blogs to complain that they didn’t see the play as a highlight on ESPN.
“They missed the boat or didn’t do their homework or whatever,” Richt said. “I don’t know how they couldn’t have noticed that as thorough as it seems that they are most of the time. It’s going to make our highlight for a long time.”

Ok, back to quarterbacks.