Georgia
Everything From Head Coach Brent Key After Georgia Tech’s Win Over Duke
It was not always pretty on Saturday night, but Georgia Tech got the 24-14 win over Duke and moved to 4-2 this season. After the win, Yellow Jackets head coach Brent Key spoke with the media and here is everything that he had to say.
Opening Statement…
“I thought it was a really good football game. I mean, that was a good football game all around both sides. Duke has a good football team. I do think that we came out, we played fast, and that’s what I was looking for after the bye week, coming off the bye week to look fresh look like we’re fast again and that’s kind of what we saw in practice during the week that we had our team speed was better again and we saw that tonight of the defense was flying around doing a good job I think they’re improving really every week doing a good job against the run credit to what Tooch is doing and what Jess and Kyle Pope those guys with front seven, uh, you know, got some big stops when they had some they had explosive kickoff return in the second half. Uh, we got to add some good stops in there. You know, they had some, uh, you know, we were playing behind the sticks field position wise. I think we had three or four, uh, drives that started minus 10 minus, you know, three were in the minus nine, I think, and you know, one or two on the minus 10, uh, you know, we got to do a better job in controlling the vertical field position in the football game.
So we don’t get in those holes so much and have the long fields to go. But we were moving the football with nine true possessions and then kneel down at the end of the game in the 22nd possession for halftime. Getting four scores out of three touchdowns and a field goal. We got a little more productive on those things, but we get in the long field. So we had to do a little better job with that. The kids played hard. Thought they played smarter tonight. I really do, other than before halftime on defense, they had those a couple of chunk plays after the penalty on the punt. We’ll take a look at that penalty and see exactly what we need to talk about on Sunday with that one. But other than that, I mean, both teams played really hard. That was a good football game, and really glad to be able to come out on top of that one. I told the guys in the locker room afterwards that it was a– enjoy the win, enjoy every win. But then I challenged every person in the room man to man that when we come back in tomorrow, the first thing we’re going to do in the team meeting starts is we’re going to make sure every person on this football team knows how to sing a Ramblin’ Wreck from Georgia Tech. There’s a couple of young guys in there that aren’t quite on They aren’t quite on it. So we have a lesson in that first. But a challenge to them all to be just as critical after this game as they were two weeks ago. And to make sure that we improve in the same regard in the next week, because we have a tough stretch coming up. And we have a 12 o ‘clock kickoff on Saturday. I believe it’s 12 o ‘clock or 8 o ‘clock. 12 o ‘clock kickoff, so we’ll be back to business. but really happy, happy for the kids, happy for the coaching staff.”
1. On the team’s performance in the 4th quarter…
“We challenged the guys that it was going to be a second half game where it was a big field position game. I know that Duke really had taken a lot of pride in taking teams in the fourth quarter and winning games in the fourth quarter. But that’s what we have top. Regardless of the outcome of a couple of games, I think our guys have continued to play throughout. And that’s what they did. They kept playing. It was a good execution. I do think at the line of scrimmage think our guys tended and I’ll look at the tape and see it for sure but I thought we started to wear him down a little bit some of those runs early on you know there were three yards four yards two yards you know six yards and they started cracking you know Jamal had a good game run on the football but I thought Chad Alexander he has really hard physical runs there on some big some big downs in there.”
2. On some of the new wrinkles from the offense tonight…
“Yeah we got it a little too constricted the last few weeks and playing in a phone booth a little bit. So we wanted to make sure that we spread it out, worked the field, not just north and south, but east and west as well. We’ve got guys that are explosive with the ball in their hand. And really the biggest challenge of that was Haynes negotiating throw past those defensive ends. I mean, they’re in raised charges up the field, almost the whole game. So that was the challenge. We felt like to be able to do that and spit the ball out there. And I thought those guys, I mean, we didn’t have a lot of long, big passes, but we had some really crucial catches and some crucial situations I thought.”
3. On Chad Alexander…
“Chad had some really good, hard runs. I mean, there was some third down runs in there he had. Ramp got behind his pads. And for a smaller back, he’s got– he’s an explosive guy. And then I thought he showed it to him.”
4. On Jamal Haynes…
“Yeah, I even mentally and emotionally to have to deal with that weekend on a job? Yeah, I mean, anytime you’re not performing the way you’re capable of, it’s tough. But look, it’s not just Jamal. I mean, I thought we played better as a unit up front tonight, and especially in some of the short yard situations, we added a couple of wrinkles in there that helped us. But some of those things were added because we were able to have guys at full speed and fully healthy. But after the game, yeah, I gave them all a big hug and I said, “It was really good to see a 100 % number 11 out there.” Watching practice really from Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, the guys that are banged up at practice, they wear a black jersey. And at the end into practice I went out and I had equipment guys go grab grab his jersey out of his locker and I Took that black jersey off of him for the last period in practice I went through in the garbage can and gave him his white one back. It must be like Superman taking his I don’t think that would have been very wise He’s a He’s a tough kid, we have some tough kids on our team.”
5. On Jordan van den Berg…
“Yeah, he’s been playing better and better each week. Earned the start tonight, through what he had done in the last several games of production he’s It’s not even close that he’s the strongest guy on the football team. I mean, he might be one of the strongest guys in the country. I mean, he’s a powerful, strong guy, but he also has enough agility and quick body quickness to be able to be disruptive. All right, so he’s improving each week. He’s another one that overcame some nagging injuries along the way. And was at full speed tonight, and I think it really helped us out in there.”
6. On how they were able to contain Duke’s rushing attack…
“We filled our gaps, we played the blocks well. I can’t say enough about Jess Simpson and the job he does, coaching technique on the defensive line. He understands the big picture on defense, and he understands the big picture on offense. And he’s a great teacher. For all those years as a head high school coach and a teacher, that shows. And those guys, they’ve become very football smart. So they’re understanding how to play different blocks, different schemes, a couple of the ones that squirted through there for bigger gains were ones that were really on us. We’ll take a look at it and see exactly what we messed up to. So we don’t have that, but I’ve been very proud of get better and better because we have a big challenge coming up next week.”
7. On executing the long drives on offense…
“I mean, I’d like to score one play every time But, no, it’s complimentary football. All right, and, You know, could we line up and throw the ball every play or play the tempo every play, but you know, it is a staff. We meet a lot together. Myself, the coordinators meet on Thursdays and we talk about how to play the game. We talk about how we have to compliment each other. And that’s what it’s about. It’s a football team. It’s not just the offense, not just the defense, not just the kicking game, special teams. We got to play complementary football. And looking at the time of possession– time of possession is not a stat that is truly indicative, always, of winning and losing games. But if it fits into the style of play that you’re playing, it does. It takes away the amount of time they have to ball. But when you’re doing that, you’ve got to score. And at one point, when it was about 10 I mean, we’ve had, you know, several possession, long possessions. I think half time we were saying it was a kind of two to one time of possession, but it was a three point game. So you’ve got to be efficient in those drives as well. And I think that’s, like I said, when I opened up, we’ve got to be a little more efficient in some of those things, along some of those drives and finishing with the points on the board.”
8. On Taye Seymore and Billy Shaw…
“Yeah, Taye earned what he’s, the spot that he’s in. I mean, there was a string in there. I mean, he had pass breaks up, tackle, tackle for loss. I mean, he was all over the field. The big thing we talked about this week was playing fast. We talked about playing Playing fast, not being, you know, hey, Eric is fast. We all know that, right? No, when he kicked off him, he was, but there’s, being fast, there’s playing fast, right? You play fast when you start to, when the game starts to slow down, right? When you start to really know what to do, know what the offense is doing, anticipate things are gonna happen, right? You know, now you’re a step ahead, two steps ahead. So, I think that’s what he’s doing. The more he’s playing, you know, the more experience he’s getting the better he’s becoming. And then, you know,
One of the greatest players to play here, Billy Shaw, and that’s what it was. It was a, just for him, passed away yesterday. And, you know, NFL Hall of Famer, unbelievable career here, unbelievable career in the National Football League. And I believe to this day, he’s still the only person that’s ever, that’s in the NFL Hall of Fame that never played actually in the NFL. And he was in the AFL Buffalo Bills the whole time. Just someone that is 83, 84, and obviously passed away 85, became a good friend. Just someone that Even as he got you know, you know later on and on and he just he would send me Send text messages or we couldn’t talk on the phone and just you know, it just just a good good man and He’s a Tech man, and he did a lot here do a lot for this place and any time somebody stands up at Canton and says that they went to the greatest University in the world You know, they love this place.”
9. On the turnaround at the end of the game…
“No, it was, we really started playing the field position battle. We had, like I said, we had two that were in the minus nine in the first half, one in minus ten, and also, boom, minus nine again. Again, we’re able to punch it out of there, get the ball, flip the field. We’ve got two big stops, a big stop on defense after they went the length. And then we got one. They missed the field goal. So we were able to gain some advantage in the field position. But then, like I said, I think we started to wear them down a little bit, which is a credit. When you see that happen, you see you start to run the ball a little better. and as the game goes on and protect better and stop the run and close coverage more and more. Really, that’s a credit to what these guys do from January. Those are things that are built in the weight room from January, February, and March. Not just in the last week of practice or whatnot.”
10. On the secondary being aggressive…
“Well, they’ve got to continue to be more aggressive, and that’s what they did. They challenged the receivers. That’s something Really, for the last two weeks, we’ve really emphasized. And from this past Sunday’s practice through the week, we got our hands on more balls, had more interceptions, more strips, because it wasn’t just emphasized. It was overly emphasized, every single play. So it’s good to be able to have that happen.”
STARKVILLE — Mississippi State baseball has made the super regionals in the NCAA Tournament and will face a team its already played four times.
The No. 14 national seed Bulldogs (43-17) are matched up with No. 3 Georgia (49-12). The best-of-three series will take place in Athens, Georgia, because Georgia is the higher seed.
The super regionals run from June 5-8, and the winner will make the College World Series.
MSU is 0-4 against Georgia this season, getting swept at Dudy Noble Field and then losing a fourth time in the SEC Tournament quarterfinals. Georgia won the SEC regular season and tournament championships.
Both teams made it through their regionals without a loss. Mississippi State blew out Louisiana 19-5 on May 31, while Georgia defeated Liberty.
MSU has played Georgia only once in postseason history, losing in the 1990 College World Series.
Mississippi State baseball history in super regionals
Mississippi State has played in 10 super regionals and won five of them. It has won three straight super regionals. MSU is 2-4 as the visiting team in super regionals.
New Mississippi State coach Brian O’Connor is 7-2 in super regionals.
NCAA baseball tournament schedule
- Super regionals: June 5-8
- College World Series: June 12-22
Sam Sklar is the Mississippi State beat reporter for The Clarion Ledger. Email him at ssklar@usatodayco.com and follow him on X @sklarsam_.
Georgia football landed a pair of commitments Sunday for its 2027 recruiting class.
Wide receiver Taurean Rawlins from Mount Vernon School in Atlanta posted on his X account on May 31 that he’s pledged to the Bulldogs.
Georgia also picked up a commitment from offensive tackle DJ Dotson from Hattiesburg, Miss., he posted on his Instagram account.
Both are rated 3-star prospects.
“I loved the support and love they showed towards me and my family,” Dotson said in a text message to the Athens Banner-Herald.
The 6-foot, 175-pound Rawlins is rated the No. 58 wide receiver in the 2027 class and the No. 478 overall prospect.
Rawlins had 67 catches for 1,395 yards and 17 touchdowns last season, according to MaxPreps.
Rawlins and Dotson give Georgia 10 commitments for this cycle.
Rawlins is the first wide receiver commitment. He also had offers from Ohio State, Florida and Michigan.
Georgia signed four wide receivers in its 2026 class: Craig Dandridge, Ryan Mosley, Dallas Dickerson and late addition Tre Shields.
Rawlins’ coach at Mount Vernon is former Georgia star wide receiver Terrence Edwards.
The 6-foot-7, 330-pound Dotson is rated as the nation’s No. 85 offensive tackle prospect and the No. 851 overall prospect.
He picked Georgia over Ole Miss, LSU and Georgia Tech, according to 247Sports.
Georgia also has offensive line commitments in its 2027 class from Kelsey Adams from Langston Hughes, Abram Eisenhower from Lowndes and Ty Johnson from Mount Pleasant, S.C.
Georgia
A Georgia Wildlife Haven Forged by Fire and Peat Nears UNESCO Recognition – Inside Climate News
FOLKSTON, Ga.—The world’s smallest heron hops from blade to blade in a patch of tall grass, testing its footing above the dark water as it searches for an evening meal.
“This was already worth the trip out today,” Joshua Howard said earlier this month from a gray flat-bottomed tour boat just a few yards away. The tiny creatures, called Least Bitterns, are secretive birds, not easy to spot.
With one quick movement of its neck, which seems to take up most of its body, the tiny heron plunges into the water and comes up with a fish. Howard and his guide continue down the swamp between walls of Spanish moss-adorned cypress trees and alligators, hoping to find more of the birds and wildlife that call the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge home.
By July, the vast swamp Howard has visited since childhood and still tries to reach at least once a week could be internationally recognized as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site.
The Okefenokee, on the Florida border in southeast Georgia, hosts the largest blackwater swamp in North America, a slow-moving wilderness roughly five times the size of Atlanta. It began forming hundreds of thousands of years ago, as the Atlantic Ocean retreated and left behind Trail Ridge, a long, low fossilized beach dune, and a shallow depression that trapped water between the ridge and higher uplands to the west.
The Okefenokee is a blackwater swamp, meaning its dark waters are stained by tannins released from decaying vegetation and cypress trees. Beneath the dense canopy, the water takes on the color of steeped tea, reflecting cypress trunks and drifting lily pads like dark glass.
The refuge was established in 1937 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, following a series of visits from Cornell biologist Francis Harper. Harper had come to admire both the swamp’s landscape and its people, but it was his wife—who had once tutored Roosevelt’s children—who ultimately helped push the president toward protecting the land.
The refuge’s latest conservation effort now depends partly on another layer of federal and international politics. The Okefenokee’s UNESCO nomination comes amid renewed uncertainty over the United States’ relationship with the organization.
Earlier this year, President Donald Trump moved to again withdraw the United States from UNESCO, though the withdrawal would not take effect until December—months after a decision on the Okefenokee nomination is expected. The United States also remains part of the World Heritage Convention, the international agreement governing World Heritage Sites.
In addition, World Heritage designations have continued in the United States during previous periods when the country was formally withdrawn from UNESCO, including under both Trump and President Ronald Reagan. The Okefenokee effort has also received support from prominent Republicans, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, who served as Trump’s agriculture secretary.
Still, regardless of shifting politics around UNESCO, the landscape at the center of the nomination remains largely unchanged.
Today, the Okefenokee stands as a protected wilderness of blackwater channels, peat and dense wetland forests, supporting a rich array of wildlife and plant life.
A great blue heron and a barred owl perch among Spanish moss in the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. Credit: Ryan Krugman/Inside Climate News
As Howard floated through the swamp at the refuge’s eastern entrance for about an hour and a half, he saw nearly 200 alligators, owl fledglings, hawks, herons and more. What he somewhat incredulously called an “above average” number of encounters was partly driven by drought conditions that pushed animals toward remaining water, though abundant wildlife sightings are far from unusual.
Across the swamp, an estimated 15,000 alligators inhabit the blackwater alongside almost 250 bird and 64 reptile species. Black bears and bobcats move through the uplands, and there are rumors of Florida panthers wandering the refuge. It is also a stronghold for endangered species, including red-cockaded woodpeckers, wood storks and eastern indigo snakes.
To fully experience the Okefenokee, visitors often paddle deep into the backcountry by canoe or kayak, traveling through areas inaccessible to motorboats. Along the way, they pass open prairies filled with lilies, wildflowers and carnivorous plants, including the Okefenokee giant pitcher plant, which can grow more than four feet tall and traps insects inside its tubular leaves.
Some visitors spend nights on raised wooden platforms scattered throughout the swamp, with multi-day trips carrying paddlers far into the blackwater wilderness. Yet even with those routes, only about 5 percent of the Okefenokee is currently accessible to humans.
Despite being one of the best-preserved wetlands in North America, and especially on the eastern seaboard, the Okefenokee has repeatedly faced pressure from industry and development. Before it became a wildlife refuge and federally designated wilderness area nearly a century ago, logging companies cut through vast cypress forests, disrupting habitats and the natural systems that shaped the swamp.
Later, the Suwanee Canal Company attempted to drain the Okefenokee to clear the way for development. The company planned to carve a canal through Trail Ridge and connect the swamp to the Suwannee River, but water repeatedly flowed back into the basin. The project ultimately collapsed, driving the company into bankruptcy before the canal could be completed.
More recently, the Okefenokee has faced renewed pressure from a high-profile mining dispute near Trail Ridge and continued development across the Florida border. Yet the swamp’s beauty and biodiversity continue to draw roughly 800,000 visitors each year—and now the attention of UNESCO.
The Okefenokee was first placed on the United States’ tentative UNESCO World Heritage list in 1981, but the nomination stalled for decades. In 2023, the Department of the Interior authorized work on a formal nomination, a push driven in large part by advocates including Kim Bednarek, executive director of Okefenokee Swamp Park.
The nonprofit, which runs tours and educational programs near and in the refuge, helped lead the campaign and raise money for the years-long nomination process. To qualify, researchers and advocates had to demonstrate the swamp’s “outstanding universal value,” the central standard for World Heritage designation.
The nomination was formally submitted in January 2025. Later that year, scientists with the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which advises UNESCO on natural sites, visited the swamp as part of the evaluation process. Advocates are now awaiting a recommendation from the organization ahead of a final decision expected this July at the UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting in Busan, South Korea.
UNESCO’s standard of “outstanding universal value” is reserved for places considered significant not just to one country, but to humanity. Advocates and scientists argue the Okefenokee qualifies because of its biodiversity and the remarkable condition of its peatlands, which have remained largely intact for thousands of years and are a natural carbon sink.
Peatlands form when organic material builds up faster than it decomposes. In the Okefenokee, still blackwater, low oxygen levels and acidic conditions—created largely by tannins from cypress trees—slow decay enough for layers of plant matter to accumulate over thousands of years.
“We do not have a similar peatland in the world in the subtropics,” said Hans Joosten, one of the world’s leading peatland experts. According to Joosten, the swamp’s location—sandwiched between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic—provides the humidity and rainfall needed to sustain this rare subtropical peatland.
An inch of peat can take more than 50 years to form. In parts of the Okefenokee, those layers reach more than 15 feet deep, storing an estimated 124 million tons of carbon and forming one of North America’s most significant peat systems.
Many of the estimated 15,000 Alligators in the Okefenokee are tagged as part of research initiatives. Credit: Ryan Krugman
The swamp’s Muscogee Creek name, often translated as “land of the trembling earth,” reflects what lies beneath its surface. Deep peat can shift, swell and occasionally rise toward the top, where visitors may see methane bubbles break through the blackwater or floating mats of peat drifting at the surface. Those peat mats can become platforms for new plant growth, reshaping the swamp as they move and settle.
The biodiversity hotspot is supported by another cycle, one much faster than peat formation. The swamp is frequently reshaped and renewed through natural wildfires. The fires clear dense vegetation and invasive species, return nutrients to the soil, and maintain the open conditions needed for fire-dependent ecosystems like the longleaf pine, one of the most endangered forest types in North America.
“To be put on the same list as places like the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone would just be amazing,” Howard said with a Southern drawl as he floated along the remnants of the Suwannee Canal.
This story is funded by readers like you.
Our nonprofit newsroom provides award-winning climate coverage free of charge and advertising. We rely on donations from readers like you to keep going. Please donate now to support our work.
Donate Now
Howard, tall and broad with silvering hair and an easy smile, had arrived at the swamp after a long day working as a school administrator in Charlton County. “You want to know why I think this place deserves to be on that list?” he asked. “Because when I got here this evening, I was stressed and now I am not.”
Howard has been coming to the swamp for almost 50 years and has spent the last seven serving as president of Friends of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, a nonprofit that helps raise money for its preservation. While the group is not directly involved in the UNESCO bid, Howard said its members strongly support the designation.
If approved in July, the designation would make the Okefenokee Georgia’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site and the first national wildlife refuge in the country to receive the status.
For Bednarek, the recognition would do more than honor the swamp’s ecology. It could fundamentally change how the Okefenokee is seen internationally. National wildlife refuges typically operate with far less tourism, funding and global visibility than national parks.
“They have this iconic brand that refuges don’t,” Bednarek said. UNESCO World Heritage status, she said, functions differently. “It’s a global brand that people travel far and wide to see.”
For now, though, the Okefenokee remains what it has long been: a slow-moving wilderness of blackwater, peat and cypress.
As dusk settled over the swamp, Howard’s guide cut the boat motor and the sounds of insects and distant birds filled the blackwater again. Methane bubbles continued rising quietly to the surface, signs of the trembling earth beneath the water.
In July, delegates in South Korea will decide whether the Okefenokee receives World Heritage status. But the swamp itself will keep moving at its own pace.
About This Story
Perhaps you noticed: This story, like all the news we publish, is free to read. That’s because Inside Climate News is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We do not charge a subscription fee, lock our news behind a paywall, or clutter our website with ads. We make our news on climate and the environment freely available to you and anyone who wants it.
That’s not all. We also share our news for free with scores of other media organizations around the country. Many of them can’t afford to do environmental journalism of their own. We’ve built bureaus from coast to coast to report local stories, collaborate with local newsrooms and co-publish articles so that this vital work is shared as widely as possible.
Two of us launched ICN in 2007. Six years later we earned a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, and now we run the oldest and largest dedicated climate newsroom in the nation. We tell the story in all its complexity. We hold polluters accountable. We expose environmental injustice. We debunk misinformation. We scrutinize solutions and inspire action.
Donations from readers like you fund every aspect of what we do. If you don’t already, will you support our ongoing work, our reporting on the biggest crisis facing our planet, and help us reach even more readers in more places?
Please take a moment to make a tax-deductible donation. Every one of them makes a difference.
Thank you,
Ryan Krugman
Contributor
Ryan Krugman is a recent graduate of Columbia University’s Climate School focusing on climate change reporting and communications. He also holds a Bachelor’s degree from St. Lawrence University where he studied Environmental Science and Sociology. As a former Inside Climate News fellow, he is now reporting on climate and environmental issues in New England and Georgia.
-
Finance4 minutes agoThe Most Innovative People in Finance 2026
-
Fitness7 minutes agoBristol fitness expert offers free exercise for Parkinson’s
-
Movie Reviews22 minutes ago‘I Love Boosters’ Film Review – Capitalism is the Real Surrealist State
-
World34 minutes agoConecta Magaluz-Mallorca: Buzz Titles, AI, What’s Shocked in TV, Latin America’s Microdrama Bonanza and Other Takeaways
-
News37 minutes ago2026 Midterms Tracker: The Key Senate and House Races
-
Politics42 minutes agoVideo: Could Talarico’s Religious Approach Win Texas?
-
Lifestyle1 hour agoIs your neighborhood riddled with dog poop? : It’s Been a Minute
-
Education1 hour agoHow a Recent College Graduate Lives on $18 Per Hour in the East Bronx
