With their national championship hopes battered, the Georgia Bulldogs face an uphill batter to attain SEC supremacy.

After Saturday’s stunning upset by Tennessee, the Georgia Bulldogs will be fortunate to win the SEC Eastern Division.

The 19-14 loss, coming a week after the Bulldogs’ 45-16 win over LSU that heated up national championship aspirations, puts Georgia in a difficult position even to win the SEC East.

“We can’t even get out of the east right now,” said Georgia head coach Mark Richt. “We’re going to be trying like mad to beat Vanderbilt.”

Though Georgia and Tennessee (both 4-1 overall) are 2-1 in the SEC, the Volunteers hold the head-to-head tiebreaker.

To win their division, the Bulldogs must win their remaining conference games and rely on Tennessee to slip up.

Tennessee has no remaining games against teams ranked in the top 25. Their toughest game will be Oct. 30 at South Carolina, which lost to Ole Miss 31-28 Saturday.

“We knew if we won this game, we could forget about last week,” said Tennessee offensive tackle Michael Munoz, referring to last week’s 34-10 loss to Auburn. “We know we can take it from here and go where we want to go.”

Georgia, which begins a four-game road trip after Saturday’s homecoming game against Vanderbilt, has yet to play Florida and Auburn.

“You don’t lose one game and lose the season. Very few teams get to go undefeated.” said Georgia defensive end David Pollack. “God says it’s not time for us to be undefeated.”

But the Bulldogs aren’t giving up.

“We’ve got to come back out and try and beat everybody else on the schedule,” said Georgia safety Thomas Davis.

Georgia was doomed by mistakes against Tennessee that were nonexistent a week earlier. The Bulldogs were penalized 12 times for 82 yards, a contrast to LSU when they were flagged just once.

Perhaps the most damaging of those penalties was a holding penalty against tight end Leonard Pope that nullified a Bryan McClendon kick return to the Volunteer 2-yard line.

“We kept shooting ourselves in the foot. Half of them were real close calls,” Pope said. “But you can’t blame it on the ref.”

Aside from the penalties, Georgia’s secondary appeared disoriented at the start of the game. Volunteer quarterback Erik Ainge found open receivers as Tennessee staked its way to a 10-0 first quarter lead.

“We blew two coverages on the first drive and gave them seven points,” Pollack said. “I’m not going to be one of those people who never gives anybody credit like some of them do. They did a good job.”

Despite the miscues, the Bulldogs still had a chance to win, closing the 19-7 Tennessee advantage by a touchdown with 4:22 left in the fourth quarter.

After stopping the Volunteers’ offense, senior quarterback David Greene — who finished 15-of-34 for 163 yards — appeared to have some last-minute heroics to make up for an otherwise inept day.

Driving from their own 13 with a little over two minutes to play, the Bulldogs had one last shot a victory with one second left but Greene’s pass intended for Pope was intercepted.