AUSTIN, Texas — Texas coach Steve Sarkisian gave proper credit to Georgia, going so far as to admit Kirby Smart’s defense crossed up his Longhorns.

The No. 5-ranked Bulldogs scored a 30-15 win over No. 1-ranked Texas in front of the crowd of 105,215 at Darrell K. Royal Memorial Stadium on Saturday night.

“They’ve been the standard in college football now for about five, six, seven years,” Sarkisian said. “And I thought we played them really well in the second half.

“But we just, when you get behind the eight ball with the way we played the first half, it’s a lot to overcome against good football teams.”

Georgia jumped out to a 23-0 halftime lead, taking advantage of three of the four turnovers Texas committed in the game.

The Bulldogs had seven sacks, 10 tackles for loss and forced four Longhorns’ turnovers.

“They did a nice job of disguising, I’ll say that,” said Sarkisian, who saw quarterbacks Quinn Ewers and Arch Manning go a combined 28-of-49 passing for 230 yards with 2 touchdown passes, an interception and two lost fumbles.

“They held a lot of their two safety shells and then when they got out of that, there were some pressure packages and they were holding that shell even though they were going to poke one high defense,” he said.

“They made it difficult on us to find some explosive plays. We started to find some there in the second half, working the middle of the field a little bit more.”

Perhaps, but Sarkisian also noted Texas was just 2 of 14 converting on third downs, and the Longhorns were stopped three times on fourth-down conversion attempts in the fourth quarter.

Smart said defensive coordinator Glenn Schumann came up with some good schemes.

“Defensively we played well, didn’t give them big plays,” said Smart, whose team gave up only one play longer than 24 yards — a 34-yarder. “Glenn Schumann did a great job, we played some unconventional coverage we had not played and stopped the run.”

Texas had just 29 yards rushing on 27 carries, while Ewers was 25-of-43 passing for 211 yards, two touchdowns and an interception, and Arch Manning was 3-of-6 passing for 19 yards.

Sarkisian noted the importance of Georgia edge Mykel Williams returning to health, and how the extra attention paid to him opened things up for Jalon Walker to get three sacks.

“I think number 13 (Mykel Willams) being healthy helped them; h.e hadn’t played there for a while,” Sarkisian said. “I think he played nine snaps last week and then came back tonight ready to go, and he’s a problem.

“(Number) eleven (Jalon Walker) is a physical player off the edge as well at linebacker.”

Sarkisian noted Georgia landing top-ranked classes ultimately added up.

“You don’t have the top one or two recruiting classes in the country for six straight years and not have good defensive personnel,” Sarkisian said. “They’ve got good players, and like I said, they’ve got a good scheme. When you do that, our good players and our scheme has to match or be better than theirs, and tonight it wasn’t.”

Sarkisian hinted that he believes Georgia (6-1, 4-1 SEC) and Texas (6-1, 2-1) could meet again in the SEC Championship Game.

“Unfortunately we didn’t play our best football tonight,” Sarkisian said. But we were still competitive. Hopefully we get another crack at them.”

Georgia is off next Saturday before facing Florida in Jacksonville in two weeks, while Texas plays at Vanderbilt next Saturday.