It was probably the greatest moment in Georgia football history. The end of the national title drought. Finally beating the longtime nemesis, Alabama. And doing so a month after Georgia had been thumped by that same Alabama team.

“We had to look in the mirror,” then-Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett said the morning after the 2022 national championship game. “We had to wonder why. We had to fix stuff. And then we did. And then we got to see them again.”

And maybe that was all the difference. This year’s Georgia team can only hope so.

As the college football world knows, Alabama has owned Georgia, going 10-1 against the Bulldogs since 2008, including 7-1 with Kirby Smart, the former Crimson Tide defensive coordinator, as Georgia’s head coach. But that one exception came the lone time it was a rematch in the same season.

The second time comes Saturday, when Georgia, which lost 24-21 to Alabama on Sept. 27, gets another shot in the SEC championship. And if Georgia is looking for another reason for optimism, Smart is 3-0 as a head coach when he’s had a rematch game.

The counterpoint: So is Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer.

The old football adage is that it’s hard to beat a team twice. The data says it’s hard but not impossible.

Georgia did it last year, beating Texas in the regular season and the SEC championship. Since conference championships began in 1992, the winner of the regular-season game has won the rematch more often (38 wins) than not (26 losses).

But in other games — bowls and College Football Playoff games — the loser of the regular season is 17-7 since 1944, when LSU avenged a regular-season loss to Texas A&M in the Orange Bowl. And the most recent example was a stark one: Ohio State, which lost by one at Oregon in last year’s regular season, routed the Ducks in the Rose Bowl.

There are other historical examples: The 1976 Rose Bowl, when unbeaten Ohio State, which had routed UCLA by three touchdowns in October, fell to the Bruins 23-10; the 1997 Sugar Bowl, when Florida State edged Florida by a field goal in late November, then was thumped by the Gators in the rematch, 52-20.

Smart was also part of another famous rematch turnaround: He was at Alabama in 2011 when it lost 9-6 at home to LSU, then won going away in the BCS championship, 21-0. Since getting to Georgia, Smart has guided three big rematch wins:

• 2017 SEC championship: Three weeks earlier, Georgia was throttled at Auburn 40-17, and Smart immediately had his staff break down the film to get ready for a rematch. Georgia flipped the result in Atlanta for a 28-7 win.

• 2022 national championship: A big factor was Alabama losing its top receivers — first John Metchie III, then Jameson Williams — in the midst of both Georgia games. But Georgia made adjustments to get a better pass rush on Alabama QB Bryce Young, and Bennett said that after a regular season of blowout wins, the shock of the SEC championship game loss might have been a positive.

• 2024 SEC championship: In the Texas regular-season game, Georgia jumped out to a big lead, then held off the Longhorns. In the SEC championship, it was basically evenly played in the first half, but then Carson Beck got hurt, Gunner Stockton went in, and the dynamics changed.

In the run-up to the rematch, Texas coach Steve Sarkisian pointed to his NFL days, when division teams play each other twice, and granted that it does give each team a chance to make adjustments.

“There are some things you can take from a first matchup, good and bad. Clearly, there were enough things we need to fix from the first time we played ’em,” Sarkisian said. He then added the more basic key: “You don’t have four turnovers in the game, you’re not trailing 23-0, to get better from the first time we played them.”

Texas last year — going from losing at home to nearly winning in Atlanta — is what Georgia needs to do Saturday, although finishing with a win. It would be a rare feat: Out of the eight SEC championship games that were rematches, only once has a team lost at home and then won in Atlanta. That was in 2001, when Nick Saban and LSU lost at Tennessee on Sept. 29, then beat the Vols in Atlanta.

Two years ago, DeBoer was at Washington when, at home, his team pulled out a 3-point win against Oregon. When they met again in the Pac-12 championship in Las Vegas, DeBoer’s Huskies eked out another 3-point win. And way back in his NAIA days, DeBoer’s Sioux Falls team twice beat the same team (Morningside) in the regular season and the playoffs (2006 and 2009).

On a more recent but less high-profile instance, DeBoer was also a coordinator when a team reversed it in a rematch: 2018 Fresno State lost to Boise State, then won the Mountain West championship game, both times on Boise State’s blue turf field. But the year before, it went the other way: Fresno State beat Boise State at home and then a week later lost by 3 on the blue turf in the conference championship.

“This one’s a little different because the game happened so much earlier in the season,” DeBoer said of playing Georgia more than two months later. “You understand what that game was about, but you also understand more who you are now. There are things that you maybe tried or that you know that didn’t go as well the first time around, you learn a lesson or two from. But there’s an identity now, and you still got to do what you do, but it has changed some, because it’s eight games since we played that one. So both teams have continued to evolve. Both teams have continued to improve.”

For his part, Smart said the time between games doesn’t matter in a rematch unless injuries are a factor, which they could be this time: Alabama will not have defensive lineman LT Overton, who made the stop on the key fourth-down play in the second half. Tailback Jam Miller, who had 62 rushing and receiving yards in that game, his first of the season, is also questionable with a leg injury. But Georgia will also be without starting center Drew Bobo, starting safety Kyron Jones and receiver Colbie Young, who was the team’s leading receiver and had a touchdown catch.

“They’re pretty beat up; we’re pretty beat up. The gantlet of the stretch that they played and we’ve played has impacted both of our seasons,” Smart said. “In terms of the X’s and O’s and the schemes, in terms of the gap, I don’t think (it matters). You evolve as a team, you have trends, but good teams do what they do. (There’s) not going to be a lot of change, and both these teams are good teams.”