TAMPA, Fla. — Blair Walsh ended his career at Georgia as a record-setter.

But he couldn’t end his last game as a winner.

Senior kicker Blair Walsh set a new school and Southeastern Conference record for most career points in Georgia's 33-30 triple-overtime loss to Michigan State. He missed a 42-yard attempt in the first overtime that would have been the game-winner for the Bulldogs. KRISTY DENSMORE/Staff

The senior kicker from Boca Raton, Fla. became both Georgia’s and the Southeastern Conference’s top point-getter with his 47-yard field goal in the second overtime of Monday’s Outback Bowl, which gave him 412 career points and moved him past former Bulldog great Billy Bennett.

However, if Walsh had made a 42-yard attempt in the first overtime, it would have been enough to give the 16th-ranked Bulldogs (10-4) a victory over the No. 17 Michigan State Spartans.

Instead, the Bulldogs fell 33-30 in the third overtime, with the final kick of Walsh’s illustrious career — a 47-yarder — blocked by Michigan State defensive end Anthony Rashad White.

Walsh was contrite about the miss in the first overtime period and admitted that he didn’t “come through in the clutch.”

“I’d trade anything — the whole record and all of that other stuff that comes with it — for me to have one field goal today that would have won the game for us, and unfortunately it worked that that’s not the case,” he said.

Walsh also made no excuses about the blocked kick in the final overtime period.

“You go out there and kick it no matter what,” he said. “You just try to get it up in the air real quick, and I don’t think it necessarily did. It looked like a little bit of a line collapse, but it’s too hard for me to tell.”

Walsh’s wayward kick in the first overtime came on third down, after quarterback Aaron Murray purposely fell to try to put the ball in the middle of the field.

Georgia head coach Mark Richt said that he had the utmost faith that Walsh would make the game-winning kick.

“I felt like if we centered the ball and put it right where we wanted to, it’s well within his range,” Richt said. “The reason why we [did] it on third down is that if you do happen to bobble the snap or have some kind of mishap, you can have another shot at it… That would have ended the game right there if he had made it.”

But if the Bulldogs had not blown a 16-0 halftime lead, Georgia would not have needed overtime heroics by Walsh or any other Bulldog.

The first points were not put on the board by the offense, either.

Senior cornerback Brandon Boykin tackled Spartans wide receiver Keshawn Martin in the end zone to give the Bulldogs a 2-0 lead at the 12:07 mark of the first quarter.

“It’s a combination of the coverage and if they throw the bubble [screen] out there, you can come up and tackle him and he did that,” Bulldogs defensive coordinator Todd Grantham said of the play.

Georgia then extended its lead to 9-0 with 3:06 to go before halftime on an 80-yard touchdown pass from Aaron Murray to Tavarres King, which not only was the longest completion of Murray’s career, but the longest touchdown reception in Georgia’s bowl history.

Wide receiver Tavarres King's 80-yard touchdown reception in the second quarter was a school record for a bowl game and gave the Bulldogs a 9-0 lead. ALLISON LOVE/Staff

“It was a great play call, and we knew that they were going to try to jump the route, so we hit them with a double move and Aaron threw it right on the money,” King said. “He caught me in stride and I went on to the end zone.”

The Bulldogs weren’t done scoring in the first half, though, as Boykin returned a punt 92 yards for a touchdown just before halftime, which marked the first time in his career he had scored on a punt return.

But the Spartans (11-3) would not go down quietly, rallying from their 16-point halftime deficit to score 14 unanswered points, both which came off interceptions by Murray.

“The one to ‘TK’ [King], he was coming back to me just as the ball was being released,” Murray said. “The other one… I thought the guy was going to be wide open and I just kind of forced it there.”

Murray’s two interceptions were part of six total turnovers between the the two teams.

Richt said the turnovers — as well as the three overtime periods — is the reason the score got as high as it did against two defenses that came in giving up less than 20 points per contest.

“That doesn’t always predict a low-scoring game,” he said. “If you have turnovers… and then of course if you go into overtime, there’s a chance for more points to be scored after regulation. That’s kind of the way football is. Turnovers, you’ve got to respect the ball. If you don’t, you’ve got a good chance of getting beat.”

Turnovers aside, the Bulldogs were in unison about one thing — they simply didn’t put the game away when they had the chance.

“Any time you’ve got a team down 16-0, you’ve got to stick a fork in them, just keep them down,” linebacker Jarvis Jones said.

Strong safety Bacarri Rambo echoed his defensive counterpart.

“You’ve just got to put the nail in the coffin, but we failed to do that,” he said.

Grantham said developing that killer instinct is something that will come with time.

“That’s a learning curve, and I think that’s another part of the process,” he said. “The team we just played hadn’t won a bowl game under Coach [Mark] Dantonio since he’s been there, so I think to educate yourself sometimes, you’ve got to go through things. You’ve got to understand that the higher the stakes, the margin for error becomes less, and that when situations come up, you’ve got to respond.”

And it was the Bulldogs’ failure to properly respond to the Spartans’ surge that will send them into the offseason on a two-game losing streak.

“It’s sad when you lose. You hate to lose,” Richt said. “Right this minute, we’re definitely not too thrilled, but in time this one will heal. [Then] we’ll get back on the road recruiting and our guys will take a little bit of a break and get back in town, go to school and get prepared for the next one. That’s just the way life is in football.”