ATHENS, Ga. — This wasn’t the No. 1 team in the country.

This wasn’t a national title contender with a suffocating defense and a habit of making decent teams look foolish.

This was Georgia, which — while it sits atop the SEC East — hadn’t beaten either of the ranked teams it had played on the year.

A solid team with no shortage of talent that was ranked only five spots higher than Auburn in the BCS standings.

And yet the No. 15 Bulldogs still throttled the No. 20 Tigers, seizing control of the game with 38 unanswered points and sprinting to a 45-7 win Saturday at Sanford Stadium.

Georgia (8-2, 6-1 SEC) beat Auburn (6-4, 4-3) worse than any team since Florida’s 51-10 victory in 1996, worse even than the 45-10 beating top-ranked LSU put on the Tigers on Oct. 22.

“I don’t think there’s a whole lot I can tell you that you didn’t see,” Auburn head coach Gene Chizik said. “I think it was pretty evident what we couldn’t do and that was a lot.”

It was Auburn’s worst loss to Georgia since a 41-0 defeat in Columbus in 1946.

And it, like the LSU game, started snowballing out of control rather quickly.

Georgia and Auburn traded touchdowns in the first quarter, with a 4-yard reverse pass from C.J. Uzomah to Philip Lutzenkirchen following up an 8-yard toss from Aaron Murray to Tavarres King and tying the score at 7-7 with 6:13 to go in the first.

The Bulldogs went ahead on an acrobatic, diving 27-yard touchdown catch by Michael Bennett from Murray, then set about playing scorched-earth football.

Kwame Geathers pounced on a Mike Dyer fumble at the Auburn 40, and Murray found Bruce Figgins from 15 yards six plays later to put Georgia up 21-7.

Bacarri Rambo picked off a Clint Moseley pass at the 24-yard line and took it to the house to build the lead to 28-7.

Malcolm Mitchell capped off a 70-yard drive with a 25-yard catch-and-run for a score from Murray, building Georgia’s lead to 35-7 with 5:00 before the half.

The Bulldogs racked up 326 yards of offense in the first 30 minutes, converting 7-of-8 third downs.

They finished at 528 and 12-of-15, as Isaiah Crowell (24 rushes, 132 yards, TD) and Carlton Thomas (15-127) became the second set of teammates to go over 100 yards in a game against Auburn this year, after Mississippi State’s Vick Ballard (135) and Chris Relf (106).

Murray, who threw only two passes in the second half, finished 14-of-18 for 224 yards and four touchdowns.

“We’ve got to make plays. We’ve got to stop the run. We’ve got to get pressure on the quarterback. We’ve got to do it all,” linebacker Eltoro Freeman said. “And we didn’t do that, and the result came out not the way we like.”

Auburn’s offense didn’t give Georgia much to worry about in its brief time on the field — 19:05 — mustering only 195 yards of total offense and 51 on the ground.

The Tigers managed their lowest point and rush yard total in 37 games under offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn and beat their worst total yard outing by only 2 yards.

Moseley, who made strides in his second career start against Ole Miss, went 11-for-22 for 140 yards and the pick-6.

Georgia also sacked Moseley five times, with Jarvis Jones padding his SEC-leading total with two.

“We didn’t get any yards, across the board,” Moseley said. “It’s just tough to know what to say in this situation. You can’t pinpoint one thing. It was too many things.

“It was just bad.”

Georgia, with a win over Kentucky next week, clinches the SEC East.

Auburn, with two blowout losses in its past three games, has a lot to think about as it heads into the final two games of its season.

“We just need to check ourselves and see really where our footing’s at, just figure out what we want to do from here on out,” running back Mike Dyer said. “If we really want to win those last two games, or if we just want to give it up and just quit.

“But I think I know this team better than that.”

Chizik would like to eliminate one of those options Dyer posed.

“They don’t have a choice. We’re going back to work,” Chizik said. “The only choice is the exit sign over the door if they don’t like it.”