Georgia coach Kirby Smart said Monday he has reached out to Mississippi State quarterback Michael Van Buren and coach Jeff Lebby to explain his contact with Van Buren on the sideline in Saturday night’s game.

Van Buren ran to the Georgia sideline late in No. 5 Georgia’s 41-31 win. Smart was rushing toward defensive coordinator Glenn Schumann when he crossed the path of Van Buren and shoved the quarterback.

Smart insisted after the game he wasn’t aware he had contact with Van Buren. He said Monday that after reviewing the play he realized he needed to reach out to the quarterback and Lebby.

“I didn’t even realize that I had run into him,” Smart said. “But I reached out to Lebby (Saturday) night and talked to him and he said the kid was great. And then yesterday, I talked to Mike, I told him, you know, I had no intentions or ill will toward him at all.”

Georgia plays at No. 1 Texas on Saturday.

Following the game, Van Buren indicated he wasn’t sure what happened on the sideline.

“I really wasn’t sure what that was but I was just trying to play my game,” Van Buren said. “I didn’t really see him for real.”

Making only his second career start, Van Buren passed for 306 yards and three touchdowns as Mississippi State rallied after trailing 34-10. The comeback attempt by the visiting Bulldogs had Smart active on the Georgia sideline.

“If you’ve ever been on the sideline during a game, it’s pandemonium,” Smart said. “It’s really pandemonium when you’re trying to change personnel and you’ve only got three or four seconds to do it and we were bad off in a bad personnel grouping. ... And so I’m trying to get to Schumann to get that changed.”

Smart said Van Buren “was great” in their conversation.

Utah quarterback Cam Rising is out indefinitely with a lower leg injury and coach Kyle Whittingham said Monday true freshman Isaac Wilson will be the Utes’ starter until further notice.

Rising was injured in Utah’s 27-19 loss to Arizona State on Friday. His leg was bent backward at an awkward angle following a hit on the Utes’ first drive. The seventh-year senior finished out the game but struggled with his mobility and accuracy. He completed only 43% of his passes and threw three interceptions.

Florida quarterback Graham Mertz will miss the remainder of the season because of a knee injury, coach Billy Napier said Monday.

Mertz, a sixth-year senior from Overland, Kansas, tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee during a 23-17 overtime loss at Tennessee on Saturday. Napier says Mertz will have surgery next week.

COLLEGE BASKETBALL

Kansas was picked first in the AP Top 25 preseason men’s basketball poll Monday, getting the No. 1 nod on half of the 60 ballots from a national media panel to start the season ahead of Alabama and two-time defending national champion UConn.

Kansas scooped up 30 first-place votes from the AP panel. The Crimson Tide, led by All-American guard Mark Sears and Jarin Stevenson, earned 14 first-place votes and UConn, which is trying to become the first school since John Wooden’s teams at UCLA to win three straight titles, received 11 first-place votes and is third.

Houston earned four first-place votes and is fourth ahead of Iowa State, which returns its top four scorers from a team that was a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Gonzaga received one first-place vote and is the sixth.

Duke is seventh ahead of Baylor, North Carolina and Arizona in the top 10.

UCLA is No. 22.

motorsports

Hendrick Motorsports said Monday it will not appeal Alex Bowman’s disqualification at Charlotte Motor Speedway that eliminated him from NASCAR title contention.

Bowman finished Sunday’s race at The Roval in 18th-place — high enough to eliminate Joey Logano of Team Penske from the playoff field by four points.

But NASCAR said the No. 48 Chevrolet failed a post-race inspection and disqualified Bowman for failing to meet minimum weight requirements. It dropped him to 38th and Logano claimed that spot in the playoff field. Hendrick had the right to appeal but said in a statement it would not.

“NASCAR allows a clear margin to account for the difference in pre- and post-race weight. After a thorough review by our team and the sanctioning body, we simply did not give ourselves enough margin to meet the post-race requirement,” the team said in a statement. “Although unintentional, the infraction was avoidable. We are extremely disappointed to lose a playoff spot under these circumstances and apologize to our fans and partners.”

NASCAR has acknowledged it is aware of allegations that an engineer for a Cup Series team accessed proprietary information and shared it with another team.

The stock series released no details about the allegations because neither team has filed a complaint with NASCAR. But a series spokesman confirmed to The Associated Press at Charlotte Motor Speedway over the weekend it is aware of a brewing scandal between the two teams.