It seems even Scott Stricklin’s neighbors want some answers.
After posting three sub-500 records his first three years as Georgia’s head baseball coach, are the Bulldogs any closer to turning the corner?
According to Stricklin, he believes that they are.
“I was explaining to my neighbor. If you start, if you jump into the insurance business and you take over the dead last insurance business in your city, how long is it going to take you to be No. 1?,” Stricklin said. “It doesn’t happen. It takes time to build something.”
Don’t get Georgia’s fourth-year skipper wrong. As someone who’s used to winning, the last three years haven’t been a ton of fun.
However, with the arrival of a freshman class that ranked as high as second in the country, Stricklin believes his program is ready to take that next step.
“All those sayings, patience is a virtue, it wasn’t built in a day … I get all that stuff but I’m like anybody else, I want it to happen,” he said. “We’ve worked really hard to this point, I feel great about this team, and I feel great about the direction of our program. I’ve said that for a while, because I knew what was coming. Now it’s here. So it’s exciting. I can tell you I sleep a little better at night after we practice. I see what we have--that we’ve got lot more depth, so it’s exciting. It’s exciting to be where we are--to be as talented and as young as we are.”
That being the case, Stricklin knows it’s time for his team - which features 32 of 35 players from the state of Georgia - to start showing some tangible results on the field.
“The newness has worn off. We’re not the new guys anymore. It’s not the excitement of the new guys anymore. We’ve got to win,” he said. “That’s what we came here to do, compete for championships and I think that will get that next round of excitement going, and the class that we just signed is very good. It’s going to be a top 20 class at the end of the day, and the guys we have committed in 2018 are really good.
“So, the momentum is going in the direction. Now it’s just time for us to take that next step and play the way we’re capable of playing and become the program we intend to be, which is every single year, year in and year out, a top 25 program that is going to host regionals.”
But will that happen this year?
Never say never but Georgia – picked to finish with Kentucky in a tie for fourth in the SEC East – has the unenviable distinction of being in the same division with the trio of Florida, South Carolina and Vanderbilt, three teams ranked in the top six nationally. Georgia opens conference play in March at perennial power LSU.
“I think this group will respond really well. Talent-wise, we’re not going to use our youth as an excuse. We’re going to play them, and I think we’ll get better as we go. But these guys have all played at high levels, whether it be the USA level or high travel ball level. The SEC is a big step but this isn’t anything these guys haven’t seen before, so I’m excited to watch these guys.
When Georgia opens its season Friday against College of Charleston, the Bulldogs could have at the least four freshmen in the starting lineup, including two-thirds of their starting outfield in Tucker Maxwell and Tucker Bradley, and the entire left side of the infield with third baseman Aaron Schunk and shortstop Cam Shepherd.
Sophomore catcher Michael Curry and junior left fielder Keegan McGovern will be two veteran presences that Stricklin will lean on for leadership and hope that a youthful and relative inexperienced starting rotation will be able to settle into an early groove.
