This is not the way Georgia’s baseball team envisioned closing out the regular season.
For the second straight night Friday, the Bulldogs came out flat. Missouri took advantage, rocking Georgia 10-3.
“We need to compete harder; right now, they’re out-competing us and playing better than us,” senior co-captain Ben Anderson said. “We’ve got to clear the past, show up ready to play (Saturday), and be prepared to fight.”
Head coach Scott Stricklin thought his Bulldogs would do just that after Thursday night’s 11-3 shellacking.
Instead, Friday night’s fiasco was almost a carbon copy of the previous night, as Missouri pounded the Bulldogs for the second time in 48 hours.
“They out-competed us. I thought they had a really good plan against Jonathan Cannon; they made his outing very difficult,” Stricklin said. “And our hitters just didn’t compete. We struck out 12 times after 16 yesterday, and that’s just not good enough.”
Stricklin was asked what he might have done differently.
“You stay up and you think about things, but right now there’s not a whole lot we can do with our lineup,” he said. “We’ve got one guy coming off the bench right now, that’s where we are, one guy, that’s how beat up we are. We’re playing with 10 guys, so the lineup is not going to be able to change unless Fernando (Gonzalez) or Josh (McAllister) wake up tomorrow with a miraculous recovery and I don’t see that happen with the way they were walking around today.
"We are who are right now. We need Liam Sullivan to give us a good start, and Jaden Woods and Jack Gowen are going to be back-to-back right there. It’s kind of a carbon copy of where we were last week at Tennessee, it’s the biggest game of the year for us, and our players need to treat it that way.”
The news on Georgia’s injury front does not appear positive.
Stricklin said that Gonzalez is dealing with a sprained wrist and McAllister has a strained thumb.
“Neither hit today, both had to come out of the game yesterday,” Stricklin said. “If they come to me tomorrow and say, 'Coach, I’m good to go,' we’ll play them. I just don’t see that happening.”
Updates on pitcher Nolan Crisp (strained muscle) and infielder/outfielder Garrett Blaylock (hit in the eye) are even dourer.
Stricklin confirmed that Blaylock is out for the year, while Crisp will need five to six weeks to recover.
“It dampens the mood when players get hurt. We’re family, and when anyone goes down nobody feels great about it,” Anderson said. “We’ve just got to be able to move on from it and get wins for them.”
Although the Bulldogs (34-20, 14-15) still appear in line for a regional bid, it certainly does not appear to be a team excited about the prospects.
Georgia entered the series still alive to earn a bye in next week’s SEC Tournament, and seemingly had ample opportunity with Missouri, the last-place team in the East, coming to Athens.
Stricklin was asked if he still felt confident about a spot in the Regionals.
“There’s nothing that’s locked in when it comes to the Regionals and we learned that last year,” he said. “We’ve got to take every win that we can. We’ve got to win (Saturday) and see where we are.”
Missouri’s Torin Montgomery did his part to make Georgia’s night a painful one.
The Tigers’ junior first baseman ripped two homers and drove in six of Missouri’s first eight runs to race out to a 7-1 lead in the fifth.
Missouri extended the lead to 10-1 before a pair of solo home runs by Corey Collins and Cole Tate accounted for the final score. Parks Harber also homered earlier in the game, but otherwise, it was not a good effort by Georgia’s bats.
“We took a couple of good swings, got a couple of home runs, but with nobody on base,” Stricklin said. “When you don’t grind out at-bats, find a way to get a walk, a hit by pitch, jam-shot single, something, solo home runs aren’t going to win games for you. We got out-competed again, and it was really disappointing to have that happen.”
Georgia and Missouri wrap up their series Saturday at 2:00 p.m. EST.
