For two straight years, Georgia advanced to the NCAA baseball tournament as a national seed, earning the right to host a regional for back-to-back seasons for the first time in school history.
For two straight years, that’s also where it has ended, this time at the hands of Florida State, as the third seed in Athens Regional advanced to the Super Regionals by routing the Bulldogs for the second day in a row, this time by a 10-1 score.
It was a sad and disappointing ending to a season that appeared to have so much hope, after Georgia (46-17) went a school-best 21-9 in conference play.
"Losing is awful. As a coach, that's what we do; this is our livelihood, and when we lose, it tears us apart, it really does," head coach Scott Stricklin said. "It's painful. Every coach out there who is listening to this knows what I'm taking about. We don't sleep. It hurts, it's painful. I hurt for the players, because I wanted it so bad for them."
The Bulldogs, fresh off a 13-0 win over Florida Atlantic to advance to Sunday’s championship round, looked anything like a team with a title on the line.
You might even say it was their worst effort of the year.
Georgia’ erstwhile pitching staff—with the exception of Elliott’s gem early in the day—bore no resemblance to the unit that performed so well for the majority of the season.
Combined with another inconsistent day at the plate and an uncharacteristic three errors, the Bulldogs never gave themselves a chance.
"We made defensive miscues today, which is just not us. We set a record for fielding last year and broke it this season," Stricklin said. "We just weren't very good defensively today. In order to beat Florida State today, we were going to have to be near-perfect, and we weren't that."
Cole Wilcox (3-2) simply didn’t have it, after pitching so well his three previous appearances against Florida, Alabama, and Arkansas in the SEC Tournament. The Seminoles scored five runs off the freshman (four earned), who allowed five hits and surrendered five walks before giving way to Zac Kristofak in the fourth.
Kristofak wasn’t any more successful. The junior allowed four runs, with just one being earned, thanks to a pair of errors, Georgia’s second and third of the game.
But once again, it was the Bulldogs’ inconsistency at the plate that killed whatever chance Georgia might have had to overcome its pitching and defensive woes. Georgia managed just six hits in seven innings off Florida State’s Conor Grady (9-5), who was making just his seventh start this year. Grady walked two and struck out three.
"I thought we swung it, obviously pretty good in the first game," designated hitter John Cable said. "But their guy threw well. He kept us off-balance all game; at the end of the day he pitched better than we hit. It hurts but that's the way baseball goes sometimes."
The Seminoles started quickly, with Reese Albert getting a two-strike pitch from Wilcox that found too much of the plate, subsequently depositing it over the left field wall for a two-run homer two batters into the game.
Florida State added two more in the third, one on a throwing error and a ground-out with the infield in.
Unfortunately for Georgia, there was a lot more where that came from, as the Seminoles added another run in the fourth and four more in the sixth, to put the game completely out of reach.
A solo home run by Tucker Maxwell to lead off the bottom of the sixth did little to cover up the damage that was already done.
"It's the same feeling, being back here (after losing in the regionals for the second straight year)," Kristofak said. "If there's one takeaway, you never know what can happen. We've been really good about coming in here, but you never know with baseball. If you don't play your best in this tournament, you're not going to win. Unfortunately, we've had to find out the hard way again."
Stricklin dismissed the notion that his team succumbed to the pressure of playing in a big game.
"Our guys have been playing in big games every weekend in this conference, the crowds that we play in front of, the venues we play in front of—this was just one of those days," Stricklin said. "It was one of those games, because earlier in the day we made all the plays, but for whatever reason, we just didn't play great defensively today, and we didn't hit great. Pitching and defense is what got us here, and we didn't pitch great, and we didn't play great defense. Against Florida State, we had to be really, really good, and we just weren't that, today."
