It’s been a frustrating season, but Georgia’s baseball team has at least one more game to play.
Saturday’s 9-5 victory over No. 5 LSU clinched a spot in next week’s SEC Tournament. The Bulldogs (29-26, 11-19) will play Tuesday in the single-elimination round of the tournament at Hoover Metropolitan Stadium. Win that, and the Bulldogs advance to double-elimination play.
The Bulldogs will be the 11th seed in the tournament and play South Carolina at 9:30 a.m. with the winner getting LSU Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. Georgia obviously has a lot of work to do and would need to make a deep run to have a chance to advance to the NCAAs. At least going beats the alternative.
“We get one more day for these guys. You never want to get in a position where you’re hoping for something else to happen, when you control it yourself,” head coach Scott Stricklin said. “We didn’t finish the season the way that we wanted these last two weekends. But we get to play one more day. You win that, and you get two more. This team is more than capable of making a run. I think we (coaches) know that, and I think they know that.”
A little ninth-inning drama did not hurt the Bulldogs after all after LSU loaded the bases with only one out. With eight losses in the ninth inning already this year, it looked like Georgia might be headed for another. But after Colin Caldwell struck out Braydon Jobert, senior Nolan Crisp came in and tried Jordan Thompson on a fly ball to deep center, ending the game to record his second save.
“I’m on the top step in the ninth inning, and I’m asking myself, can we make this easy? Can we just make this easy?” Stricklin said. “Of course, we can’t. It’s just one of those teams that sometimes it’s hard to watch, but you can’t stop watching because some wild things happen.”
The Bulldogs outhit the Tigers (42-13, 19-10), with two of those hits coming on home runs by Connor Tate and Charlie Condon, who went deep for the 25th time this year. The homer also enabled him to hold the distinction of homering all 10 SEC series this year.
“It was in the back of my mind but wasn’t something I was worried about,” said Condon. “I was just worried about getting a hit, to be honest with you, and try to get it back rolling.”
It took starter Liam Sullivan 32 pitches in the first inning, one which saw the Tigers jump out to a 2-0 lead on Tre’ Morgan’s two-run homer over the fence in right.
But the Bulldogs would not tuck their tails.
After tying the game in the second on a base hit by Fernando Gonzalez and a throwing error by Tiger third baseman Tommy White, Georgia grabbed a 3-2 lead in the third on Tate’s 16th home run.
A three-run fourth pushed the margin to 6-2, with Condon’s two-run homer putting the Bulldogs up by four, following a sacrifice fly by Ben Anderson.
Sullivan, meanwhile, would settle down.
The junior lefty retired 11 straight batters before giving up a sixth-inning homer to Cade Belso. LSU would score a pair of runs off Luke Wagner, but the quintet of Leighton Finley, Kolten Smith, Chandler Marsh, Caldwell, and Crisp shut the Tigers out on one hit over the final three innings.
“I was pretty nervous,” Sullivan said. “I went to bed last night and was feeling it a little bit, but once I get out there, the nerves are gone. It’s just kind of leading up to it. My preparation was the same, just a little more nerves.”
NOTE:
Gonzalez had to leave the game midway through his at-bat in the third inning when he apparently injured his hand during a swing.
