If SEC baseball coaches have their way, it’s going to be business as usual as it pertains to the 2021 schedule.

League coaches met via Zoom on Thursday, where it was that they would attempt to play a full 14-week schedule, including the normal slate of 10 SEC weekend series. League athletic directors still have to approve the plan.

“The league has not wanted to make a decision too quickly but now that the calendar has flipped over and the season-opener is six weeks away, we needed to start moving forward with what we are going to do,” Georgia baseball coach Scott Stricklin told UGASports. “The vote today, for the most part, it was unanimous. We’ve still got some other ideas that are floating around, but right now it is unanimous that we stay with the status quo, which means 14 total weekends, playing series on the weekend in the league, have 10 games of weekend series just like always. We’re just trying to stay as normal as possible until we don’t have to.”

However, Stricklin said coaches understand they’ll have to be flexible, especially when it comes to non-conference games against teams that could find it more difficult to comply with Covid testing protocols subscribed to by the SEC.

Currently, the Bulldogs are opening the season with three four-game weekend series against Evansville (Feb. 19), Gardner-Webb (Feb. 26) and North Florida (March 5) with a single game on Friday, a double-header on Saturday and a single game on Sunday. Stricklin said he still has to find a non-conference opponent for the weekend of March 12.

“We could pivot and do 10 weekends of four-game (SEC) series to get our games in. But we all felt it was important that it was important to play our non-conference games, to play our non-conference weekends to get ourselves ready for the league No. 1, but also to get more opportunity for guys to play,” Stricklin said. “We want to try and play our midweek games if we can, our testing protocols we think are manageable in the league for our non-conference opponents, so that’s what we’re going to try to do. We’re going to try to stay normal until we’re told we can’t stay normal.”

However, what was supposed to be a three-game weekend series with in-state rival Georgia Tech will no longer be the case.

With the ACC going to 12 weekend conference series over 13 weeks, the Yellow Jackets will not be able to play the Bulldogs, like they did last season at Coolray Field in Lawrenceville.

But according to Stricklin, he and Yellow Jacket head coach Danny Hall are trying to schedule a two-game midweek series between the two programs. If that does not work, they will try to play a single game at a neutral site.

The Bulldogs will still play ACC rival Clemson in their customary mid-week spot, presumably in early April.

“Our weekend series with Georgia Tech had to be canceled because they’re playing in the league, but we’re looking to make an adjustment to try and play Georgia Tech, kind of like we used to,” he said. “We’re still looking into that.”

The Bulldogs begin full-fledged preseason workouts on Jan. 29.

Since having to briefly pause fall workouts the second week of September, Stricklin said his Bulldog baseball team has been very fortunate when it comes to avoiding issues associated with Covid-19.

“Knock on wood, but since then it almost kind of went away within our team,” Stricklin said. “We did not have any issues the entire fall, and since the kids have gone home, I think we had one.”

According to Stricklin, the unnamed player was asymptomatic after coming in contact with a family member who had it.

“We’re going to have a meeting (Friday) to go over what they’ll need to do when they come back to campus on Monday,” Stricklin said. “Hopefully, we’ll get a clean bill of health for when school starts up on Wednesday so we can begin workouts as long as everybody receives a negative test.”