For Georgia pitcher Cole Wilcox, it just all seems surreal.

A week ago, he and his Bulldog teammates were headed down to Florida to open SEC play against the Gators. Then, Georgia’s bus was turning around, heading back to Athens.

Initially, it was hoped that the teams might be able to salvage at least part of the season, but those hopes were quickly dashed when the SEC announced it was canceling all spring sports due to the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.

“I don’t know if it’s all set in, honestly. You feel like you’re going to go back out there at some point. It’s tough. All the time you put in with those guys, you see how hard they work. The biggest thing for me, it’s like three months of memories just kind of stripped away,” Wilcox said. “I mean, you think about just how fun it is being on the road, being in big, hostile environments with your guys, those nine guys, when they’re the only ones pulling for you—that’s something special you can’t get back.”

It was last Thursday, when the Bulldogs had stopped in Brunswick for lunch after a Wednesday night game, that Wilcox and the rest of the players learned what was happening.

Head coach Scott Stricklin spoke to the team, but word had already started to leak on Twitter.

“We found out through Twitter before Coach Stricklin addressed us, and it was just silence the rest of the way,” Wilcox said. “We were about 30 minutes out, and I don’t know if there was another word said the whole time. I was sitting on the bus with some of the seniors, and it was tough.

"You saw just how hurt they were, and how hurt everybody is. But you really feel for those guys, knowing something this special got taken away by this. It was really heartbreaking.”

What’s also heartbreaking for Wilcox and the Bulldogs is that the 2020 season was shaping up to be a memorable year.

Georgia was ranked as high as No. 2 when the decision to stop play came down.

Wilcox’s season had a gotten off to a tremendous start. In four games, the big right-hander was 3-0 with an ERA of 1.57. He had 32 strikeouts and just two walks in 23 innings.

“There’s been just a ton of what-ifs,” Wilcox said. “We felt like we were going to start peaking at the right time. We knew what we had. Like I said, we’d been working with each other all year. We had put so much into it, and you know when you put a lot into something, you’re going to get a lot out of it.

“We knew we had a good team. We knew we had a good shot of making a lot of noise in the SEC, go into postseason; it just really stinks not to have that now.”

What also stinks for players like Wilcox is not knowing what the future holds.

The NCAA leadership council has agreed that eligibility relief is appropriate for all Division I student-athletes who participated in spring sports. In other words, if passed, all spring athletes would get to keep their current year of eligibility, should they decide to return.

For Wilcox, however, there’s something else to consider. Along with teammate Emerson Hancock, Wilcox is draft-eligible and projected to go in the first round. The question is, will the annual Major League Draft be delayed? Will it take place at all?

“No one has any answers right now, so it’s hard to even know,” Wilcox said. “I thought I’d have some certainty about May or June. It’s tough having it in March, so right now I don’t really know where to go from here, because no one knows what’s going to happen. It’s tough to come up with an answer for that right now. I’m just trying to take it one day at a time.”

Wilcox agrees that spring sports athletes should all have the opportunity to come back and not lose a year of eligibility.

“That’s definitely the right thing to do,” he said. “We’re promised five years of eligibility, this barely counts as a year.”

In the meantime, Wilcox will just wait and see what happens.

“I think we’re going to have a spot in Athens where we can go lift. That’s really going to help; after that, we’ve just got to find a place to throw,” Wilcox said. “We’re just going to try to make stuff work. Nobody’s really been in this situation before. Nobody really has an answer; we’ve just got to find a way.”