Georgia Bulldogs Baseball
The College Diamond
By: Robert Craft
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
64 NCAA Tournament teams will be announced next Monday, and the SEC is in position to grab up to 10 of the 16 Regional host sites and six of the eight national seeds.
Heading into conference tournaments, these seven teams have all but locked up a top eight seed, which means home-field advantage all the way through the Super Regionals. Teams are in order of RPI, not projected seed.
Georgia (1)
Auburn (2)
Vanderbilt (3)
Texas (4)
Arkansas (5)
LSU (8)
Teams on the hosting bubble.
Alabama (9)
Florida (13)
Tennessee (16)
Ole Miss (18)
Some notes on the bracket hopefuls: Alabama’s RPI is very strong, but the Crimson Tide have only two series wins against Tournament-caliber teams (Oklahoma and Georgia).
Florida went 15-15 in the SEC, but six of those wins came against South Carolina and Missouri. On a positive note, the Gators won series vs. Texas (on the road) and Arkansas.
Tennessee went 16-14 in the SEC and lost their last five series. They have one of the weakest non-conference schedules (216).Tennessee has joined a long list of defending national champions that have struggled, relatively speaking, the following season.
Only one of the last 10 national champs, 2017 Florida, was a top eight seed the following season (the Gators were No. 1 overall). Four of the other nine were hosts but not top eight seeds, and four failed to make the tournament.
Florida miraculously ended its 2025 regular season .500 in Southeastern Conference play after opening 1-11 against league squads, capping off the turnaround with a series victory over Alabama at home on Saturday [W 7-6; L 6-9; W 9-3] and securing the No. 10 seed in the upcoming SEC Tournament.
Vanderbilt, the 2019 champs, did not have an opportunity to defend its title due to the pandemic. The Commodores were the No. 4 overall seed in 2021.
Vanderbilt enters the postseason as one of the hottest teams in the country. The Commodores won their final five SEC games — many in dramatic fashion — to finish 39-16 overall and 19-11 in the SEC.
Vanderbilt swept Kentucky in Nashville over the weekend, winning the first two games on back-to-back walk-off home runs. Outfielder Braden Holcomb, down to his final strike with two outs, hit a three-run blast to give Vanderbilt an 8-7 win.
Then, after Kentucky rallied from down 7-5 at the top of the ninth to take an 8-7 lead, shortstop Jonathan Vastine hit a two-run home run with one out to walk off the Cats once again.
These heroics were nothing new for Vanderbilt. Two weeks earlier, the Dores rallied from down 7-2 in the eighth to beat Alabama with a two-run Holcomb homer with two outs in the bottom of the ninth.
For Kentucky, it was a painful ending to a regular season that featured eight SEC losses by one run and another three by two runs.
At 29-23 overall and 13-17 in the SEC with an RPI of 36, the Cats head to the SEC Tournament on the NCAA Tournament bubble. They play Oklahoma on Tuesday.
The SEC will be well represented and this year‘s College Baseball World Series tournament. It’s just a matter of who will host and who will travel.
I predict four SEC teams will make it to Omaha and one will be crowned national champion.
Diamond Dawgs
By: Kipp Branch
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
As I sat at the campsite on beautiful Lake Oconee last Sunday evening, I got on my phone and watched UGA fall to a hot hitting FSU squad in the finals of the Athens regional and it was obvious that this UGA baseball program is on the right track. Even Captain Obvious would be in agreement with me on the subject of UGA baseball.
The 2019 Bulldogs finished the season with a 46-17 record after reaching the NCAA Athens Regional final.
The 46 wins is top 5 in school history and the 21 SEC wins is the most ever in a season for the baseball Dawgs. Georgia earned a National Seed two straight years and played host to an NCAA Regional in back-to-back seasons.
Yeah, The Dawgs lost to Duke and FSU at home over the last two seasons as a regional host, but baseball may be the greatest game on the planet. If a team gets hot at the right time and just goes on a tear, they are tough. That is what has happened to UGA over the last two baseball seasons.
I laugh at people who say this team choked without doing the research on how this baseball program has evolved.
As a fan of the program you hate to see your favorite team lose to anyone, but realize that prior to hiring of Scott Stricklin the Bulldogs had gone 42-72 the previous 4 years in SEC play and had conference records of 5-23 in 2011, and 7-20 in 2013. When Stricklin was hired the program was a dumpster fire.
It takes time to build a quality baseball program and when Strickin was hired in 2014 the rebuild was put into motion.
It took four tough years to start seeing results, and those results came in 2018 when UGA went 39-21 and 18-12 in the SEC. Anyone who follows UGA athletics can see that the program is rising to being one of the elite baseball programs in the conference.
The 21 SEC wins this season show that the program is on a solid foundation. I personally believe that a baseball rebuild is much harder than a football or basketball rebuild job.
Give credit to Greg McGarity, the UGA AD, for giving Stricklin the opportunity to put his stamp on the program. The results are starting to come in. Look at the Dawgs drafted in this week’s MLB draft.
Georgia’s draft picks were junior third baseman Aaron Schunk (2nd Round, Colorado), junior pitcher Tony Locey (3rd Round, St. Louis), junior pitcher Tim Elliott (4th Round, Seattle), senior second baseman LJ Talley (7th Round, Toronto), junior pitcher Zac Kristofak (14th Round, L.A. Angels), junior shortstop Cam Shepherd (20th Round, Tampa Bay), junior outfielder Tucker Maxwell (22nd Round, Philadelphia) and redshirt sophomore outfielder/infielder Riley King (26th Round, Atlanta).
When you have 8 players drafted from your current program things are clicking. Georgia has great pitching coming back in 2020, young talents like Randon Jernigan, and 12-13 new players coming in the 2020 recruiting class.
This team isn’t going anywhere folks except a Super Regional or a College World Series in the near future.
Scott Stricklin deserves a raise for the job he is doing in Athens. 85-38 overall and 39-21 in the SEC over the past two seasons. The rebuild has turned into reload mode now.
Georgia baseball is firmly on the right track.
