Georgia Bulldogs Pursue NCAA Championships in Softball, Tennis

Yes, I know that Mark Richt answered a direct question in a polite, reasonable, and ethical manner without speaking ill of anyone else, and that some people mistakenly believe this imagined affront represents adequate justification for offering inelegant and ill-informed snark, but, since I don’t understand what motivates such nonsensical broadsides, I intend to turn to a separate subject altogether. Should you wish to discuss that issue, elfcrash has posted a fanshot, to which I would direct you for the purpose of carrying on that particular conversation.

Instead, I want to talk about NCAA Tournament brackets. If small (in more than one sense of that word) segments of the Alabama fan base wish to bash the Bulldogs rather than discuss postseason tourneys, well, that’s probably because they either don’t make the ones we do, or, when they make them, they get eliminated from them by us.

The Georgia softball team earned the sixth seed nationally in the NCAA Softball Tournament, meaning the Bulldogs will host the super regional if they advance past the regional round. The Red and Black will open the tournament in Athens on Friday against the Georgia St. Panthers, who captured the championship of the Colonial Athletic Association with a 36-23 overall record. The other Classic City combatants are the UAB Blazers and the Florida St. Seminoles; although the Tribe secured the ACC Tournament title, FSU sports only a 30-26 ledger, and Conference USA representative Alabama-Birmingham won only 38 games to Georgia’s 47.

The winner of the double-elimination Athens Regional will advance through the softball tournament bracket to the best-of-three super regional to face whichever contender emerges from a College Park field of four that includes the 11th-seeded Baylor Bears, the East Carolina Pirates, the Lehigh Mountain Hawks, and the host Maryland Terrapins.

Farther from home, the eighth-seeded Georgia women’s tennis team will face ninth-seeded California in Palo Alto at 9:00 Eastern on Friday night. The winner of that match will advance to the quarterfinals against the winner of the third-round match pitting No. 1 seed Stanford against No. 16 seed Northwestern. Joining the Bulldog lady netters in the Golden State will be the sixth-seeded Georgia men’s tennis team, which is slated to square off with No. 11 seed Duke at noon Eastern on Thursday. The victor will be scheduled for a Saturday showdown with whichever team comes out of the contest pitting the third-seeded Tennessee Volunteers and the 14th-seeded California Golden Bears.

In short, it’s a big weekend for the Georgia spring sports in postseason play. I, for one, will be paying attention to the performance of the Red and Black student-athletes as the Bulldogs pursue national championships in their respective sports, rather than slinging mud over perceived slights in the answers to enquiries (or are they inquiries?) of head coaches at non-rival schools. Others’ mileage, of course, may vary.

Go ‘Dawgs!