I had a great time in Athens on Saturday, and I’m grateful to everyone who turned out, showed up, or just came over to say hello. We hope to make this an annual event, and we plan to begin planning next year’s Dawg Day Afternoon (we are open to suggestions for a better name, but that’s what I’m calling it for now) as soon as the 2012 G-Day game date is announced.
While we were in the Classic City, much was afoot in Bulldog Nation. Although separate baseball and softball series recaps will follow, as will a look at G-Day, I want to provide a quick overview of what occurred in other sports in today’s unusually succinct Saturday summary:
Saturday was not a good day for the Bulldog netters. In Knoxville, the No. 8 Georgia women’s tennis team fell to No. 16 Tennessee, dropping the 5-2 verdict that left both clubs sitting at 9-2 in SEC play. With the loss, the Bulldogs fell to third in the conference tourney seeding.
Before a raucous season-high crowd of 2,060 (two of whom were NCT and me) at the Dan Magill Tennis Complex, the No. 5 Georgia men’s tennis squad fell, 4-3, in a hotly-contested showdown with No. 4 Tennessee. The Red and Black lost the doubles point on a controversial call (and, by "controversial," I mean "obviously erroneous to anyone who is not legally blind") but battled to the bitter end, with the clincher coming in No. 13 J.P. Smith’s 7-5, 6-3 victory over No. 16 Wil Spencer. The head-to-head loss to the co-SEC champion Volunteers leaves the Bulldogs with the No. 2 seed for the league tournament, where Georgia will open against the LSU-Alabama winner.
The Red and Black riders came up just short in their quest for a fourth straight NCAA title, as Georgia fell to Auburn at the Varsity Equestrian National Championships. After the Bulldogs edged the Tigers, 4-3, in the Western discipline, the Orange and Blue defeated the Athenians, 6-2, in the hunt seat events. This gave Auburn a 51-49 overall triumph in the battle with Georgia, who finished second in hunt seat and third in Western.
Thanks to a second-round surge at St. Simons, the Georgia men’s golf team moved up the leaderboard to fourth place in the chase for the SEC championship. Meanwhile, at Auburn, the Bulldog lady linksters fell from nine to 28 strokes back, though the Georgia women’s golf team remains in sixth place.
A second scheduled game was scrubbed due to weather, so the spring season ended with the Georgia soccer squad’s 2-0 win over Wake Forest in Winston-Salem. The result gave Bulldog head coach Steve Holeman a victory over his alma mater.
Go ‘Dawgs!