Diamond Dawgs Serving Notice

The more Georgia plays, the harder the Bulldogs are making it to discount them on the baseball diamond.

The Diamond Dawgs, now ranked 24th, opened the weekend series on Thursday against 14th-ranked Texas A&M, wearing down the Aggies pitching staff to the tune of an 11-5 win. With a win on either Friday or Saturday, Georgia would have its third weekend conference series of the win in the third weekend of SEC play. The Bulldogs needed nine weekends within conference play to win as many SEC series a year ago.

Georgia wraps up its series with Texas A&M at 7 p.m. on Friday and Saturday at 2 p.m.

The 5-1 conference mark was good enough to tie Georgia with Vanderbilt as co-leaders of the SEC coming into Thursday. A&M, meanwhile is still looking for its first series win, but is hardly struggling given that those two weekend losses were to fifth-ranked Ole Miss and 12th-ranked Auburn.

There are some question marks about how much of a ‘quality win’ the wins over Alabama and South Carolina will end up being. The Crimson Tide are hardly a baseball powerhouse, and the Gamecocks are in year one following the Chad Holbrook era and failed to reach the regionals last year.

Georgia served notice on Thursday night that it bears keeping a close eye on and a weekend series win against a mainstay power like A&M would send a strong message. The Aggies have been in the regionals each year since 2007 with a pair of trips to Omaha, including last year.

The Aggies pitching staff is regarding as one of the best in the nation with a 2.60 ERA and .223 opposing batting average coming into the weekend. But Georgia’s hitters wore that pitching down on Thursday with three runs in the fourth and four runs in both the fifth and sixth to come back from an early 2-0 hole. Michael Curry led the way with three hits and four runs batted in along with Keegan McGovern and Tucker Bradley’s two hits.

Chase Adkins threw five solid innings on Friday, and Georgia will look to Emerson Hancock and Ryan Webb on Friday and Saturday in an effort of building toward not only getting a series win, but also registering another attention-grabbing win.