Despite Series Loss, Dawgs Still Lead SEC

The bad news for Georgia’s baseball team is that it met its biggest share of adversity over the weekend, losing its first conference series of the year in the highly competitive SEC.

The good? By salvaging the weekend on the road against Tennessee with Saturday’s 7-1 win against the Vols, Georgia is 29-8 overall and 10-5 in conference play - good enough to lead the SEC East by a game over Vanderbilt and also tying Mississippi State for best record overall in the league.

Georgia dug deep on Saturday for the win - digging that was much needed after back-to-back shutouts at the hands of Tennessee - the nation’s leader in overall shutouts.

While Emerson Hancock and CJ Smith were the hard-luck losing pitchers to start the weekend, Tony Locey helped Georgia get a strong start in the series finale, giving up three hits over six innings of work.

And after Georgia did what it had not yet been able to do against UT - score runs - the job was easy with the way that Locey was pitching.

Three runs in the first inning and a pair in the second made it a 5-0 Bulldogs lead, and two more in the fourth paved the way to a 7-0 lead and 7-1 win.

Tucker Maxwell, Georgia’s team leader in stolen bases, helped get Georgia going, reaching in the first followed by Riley King and Aaron Schunk before an LJ Talley groundout and John Cable two-run single made it 3-0. An inning later, after Chaney Rogers ripped his first career homer, Maxwell doubled before scoring on a sacrifice fly by King.

As usual, there’s no easy path for Georgia despite leading the SEC. Clemson is in town on Tuesday night for a top-20 matchup before Mizzou, third in the SEC East, is at Foley Field Thursday through Sunday.

Go Dawgs!