Baseball: The rubber meets the road
Bulldogs look to rebound from 14-inning defeat to take series from Auburn
A hit falling in there, a better executed pitch there.
In a 14-inning game, there are countless little plays that add up to the game’s final outcome. On Friday night, the sum of those moments came out to be a 10-6 loss for Georgia (27-15, 10-10 SEC) to Auburn (18-21, 4-16) at Foley Field.
The Tigers lost a pair of leads in the contest. Both teams scored two runs in the first, while Georgia tied the game at three on a solo home run from right fielder Connor Tate in the bottom of the sixth.
Overall on the night, though, the Bulldog offense struggled to get the big hit. Georgia went 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position, with the one knock a single that didn’t plate a run.
“It’s probably more Auburn making good pitches,” Georgia head coach Scott Stricklin said after the game. “Sometimes, when you get up with runners in scoring position, you try to do a little bit too much and maybe you squeeze the bat a little tighter. It does happen.
Of Georgia’s six runs on the night, three came via sacrifice fly. The other three came on home runs.
As the game headed to extra innings knotted up at three, the teams engaged in a stalemate. Bulldog freshman pitcher Jaden Woods dealt 4.2 dominant innings of relief before issuing a pair of two-out walks in the 12th.
Michael Polk relieved Woods in an attempt to extinguish the fire, but instead Tiger shortstop Ryan Bliss added fuel to the flame with an RBI double to give the visitors a 5-3 lead. It seemed as if Auburn had the win firmly in hand.
That is until Georgia center fielder Ben Anderson, who has struggled at the plate all year and has just two home runs in his Georgia career, sent a lightning bolt over the fence in the bottom half of the inning to tie the game at five. The classic contest had yet another unexpected twist.
The teams traded runs once again in the 13th. Finally, in the 14th, Auburn struck the killer blow with four runs off Georgia reliever Darryn Pasqua. He and Polk, two veterans on the Georgia staff, combined to allow five runs to the Tigers in extra innings.
“Michael and Darryn have been great for us all year long, and we’re going to keep giving them the ball,” Stricklin said. “We trust them and we’re going to give it to them. Sometimes, it just doesn’t go your way. Unfortunately, it just didn’t go their way tonight.”
With the loss, the series goes to a rubber match on Saturday afternoon. It’s a big game for Georgia, more so than a typical series wrap-up game.
A win gives the Bulldogs their fourth straight SEC series win and continues their ascent up the league standings. A loss means dropping a home series to an Auburn team who hasn’t won an SEC series this year.
With a tough schedule coming up, the Bulldogs need all the confidence they can get. Losing a home series to Auburn might reset that meter, erasing the momentum built up with series wins the past three weekends.
Both teams will be tired for the noon first pitch tomorrow. Stricklin doesn’t want to hear that excuse from his players.
Instead, he views this as a chance for his Bulldogs to once again prove their mental fortitude.
“We’ve got to be the tougher team tomorrow,” Stricklin said. “We’ve got to find a way to win a series at home. That’s always the goal.”