Georgia Baseball not getting complacent with top-25 ranking, looking to take attitude on the road

ATHENS, Ga. — Georgia Baseball cracked the top-25 for the first time since 2022, but the Bulldogs know it doesn’t mean anything if they don’t build on it. Only two weeks into SEC play, there’s eight series to go featuring several of the country’s top teams, and if the Dawgs take they’re foot off the gas, they could be doomed.

“If that gets us into a Regional, then I care about it right now. If it doesn’t, then it doesn’t mean anything to me,” first-year Georgia head coach Wes Johnson said. “You look at our schedule, every team in our league is good. The magic number in this league, everybody knows it, is 15 (conference wins to get in the NCAA Tournament). If that magically gets us to 15 wins, then I’m fired up about it, but I don’t think it does. For us, it’s cool for the fans, cool for some other people, but for us as a team, we know what it’s going to take.”

That approach certainly sounds like one of a championship winning coach, and Johnson’s been a part of championship winning teams. Last year as the pitching coach at LSU, he helped the Tigers to the program’s first National Championship in over a decade. He also spent time at Dallas Baptist, Mississippi State and Arkansas, making it to the NCAA Tournament six times in eight seasons including a run to the College World Series championship series with the Razorbacks in 2018.

As for his Georgia team and the program he took over in June, the Bulldogs have missed the NCAA Tournament two of the last three years and haven’t made it out of a Regional since 2008. There’s a long way to go, a Johnson knows, but after a school-record start, UGA sits at 21-4 overall (3-3 in the SEC) and is looking strong heading into the final weekend of March and the season-defining stretch that is April and May.

“I always look at it as people really starting to see us,” SEC Player of the Week Corey Collins said about the recent ranking in the top-25. “That means we’re making waves, and I like that, but you can’t get complacent. Not even the No. 1 team is going to go undefeated this year. That’s going to change a bunch of times. Our poll will probably bounce up and down, that’s just baseball. It really only matters at the end of the season where you’re at.”

MORE: Collins wins SEC Player of the Week with six home runs in four games

Georgia dropped its opening series of SEC play two weeks ago at Kentucky, being swept by the Wildcats while only putting up a combined five runs in the final two games. On the season, the Bulldogs are averaging over 10 runs a game, ranking fifth in the nation with 252 scored. Needless to say, it was an uncharacteristic weekend.

The Bulldogs bounced back however, returning home to welcome in an Alabama squad ranked in the top-10 by some. With a better set of pitching performances and the return of the hot bats, Georgia rolled to its own sweep.

“I like where we are. It’s never good to get swept, but the good part of it was coming back and showing that we can answer after a tough weekend,” Johnson said. “It was good to see that. You hope you don’t have to answer like that the rest of the year, but it’s a tough league.”

Georgia returns to the road each of the next two weekends, and the opponents aren’t easy ones. First up is Tennessee, fueled by a high-power offense much like Georgia’s. The Volunteers rank as high as No. 5, and that’s followed by a trip to Starkville, Miss. to take on Mississippi State, another ranked squad.

Two weeks into conference play, home teams across the SEC are 11-3 in series. Asked why that is, Johnson said coaches are doing a better job of recruiting to their ballpark. Kentucky, playing in one of the biggest in all of college baseball focuses on playing with speed while Georgia has a team built for power at Foley Field. Tennessee playing at a smaller Lindsey Nelson Stadium is quite similar.

Regardless of what style his team is recruited to play with, Johnson knows they’re going to have to go on the road and win to be truly competitive in the SEC. That’s why he’s preaching to his players a message about concentration recently, and when locked in, the Bulldogs are hard to beat.

“Every pitch matters, that’s for sure. You can never take a pitch off in the SEC. You can feel the energy around the place. The crowd plays big into it, and when you get the ball rolling, it just keeps going,” Georgia’s Henry Hunter said. “… Confidence and having some fight to you, showing up with a chip on your shoulder and taking it personally, that’s what it takes. We’re trying to come into somebody else’s house and knock them off.”

Hunter added that the team talked after the Kentucky series about “taking things more personal.” While a newcomer to Georgia, he considers himself to be a leader already and had a heart-to-heart with his teammates. His message was heard, and the Bulldogs showed it against Alabama. He hopes it can continue to carry weight.

“We want to show up and beat somebody. It’s not always a bad thing to not be so nice,” Hunter said. “Obviously there’s a line in the sand, but we don’t want to back down from anybody. We want to give everybody our best effort. Going forward, if we can show up and have that confidence and swagger, just that mentality of, ‘We don’t plan on losing any of these games,’ I think we’re going to have a lot of success in the SEC.”

First pitch from Knoxville is set for Friday at 6:30 p.m. ET, airing on SEC Network+. Games two (Saturday – 5:00 p.m.) and three (Sunday – 2:00 p.m.) will be televised on SEC Network.