Georgia Baseball rising in rankings, Charlie Condon superstardom continues

Georgia Baseball is trending in the right direction. Monday’s updates of the D1Baseball, Baseball America and the USA Today Coaches rankings all have the Bulldogs in the top-15 while superstar Charlie Condon continued to put on an incredible display of his skills – still leading the nation both in batting average (.459) and home runs (33).

With a 4-0 week that saw a sweep of Vanderbilt and a midweek win over Kennesaw State, Wes Johnson’s squad is continuing to make a strong case to host an NCAA Tournament Regional in Athens. The selection committee chooses 16 host sites from around the country with the top eight remaining teams having an opportunity to host Super Regionals at their home stadium as well. While still three weeks away from the announcement of the bracket on May 27th, UGA certainly is in a strong spot.

D1Baseball: No. 15 (Up from No. 19)

Baseball America: No. 14 (Previously unranked)

USA Today Coaches: No. 12 (Up from No. 18, Georgia’s highest ranking last week)

According to D1Baseball, the rankings used by ESPN to highlight the nation’s top teams, Tennessee took over the No. 1 spot from Texas A&M. The Aggies drop to No. 3 with Clemson in between. Georgia has a win over each of those three teams.

Fourth-ranked Kentucky also represents an opponent of UGA’s. The Bulldogs fell in a sweep to the Wildcats to open SEC play in Lexington. Add in a dropped series against No. 14 Mississippi State and an upcoming date with No. 13 South Carolina and all five of Georgia’s series against teams currently ranked have come (or will occur) on the road. Vanderbilt, ranked No. 17 by D1Baseball entering last weekend, dropped out of the top 25 on Monday, as did Alabama (previously No. 23). UGA swept both squads at Foley Field this season.

“It’s massive. As you know, every win in this league is hard. For these guys to win three in a row shows that they have a lot of heart and a lot of toughness,” Georgia head coach Wes Johnson said after Sunday’s sweep-clinching 11-7 victory over the Commodores. “You’ve got to tip your hat to Vanderbilt. We had them down and they could have checked out, but they didn’t. They came back and they fought hard to make it tough on us. I’m fired up with the way our guys responded back.”

Charlie Condon Doing Special Things

Georgia superstar Charlie Condon continued doing special things over the weekend. Having already won SEC Player of the Week three times this season, the Walker School product and Marietta, Ga. native positioned himself for another one (to be announced later on Monday).

Condon has hit home runs in seven straight games including each of Georgia’s four this past week. His total on the season of 33 ties an NCAA record during the BBCOR era (set in 71 games last season by Florida’s Jac Caglianone) and is second-most in SEC history behind Brandon Larson’s 40 in 1997.

Furthermore, he’s hit safely in 18 straight games and is on track to take Georgia’s Triple Crown once again with a nation-leading .459 batting average, a team-high 69 RBI and his NCAA-best 33 home runs. He also leads UGA in doubles (16), runs scored (70, 25 more than any teammate) and hits (83, 20 more than any teammate). Condon is considered by many the favorite to go with the first overall pick in this summer’s MLB Draft, which would make Georgia just the third school in the nation to have first picks in the MLB, NBA and NFL drafts joining UCLA and LSU.

“It’s been really good to see this team compete on both sides of the ball as well as we did this weekend. It’s the most complete we’ve played as a group this season which is really exciting to see this time of year,” Condon said about the sweep. “It’s great. The team success definitely feels way better than the personal success. It’s always way more fun in the locker room after a win and a big series win like this. I’ll take that any day of the week over having a good game individually. For it to be together, it’s awesome.”

Georgia, now 35-12 on the season and 13-11 in SEC play, has just six games remaining in the regular season – all against conference competition. A road series at South Carolina awaits on Thursday, Friday and Saturday before another Thursday-Saturday series to wrap up the regular season the following weekend. That one comes at home against Florida.

First pitch between the Bulldogs and Gamecocks on Thursday is set for 8:00 p.m. ET on ESPNU. Games two and three follow at 5:30 and 2:00 p.m. ET on SEC Network (Friday) and SEC Network+ (Saturday).