Georgia steals one from Tennessee in style, stumbles vs. Vols over the weekend
Georgia Baseball was able to get one on the road over Tennessee, but that was all for the Bulldogs this weekend as they went up to Knoxville. Taking down the top-10 Volunteers on Friday and handing them their first home loss by the run rule, Wes Johnson’s team dropped the next two and will come back to Athens with a 22-6 overall record and a 4-5 mark in the SEC.
Still, winning one is a big deal, and the fashion in which the Dawgs did it (14-2) was impressive. SEC Player of the Week Corey Collins went 2-for-3 with a pair of home runs, racking up six RBI, as part of Georgia’s 14-hit day. Georgia tacked on to its nation-leading home run total with four more as Fernando Gonzalez and Clayton Chadwick joined in on the fun with Collins.
On the mound, Charlie Goldstein gave Georgia six strong innings with no earned runs, no walks and three strikeouts. He would hand things over to Brian Zeldin in the seventh as he closed out the game. Tennessee, while recording 10 hits, was only able to muster up two runs, both of which were unearned off of an error. It was just the second home loss of the season for the Volunteers at Lindsey Nelson Stadium.
“We came out and Charlie attacked the strike zone, we played good defense and got timely hitting,” Georgia’s head coach Wes Johnson said. “Our offense did a phenomenal job early in the game of not chasing and pushed their starter into some counts that were favorable to us. We got some good swings and did some damage. What Corey Collins is doing right now is hard to talk about. It’s impressive. We had a lot of good hits up and down the lineup. We turned some big double plays and made plays around the diamond including Charlie Condon in centerfield.”
Saturday and Sunday weren’t quite as friendly to the Bulldogs. Georgia watched as Tennessee came back to win 16-10 on Saturday before being shut out on Sunday 7-0. While Charlie Condon blasted a pair of home runs in the first of the two losses, it was uncharacteristic mistakes that cost Georgia on Saturday. Then, it was an inability to get anything going offensively that did the Dawgs in on Sunday. Georgia was thrown out at home early on, and the threats essentially ended there.
Georgia returns home to Foley Field this week to host Georgia State on Tuesday. Then it’s another road trip to take on a ranked SEC opponent with three games at Mississippi State lined up Friday, Saturday and Sunday. First pitch on Tuesday is set for 5:00 p.m. ET on SEC Network+, the same way you’ll be able to watch games one (Friday, 7:00 p.m. ET) and three (Sunday, 2:00 p.m. ET) in Starkville. In between those two will be a contest on SEC Network Saturday at 8:00 p.m. ET.
