A barrage of home runs from Georgia baseball’s best two hitters helped the Bulldogs shock No. 3 Florida with a late 13-11 win.
Connor Tate and Charlie Condon combined to mash four home runs with nine RBI, stunning a hostile rival crowd in heartbreaking fashion on Friday night in Gainesville.
The Bulldogs (19-15, 4-9 SEC) rallied from a 10-6 deficit to defeat the Gators (28-7, 9-4), scoring seven runs in the ninth inning in a packed-out Condron Ballpark.
Georgia also earned its first SEC Game One win of the season and its fifth straight win over Florida.
UGA more than batted around in the ninth, stringing together six hits and two walks off Florida closer Brandon Neely, who had allowed just two earned runs in SEC play entering Friday.
Georgia had more hits in the ninth than the first eight innings combined.
UGA loaded the bases for the 24-year-old Tate, who smashed a hanging curveball over the left-field wall to tie the game at 10 runs. The Bulldogs then reloaded the bases and got three more RBI from Parks Harber, Cole Wagner and Fernando Gonzalez to take a 13-10 lead into the final half-inning.
“We just kept fighting,” Tate said on 960 The Ref. “Our bats have been getting turned around, getting hotter and hotter, and it just showed tonight.
“We felt it the entire time.”
UGA coach Scott Stricklin leaned on another freshman in reliever Leighton Finley to seal the win.
True to the game’s high-octane nature, the Gators loaded the bases and scored a run before Finley struck out Florida’s last hope.
UGA’s last-minute outburst still wouldn’t have been enough without loads of early damage by the powerful freshman, Condon. The first baseman thumped three home runs, plating five runs of his own on his 20th birthday.
“He was unconscious today,” Stricklin said. “We’ve lost some really hard ones, and we’re just happy for one to go our way.
“That’s how you turn your season around right there.”
Georgia overcame two Florida grand slams to win the game. It was UGA’s first four-home run game since SEC action started.
The Bulldogs will look for their second conference series win over a top 10 team in as many weekends tomorrow at 7 p.m. UGA knocked off then-No. 10-ranked Kentucky with a Sunday doubleheader sweep a week ago.
Of course, Georgia is far from where it wants to be at this point in the season. To have fewer wins in the conference than weekends played is certainly less than ideal and UGA’s pitching struggled yet again.
Surrendering 11 runs on a Friday night was yet another example of inconsistency, even though it was against the country’s No. 5 scoring lineup.
Georgia likely will not be able to score 13 runs every game, especially in the talent-stacked SEC. The Bulldogs entered Gainesville averaging just over five runs per game in conference play with plenty of top-shelf pitchers left on their schedule.
The Bulldogs did show they can win close conference games, something they had failed to do three weeks into the SEC schedule. Georgia, which had been outscored 24-4 in the ninth inning before Friday, won its first game after trailing going into the ninth this season.
UGA also moved out of last place in the SEC East for the first time this season, passing Missouri (4-10).
Finishing the regular season as a top 12 team in the SEC is paramount, as the bottom two teams miss the conference tournament.
Georgia’s 4-9 conference record ties Alabama for the 10th-best in the SEC.
“You can’t say ‘What if?’ and ‘What about what happened before?’ because it’s over,” Stricklin said. “You can’t change it, but that’s a great win for us and hopefully, that can propel us into winning this series.”
