Georgia baseball saved its best for last against Ole Miss, pounding the No. 11-ranked Rebels by a 13-2 margin on Senior Day at Foley Field on Saturday.
“This team has proven that they are a tough team and that they can bounce back,” said Bulldogs’ coach Scott Stricklin, whose program scored at least one win in every SEC series this season.
Stricklin’s Georgia team (30-23, 13-17 SEC) kept itself squarely on the NCAA Baseball Tournament bubble with Saturday’s impressive home win over Ole Miss (38-17, 18-12).
The Bulldogs will return to action at the SEC Baseball Tournament in Hoover, Ala. Georgia is the league’s No. 8 seed and will face traditional powerhouse and No. 9 seed LSU at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday in an elimination game. UGA did not face the Tigers this season.
The Bulldogs’ backs were against the wall after a tough 2-0 setback on Thursday and 8-5 defeat in 11 innings on Friday night in a game UGA led 5-1 entering the eighth inning.
“Coming off a heartbreaker last night was tough, (and) I knew today was a must win,” said Georgia sophomore pitcher Jonathan Cannon (4-2), who responded with a strong start featuring seven innings of four-hit, two-run ball.
“The offense was able to give me some run support, which allowed me to settle in and allowed me to do my thing.”
Ole Miss took a 1-0 lead in the first inning but Georgia came right back in the bottom of the frame to go up 2-1. Freshman Corey Collins delivered an RBI triple and Garrett Blaylock singled in another run.
The Rebels responded in the top of the second, tying the game at 2-2 on a Peyton Chatagnier home run.
Georgia redshirt senior Riley King came through in the clutch in the fourth inning with a two-out, two-run single that put the Bulldogs on top 4-2. It was a lead they would not relinquish.
Georgia extended the lead to 8-2 in the fifth inning on the strength of Blaylock’s three-run home run.
Senior Chaney Rogers helped keep the momentum in the sixth by extending his hitting streak to a career-best 10 games with a single before coming around to score as the lead grew to 10-2.
“Last (Friday) night was tough, but you try to compartmentalize and move on from it,” Blaylock said. “I feel like we did that pretty well, putting up a lot of runs showed me could do it.”