ATHENS — Wes Johnson and the Georgia Bulldogs are the hottest team in college baseball and plan to keep the pedal down with rival Florida coming to town.

Johnson has led Georgia to a consensus Top 10 ranking in his first season as head coach by emphasizing positivity and urgency, and nothing will change before the first pitch is thrown at 6:02 p.m. on Thursday night at Foley Field.

“The challenge, when you start to look at how do you get guys to win or how does a winning streak evolve, those players and those teams are really focused on just today,” Johnson said at a Wednesday media session at Foley Field.

“You never get too far ahead, that’s something we work really hard it. We’re not talking about going to Hoover on Monday or anything like that, we have a game that starts at 6 o’clock on Thursday night right here.”

Indeed, the Bulldogs (38-12, 16-11 SEC) aim to build on an eight-game winning steak that includes the first sweep of back-to-back ranked teams at UGA since the Bulldogs’ 2008 College World Series team accomplished that feat.

The Gators (26-25, 11-16) enter Athens as a desperate team looking to salvage a season that began with them among the national favorites to win the College World Series.

Instead, it has been Georgia — with 28 new players including 18 transfers and 10 freshmen — that has been making national headlines.

The Bulldogs boast the No. 3 RPI in the nation and appear to have clinched hosting an NCAA Regional for what would be the first time since 2019.

Georgia, with two wins in the three games against Florida — 6 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. Saturday — could be in position to earn a national seed of No. 8 or higher. That would put the program in position to host a best-of-three Super Regional, should the Bulldogs advance past the regionals.

The Wednesday D1 Baseball Field of 64 projections had the Bulldogs as the No. 7 national seed.

Johnson, however, is not allowing his mind or his players’ to think that far ahead.

Georgia has won six straight over Florida at Foley Field, sweeping them in 2022 and 2019, but that means nothing entering this weekend’s matchup.

It certainly doesn’t aid UGA’s hopes of landing a top 8 national seed.

“I’ve been in this league long enough to know that if we get ahead of ourselves, and I start trying to chase that, we’re not going to play very well this weekend and it’s not going to matter, anyways,” Johnson said.

“Let’s not forget this (Florida) team was one of the teams picked to win the national title before the season started, and they are desperate, so we’re going to have to play our best baseball this weekend or they will run us right out of here.”

Perhaps, but the Gators will need a strong effort from the pitchers mound to do so.

Here’s where Georgia and its star players rank among national leaders entering the three-game series:

- Team is third nationally with a school-record 133 home runs

- Team is third nationally with a .607 slugging percentage

- Team is third nationally with a .440 on-base percentage

— Charlie Condon leads nation with .454 batting average

— Condon leads nation with a school-record 34 home runs

— Condon leads nation with a 1.082 slugging percentage

— Condon is third nationally with a .567 on-base percentage

— Corey Collins leads the nation with a .598 on-base percentage

— Collins ranks fifth nationally with SEC-high and school-record 24 hit-by-pitch