Matt Hogue breaks down why Georgia was deserving of top eight seed in NCAA Tournament

The Georgia Bulldogs officially punched their ticket to the NCAA Tournament on Monday, receiving the No. 7 overall seed nationally in a postseason that starts with them hosting Army, UNC-Wilmington, and Georgia Tech in the Athens Regional. With their top-eight seed also guaranteeing them as a host of the next Super Regional if they do make it out of the first round of the tournament.

The top eight and top 16 seeds are always a discussion point of the NCAA Baseball Tournament given their importance in regards to home-field advantage. And following Selection Monday, D1 Baseball Committee Chairman Matt Hogue explained how the Bulldogs earned a coveted top-eight seed.

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“Well I think our committee they looked at factors with Georgia,” Hogue said. “One thing that I think does stand out when you kind of look at the overall picture, 21 wins against teams that are in the tournament. Again, an overall strength of schedule that was 11. 22 wins, I think, in quad one and quad two, strong finish in an extremely difficult league. I think those were some factors that the committee certainly reviewed in trying to make that decision.”

The Bulldogs finished the season with a 39-15 record, also winning 17 games in the competitive SEC despite losing their first four conference matchups of the season. Fueled by one of the strongest offenses in the nation that ranked third across all of Division I in home runs and slugging percentage this season. Led by college baseball’s batting average and home run leader Charlie Condon.

Georgia had a disappointing early exit in the SEC Tournament, falling to No. 11 seed LSU who wound up in the conference championship game. But like Hogue, Georgia head coach Wes Johnson believes that his team’s resume this season is that of a top-eight team in the nation.

“You look at our total body of work, and I am not on the committee and not here to say that somebody shouldn’t have got it or should have got it somewhere else, but I felt pretty good about our resume,” Johnson said. “There are a lot of things you look at. We did some good stuff this year, this regular season.”

“We beat a Clemson team here that was really good. I go all the way back to Northern Kentucky and how good they were. They won their conference tournament. They are going to give some people some fits. Georgia Tech is in our region. We took two from them. You keep going through the league, sweep Alabama, sweeping Vanderbilt, sweeping South Carolina at South Carolina, all three of those teams are in the tournament.”

There is no question that the Bulldogs have an impressive body of work, which they’ll look to build upon ahead of their 14th Regional appearance in program history. Which starts on Friday at 1 p.m. ET at Foley Field against Army.