Georgia AD Josh Brooks addresses upcoming meeting with head baseball coach Scott Stricklin

The Georgia baseball program could be arriving at an inflection point as athletic director Josh Brooks is slated to meet with head coach Scott Stricklin in the near future. The AD was mum about where things might go for the Bulldogs on the diamond.

Brooks apparently has not met with Stricklin since Georgia flamed out of the SEC Tournament first round, coming to a 29-27 finish. It concluded Stricklin’s 10th season at the helm at Georgia.

“I look forward to meeting with him soon and talking about the direction of our program,” Brooks said, according to The Athletic’s Seth Emerson.

Georgia has made the NCAA baseball tournament three times in the 10 years under Stricklin, never making it past the regionals. The Bulldogs appeared in the NCAA tournament last season after making appearances in 2018 and 2019 under Stricklin.

Stricklin said that the blame falls on him for Georgia’s subpar 2023 season.

“Our guys never quit and I know on paper, we had a bad year. We didn’t perform up to expectations. We have a lot of pride, and we came up short and that’s on me,” Stricklin said. “It was disappointing. When you look at our body of work, we had trouble closing out games. In this conference, you have to slam the door when you have leads, especially in the ninth, 10th and 11th innings. And that’s where we struggled.”

Prior to being hired at Georgia in June 2013, Stricklin was the head coach at Kent State, his alma mater. In nine years there, he made five NCAA tournament appearances with the Golden Flashes and even made the 2012 College World Series.

Brooks got a raise from Georgia on Thursday

Brooks has overseen an athletics program that has maximized its most profitable sport, with the Bulldogs the reigning back-to-back national champions in football.

Per Emerson, Brooks’ raise will take him to $1.025 million annually, increasing by $100,000 each year of the deal. The length of his extension is six years.

That’s a price the program will be happy to pay to have someone regarded as one of the nation’s best athletics directors run things. Brooks was named a finalist for the 2023 Sports Business Journal’s Athletic Director of the Year honor.

Brooks was named the program’s athletics director in January 2021.

His hire in that role came following 11 years in various roles at Georgia within the athletics administration. He was most recently the interim athletics director and a senior deputy director of athletics.