Nolan Crisp reflects on ups and downs of Georgia baseball's season

Georgia baseball didn’t experience the year they hoped, finishing as one of the few teams in the SEC who won’t hear their name called in the NCAA Tournament field. And it was the Bulldogs’ performance in conference play that has them on the outside looking in, because they put together an impressive 18-8 non-conference slate with some solid resume wins. However, they faltered in league play, going just 11-19 while recording only three series victories over conference opponents.

After a tough year in the SEC, the conference tournament was no nicer to the Dawgs, as UGA was shut out 9-0 by South Carolina to bring their season to an abrupt end on the opening day of the tournament. After the final loss of a disappointing season, junior reliever Nolan Crisp answered questions in the postgame, none more important than: what happened to Georgia baseball in the back half of the season?

His answer:

“Yeah, no doubt. We had a good non-conference, had some good series there. Started off really slow in non-conference, but as a team we never looked down,” said Crisp. He went on to further defend his team for not giving up even when the losses began to pile up in the last couple months.

“We just kept fighting throughout the entire season, everybody, top to bottom. We had guys step up on the pitching staff, guys that were struggling, lineup, you name it, you guys stepped up, and nobody ever put their head down and we just fighting to the end and made it here to Hoover today and gave ourselves a chance to keep playing.”

According to the junior righty, the Georgia players were locked in and engaged this season until the final out in Hoover early last week. Now, whether those players stick around following the firing of head coach Scott Stricklin remains to be seen. Of course, he was just recently let go after the SEC Tournament loss despite spending the last 10 years coaching ball in Athens.

“I want to thank Scott for his service to our athletic department over the last 10 years,” said Georgia AD Josh Brooks in his statement about the change. “After much thought and deliberation, we feel it is in the best interest of our baseball program to move in a different direction. We will begin immediately the process of a national search to identify the next leader of our baseball team.”

A new era is coming for Bulldog baseball.