Georgia Baseball takes series over Princeton

ATHENS, Ga. — Georgia Baseball season is underway, and the Bulldogs played four this weekend at home against Princeton. With the combination of strong pitching performances and firepower from the offense, Georgia took three of four from the Tigers. Here’s how it happened…

FRIDAY

Georgia and Princeton got their four-game series underway on Friday night but weren’t able to get it all in. Jaden Woods made his second start of the season and stepped up to the challenge of Scott Stricklin. Throwing 4.2 innings, Woods struck out a career-high 11 while only allowing one hit and walking one. The Bulldogs also got the bats going early with home runs from Charlie Condon, Corey Collins and Connor Tate before the stoppage in play with a 7-2 lead.

SATURDAY

Saturday was always expected to be a double-header for the Bulldogs but not necessarily in the exact fashion that it played out. After Friday’s game was called off, Georgia and Princeton resumed action on that one in the top of the sixth on Saturday.

Pace Mercer, Zach DeVito and DJ Radtke took the mound for Georgia to finish the game out after Woods and Jarvis Evans threw on Friday. The trio combined to allow three runs on three hits while striking out four. Georgia added five runs of its own, all in the seventh, with Mason LaPlante, Connor Tate, Parks Harber, Charlie Condon and Cole Wagner all crossing home on the way to a 12-5 victory.

In game two of the double-header, Georgia once again got a strong outing out of the starting pitcher. Liam Sullivan threw seven hitless innings. He too struck out 11, a career-high, in what turned into a three-hit shutout victory with the help of Will Pearson and Collin Caldwell out of the bullpen. Each threw one inning in relief.

“It’s been a long week for those two guys,” Scott Stricklin said about the strong outings from Woods and Sullivan. “Opening weekend didn’t go the way those guys wanted it to go. There’s a lot of expectations on them. When they’re that talented and pitching one and two at the University of Georgia and didn’t have a great start, a lot of credit goes to them and their ability to bounce back.” 

Georgia jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the second with Charlie Condon and Will David scoring. David reached base on a double that scored Condon while he came home on a single from Sebastian Murrillo.

That was the first of two runs for both Condon and David. Cole Wagner and Connor Tate recorded an RBI each in the third and fourth respectively before Parks Harber hit a home run in the seventh, the first two of three runs for the Bulldogs that inning. Josh Tate made it 9-0, the final score, in the eighth reaching on a fielder’s choice that scored Garrett Spikes.

“I thought we played well all around today,” Stricklin said, accessing the first two games of the series. “We had some big hits, some really good at bats all the way through the lineup, played really good defense…we did make an error there late, but bottom-line we played great defense and pitched a great game, and came up with some big hits.”

SUNDAY

With the weather on Friday, Saturday’s originally scheduled double-header took the form of finishing game one and playing the entirety of game two. That meant that game three was pushed to Sunday and shortened to be played along with game four of the series. In need of just one win to take the series, Georgia did just that.

It was a back and forth affair in the morning slate on Sunday with Princeton taking an early lead only to see Georgia respond with three in the bottom of the first. Those all came off of a home run from Corey Collins, his second of the series and third in five games.

The Tigers didn’t go down without a fight though. They tied the game on two different occasions before the end of the fourth and even took the lead, 6-5. Parks Harber hit a home run in the third before a big fourth inning from the Bulldogs gave the lead back to them, scoring Dwight Allen, Mason LaPlante and Ben Anderson. Josh Stinson, Will David and Allen, again, scored in the fifth to make it 11-6 UGA. Princeton would hit a home run in the sixth, their sixth of the series – all solo shots – but a Collins double with score Justin Thomas to even it out and bring the game to its final score, 12-7. Collins’ four RBI in the game tied a career-high for him, one that he has reached five times during his time at Georgia.

The Bulldogs threw five pitchers in seven innings with the fifth entering in the fifth. Charlie Goldstein, Kyle Greenler and Luke Wagner each allowed at least a run in their 3.2 total innings of work. Chandler Marsh however came in to get an out, ultimately leaving with the win, while Dalton Rhadans provided a strong 3.0 innings in relief to finish the game out. He struck out three and only allowed one run, facing 13 batters.

In game two of the Sunday double-header, game four of the series, the Bulldogs jumped on the Tigers early, scoring five runs in the first two innings. Fernando Gonzalez left the yard for a two-run home run in the first after Connor Tate scored on a sacrifice fly from Charlie Condon. Then, Tate brought home two himself with a two-out double that scored Ben Anderson and Mason LaPlante.

Princeton’s Kyle Vinci sent one out of the park off of for the Tigers’ first run of the game in the top of the fourth. Georgia however would respond with a run in the bottom half of the inning as Ben Anderson tripled and scored on a single from Dwight Allen, making it 6-1.

The Tigers stormed back in the fifth, loading the bases on Nolan Crisp and Leighton Finley. Crisp made his first start of the season and was strong early on but let two on base on the fifth. Finley then walked one before allowing a single to score one, a fielder’s choice to score another and a three-run home run to plate the rest and tie the game. It was Princeton’s eighth of the weekend.

In similar fashion to the first game of the day, the two teams started going back and forth. Georgia responded to take the lead on a fly out by Will David with the bases loaded, but that’s all the damage that the Dawgs could do with the opportunity. Princeton then tied it again in the top of the sixth with a home run before Georgia retook the lead, now 9-7, with two runs. Connor Tate and Parks Harber crossed home in an inning that featured three errors by the Tigers.

Blake Gillespie entered and went 1-2-3 in his first inning of work but allowed four to score in his second, not making it out of the eighth. Three of the four runs scored with two outs on the board and gave Princeton an 11-9 lead. Jarvis Evans and Max DeJong also threw in the final two innings for the Bulldogs.

Georgia threatened in the bottom half of the eighth with runners at first and second but came up empty. Then, after allowing a tenth home run of the series for Princeton in the ninth, Sebastian Murillo hit a two-run home run, first of his career, to make it a one-run game, but that was it in a 12-11 defeat. The loss was the first time this season that the Bulldogs have allowed 10 runs or more having scored that in five of seven and at least nine in all but one.

“Yeah, 5-0, 6-1 and then 9-7 late, those are games you’ve got to win. We just didn’t get it done … They had two big innings that really hurt, and in a long game like that, little things hurt,” Stricklin said. “We had one inning were we scored one run with the bases loaded and nobody out, two base running mistakes that cost us. Bottom line is, we’ve got to clean things up. We didn’t deserve to win that game, we didn’t play well enough to win and give Princeton credit.”

“You have to turn the page,” he added. “Three out of four is not bad, but it’s absolutely a weekend we feel like we should win four. It’s disappointing to lose the last game. My message to them is, we’ve got to be better. We’ve got to turn the page on Tuesday, we’ve got to come out and play as hard as we can, put up some runs, pitch better and play all around better baseball to get some momentum going into the weekend against our arch rival.”

Georgia hosts Presbyterian College on Tuesday with first pitch set for 4:00 p.m. ET on SEC Network+. Then it’s a three-game weekend series against Georgia Tech at three different locations. Friday’s game (6:00 p.m. ET, SEC Network+) will take place at Foley Field before the teams travel to Tech on Saturday (2:00 p.m. ET, ACC Network Extra) and Sunday at Coolray Field in Lawrenceville (3:00 p.m. ET, SEC Network).