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Georgia pitcher Brian Curley's mentality was forged as an underdog

Jeremy Johnsonby:Jeremy Johnson•03/25/25•

JeremyO_Johnson

Brian Curley
Photo by Conor Dillon, UGA.

Georgia pitcher Brian Curley went from ‘eat a sandwich’ to the ace of the No. 3 college baseball team in America according to the D1 Baseball Rankings.

Curley dazzled in his first start on the mound for Georgia on Saturday. Curley picked up the win in Georgia’s 17-2 win over Florida in Gainesville. He threw five innings, allowed two hits and struck out five Gators.

Curley loves the road environment. He was looking forward to being the one everyone was rooting against on Saturday.

“I’m looking forward to the hostility of that environment,” Curley said prior to this weekend’s series. “Coming here, you have the support of everyone. Going into a different place and treating it like our own place and having that combative experience is always exciting, just to prove people wrong.”

Brian Curley has come a long way in his underdog arch

Proving people wrong is something Curley has done for a long time. The day he walked onto his high school baseball field, he was 4-foot-11 and weighed 95 pounds.

Curley was labeled the underdog that day.

“In high school as a freshman, I was 4’11, 95 pounds,” Curley said. “The first thing my varsity baseball coach told me to do was to ‘eat a sandwich’. I’ve had that underdog mentality since. It’s cool that it has changed.”

Curley exploded physically during his second junior year. He reclassed back a year during the COVID-19 pandemic year in 2020. Curley changed a lot physically during that second junior year. He grew five inches, added about 30 pounds and his velocity jumped ’15-20′ miles per hour.

Confidence and dominance

Curley isn’t the underdog anymore. He hasn’t told himself that yet. Curley was a pre-season All-American. He’s been drafted once already. Curley was selected in the 2024 MLB Amateur Draft by Pittsburgh Pirates in the 16th round.

He decided on the transfer portal instead. Curley has shown up at Georgia throwing in triple digits and rolling to an early productive start to the 2025 season. He’s already struck out 23 hitters in only 18.2 innings of work.

It appears Curley is settling into a potential starting role for Georgia after being a reliever for much of his college career to this point.

Doubt is something Curley thrives in. He’s made a life in college baseball and potentially beyond battling the man in the mirror. It gives him his bouncy, larger-than-life persona on the mound.

“I think that’s how I’ve based my whole development in my career,” Curley said. “Sometimes you feel like people are against you, and that doesn’t matter. It’s me vs me regardless of the situation. I’m going to hone that part of my game for the rest of my career.”

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