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Omaha! Diamond Dawgs Bound For CWS
Omaha! Diamond Dawgs Bound For CWS
For the first time since 2008, the Diamond Dawgs are headed to the College World Series in Omaha, Neb.
And for the second day in a row during an absolutely thrilling super regional at Foley Field against Mississippi State, Georgia pulled off another round of late-inning theatrics.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAfter seeing a 7-2 lead through four and a half innings evaporate and trail 9-8 after eight innings, the Diamond Dawgs would once again pull themselves up off the mat. After Brennan Hudson’s ninth-inning single scored Kenny Ishikawa to force extra innings, Daniel Jackson’s riveting two-run blast in the tenth put Georgia in front. From there, Justin Byrd sealed the deal for the second day in a row, getting out of a two-aboard situation in the tenth as Georgia won 11-9.
“I tell our guys all the time I think toughness gets a bad rap. People think it’s some kind of physical element, and it’s not. You have to learn to be capable of great endurance and understand that our game is really long. They got to get you out. Teams are going to get emotional,” Georgia head coach Wes Johnson said. “Those emotions are going to carry you out of what you normally do every day. That’s what we talk a lot about. Not only do we talk about it, we practice it. We try to try to give our guys something hard to do every single day, whether it be physical or mental. And you just saw a bunch of resilient guys, and you saw the fruition of all that work come through.”
After multiple seasons of bad postseason breaks, close calls, and one Omaha-contending season halted by COVID-19, this team is going to college baseball’s promised land. It’ll also be the Diamond Dawgs’ first CWS trip since it moved across town to Charles Schwab Field from Rosenblatt Stadium. One of those heartbreaks, a 2024 super regional loss to NC State, was on the mind of Kolby Branch this weekend.
“That hurt on our home field. I still remember that. We were just talking about it before. I remember going to bed that night knowing we were going to Omaha, we are going to win this game, and it just didn’t work out,” Branch said. “That’s how baseball is. And so now that we got that third game, that second game, and now we are on to Omaha, it’s kind of a full circle moment.”
For the first few innings on Sunday, the agenda was simple for the Bulldogs. Take advantage of a sterling pitching performance from Caden Aoki and slowly pad an early lead. That shook out nicely through the game’s first half with Georgia leading 7-2 despite missed early chances to plate more runners. Aoki was more than up to the task, throwing more than 120 pitches into the sixth inning, giving up four runs on eight hits and striking out nine.
Georgia put two runs across in the first inning a Rylan Lujo sac fly and Ryan Wynn groundout with a 3-0 lead coming in the second on a Kolby Branch homer and Ryan Black drawing a bases-loaded walk. A pair of second-inning runs by MSU was answered by a Brennan Hudson solo homer for a 5-2 third-inning lead, and single runs in the fourth and fifth on a Lujo RBI and run-scoring groundout by Tre Phelps extended the UGA lead to 7-2.
In most cases, that’d of seemed like a safe lead. But not against this MSU team that slammed balls out of the park the day before, and Sunday was more of the same, starting with a homer and RBI single to trim the Georgia lead to 7-4, one that would be a 8-7 Georgia lead after seven before a two-run homer in the eighth put the Maroon Dogs in front 9-8, setting the table for yet another day of late-inning Foley Field magic.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“When you’re winning together, it’s fun and it’s true. The locker room is a much happier place after a win,” Jackson said. “The whole sour power thing, like that’s been a crazy thing that’s united us just because it’s turned into this fun thing.”
Go Dawgs!