Sports

The ladies are off to the program's 1st ever World Series Appearance

Last Friday, the #6 softball team (44-10) swept #11 Ohio State (47-11) (ironically the same school that the baseball team hopes to defeat on Friday in Regional play down in Tallahassee, FL) in the best two-out-three Super Regional in Athens and earned a trip to the College World Series for the first time in school history.

Today, their championship quest begins against #3 Washington (46-11) at 1pm on ESPN.

For those of you who have never had the chance to see the team play this year/ever, now is the chance to see what the team is all about. No matter how well the team does over the next few days, (as an FYI, like the baseball College World Series, the softball College World Series is also a double-elimination tournament of 8 teams) this has been an unbelievable season so far and most certainly is another wonderful reminder of just how amazing our athletic program is here at UGA.

Georgia will be the 2-seed in the Tallahassee Regional where they will face 3-seed Ohio State on Friday. The 1-seed is Florida and the 4-seed is Marist.

Georgia’s first round game against Ohio State will start at noon and be nationally televised on ESPNU.

For the complete release from Georgia Sports Communications, click here.

The schedule for the NCAA regional is below:

Tallahassee Regional Schedule

Friday, May 29
(2) Georgia vs. (3) Ohio State – Noon
(1) Florida State vs. (4) Marist – 4 p.m.

Saturday, May 30
Noon and 4 p.m.

Sunday, May 31
Noon and 4 p.m.

Monday, June 1 (if necessary)
7 p.m.

The winner of game two will play Vanderbilt tomorrow at 12pm CT. Game two will consist of only seven innings. Nolan Cain will take the mound for the Tigers. He is 4-0 with a 4.94 era. For Georgia, Jeff Walters takes the hill. He’s 2-0 with a 4.23 era.

Georgia Bulldogs           LSU Tigers
lf – Zach Cone              lf – Leon Landry
cf – Matt Cerione        1b – Ryan Schimpf
1b – Rich Poythress    dh – Blake Dean
c – Bryce Massanari    c – Micah Gibbs
dh – Joey Lewis           cf – Mikie Mahtook
rf – Lyle Allen               rf – Jared Mitchell
3b – Colby May            2b – DJ LeMahieu
ss – Levi Hyams           3b – Tyler Hanover
2b – David Thoms       ss – Austin Nola

FINAL: LSU HOLDS ON TO WIN, 3-2, IN THE 7TH. (more…)

Welcome to a damp, rainy Regions park in Hoover, Alabama for Georgia’s (#21, 37-20, 15-15 SEC) Southeastern conference tournament semifinal game against the LSU Tigers (#2, 43-16, 20-10 SEC). Georgia is undefeated in the tournament so far, the first time since 1994. Georgia went 1-2 against the Tigers during their April 3-5 series. If Georgia wins this afternoon, they will advance to the SEC Championship game versus Vanderbilt at 3pm Sunday for a chance to win their first league tournament ring.

Alex McRee and Daniel Bradshaw takes the hill for the Bulldogs and Tigers, respectively. McRee is 4-3 on the season with a 5.27 era averaging over a strikeout per inning. This season, McRee is 1-0 with an era of three against the Tigers. For the Tigers, Bradshaw is 3-0 with a 3.62 era. This is Bradshaw’s first career start against the Bulldogs.

LSU lost their first game of the tournament, so a loss this afternoon sends them home. If the Tigers defeat Georgia, the two teams will play later today in a game that will decide who takes on Vanderbilt Sunday.

FINAL: LSU wins 16-0–game two will begin at 9pm CT. Also, tomorrow’s championship game will begin at 12pm CT due to the threat of inclement weather. (more…)

Georgia, hot off a 6-3 victory over the Ole Miss Rebels, looks to advance further into the SEC baseball tournament with a win over Arkansas this evening. Yesterday, Matt Cerione’s grand slam helped Georgia to their first SEC tournament win three tries. A win tonight puts Georgia in excellent position to make it to the championship game, and gives them a day off Friday.

The #20 Arkansas Razorbacks (33-20, 14-15 SEC), seeded 7th in the tournament, upset Florida to stay in the winner’s bracket. Georgia won the season series taking two of three in Athens in mid-April. In the series, both teams hit under .200, showcasing both teams’ superb pitching staffs. Today doesn’t look to be much different; the Razorbacks’ Brett Eibner  and the Bulldogs’ Trevor Holder will both start and try to pitch their teams to second round victories. Eibner, who is coming off a a complete-game one-hitter  in the Razorbacks victorious season finale,  is 4-4 with a 4.17 era averaging a strikeout per inning. Holder, who’s trip to Birmingham this week serves as a homecoming, is 7-4 with a 4.68 era. A key for Holder will be to keep the ball in the ballpark—he’s allowed a team high 19 homers this season.

FINAL: Georgia wins 2-1 in 10th. See below for details. Georgia plays next on Saturday at 1:30pm. (more…)

It is a beautiful sunny day at Regions Park, just south of Birmingham, Alabama. The 6th seeded Georgia Bulldogs (35-20, 15-15 SEC) take on the 3rd seeded, 7th nationally ranked Ole Miss Rebels (40-15, 20-10 SEC) for a chance to stay in the winners bracket at 2:15pm CT. For a look at the bracket, click here. The SEC tournament, which consists of the top 8 teams in the SEC, is double-elimination style, meaning a team is eliminated when they lose two games. If the Bulldogs lose today, they will play Florida (who lost earlier this afternoon to Arkansas) tomorrow at 10 am. If they win, they will play Arkansas tomorrow evening at 5pm.

This year’s tournament appearance for the Bulldogs’ marks the first back-to-back appearances since the 2001-2002 season. So far this season, the Dawgs have gone 6-15 against the field (3-6 within our bracket). Georgia has never one the tournament and, has actually gone on to win the College World Series when they’ve gone 0-2 three times, most recently being 2008. Georgia went 1-2 when they played the Rebels in Oxford this season. In addition, the Rebels won the regular season SEC title.

I’ll be posting recaps every half inning (per NCAA media regulations). Follow WUOGsports on Twitter for score updates by the 1/2 inning.

FINAL: UGA 6, Ole Miss 3 — UGA will play Arkansas tomorrow at 5:00. WUOG will cover the event live on wuog.org/sports and on Twitter starting at 4:30pm (more…)

Hey! WUOG Sports is now on Twitter! Find us at twitter.com/WUOGSports.

The Florida Gators Got A Huge 3-game Sweep In Athens This Weekend

It appears that as the month of May has arrived, the Georgia Bulldogs have hit rock bottom. In what was arguably the biggest series of the season, UGA came up short, getting swept by who-else but the #17 Florida Gators (34-14, 16-8 SEC). After coming into the weekend up 1 game in the SEC East, the Dawgs (33-15,14-10) now trade the Gators by 2 games with just 6 conference games left in the year.

Losers of 6 straight, including another embarrassing loss to Jacksonville St. on Wednesday 16-8 ( a game in which they were up 8-7 until giving up NINE runs in the BOTTOM OF THE NINTH), and 8 out of their last 10 games overall, Georgia is playing their worst baseball of the season at the wrong time of the year with the SEC Tournament and the NCAA Tournament just around the corner.

It started on Friday/Saturday (the game got suspended due to weather on Friday night and the game was resumed on Saturday, after Saturday’s initially scheduled game was completed) as UGA jumped out to an 8-0 lead after just 2 innings, before the bullpen blew an 8-6 lead in route to a 10-9 loss in 11 innings. On Saturday SP Alex McRee struggled, getting knocked out in the 5th inning and while Georgia made a valiant comeback down 7-3 their efforts were not good enough as Florida hung on to win 7-6.

Sunday’s game, however, was arguably the most frustrating for the Dawg faithful. Despite two frustrating 1-run losses, a win yesterday would have pulled UGA even with Florida for the SEC East lead. With that in mind, UGA stormed out an early lead by scoring a run in both the first and second innings. In fact, heading into the 9th inning, the Dawgs led 7-4. Unfortunately, the bullpen imploded once again, giving up SIX runs in the Top of the 9th as the Dawgs went on to lose 10-8.

Early on this season the only noticeable chink in this team’s armor was it’s porous defensive play (with 63 errors in 48 games, UGA has committed the 2nd most errors in the SEC) and perhaps inexperience to a certain extent (e.g. with so many freshman playing significant roles on this team). Now, you can add the bullpen to that list. As the season has progressed, the pen has begun to come apart after starting so strong.

While senior Will Harvil (2.15 ERA in 37.2 IP this year) and junior closer Dean Weaver (2.32 ERA in 31 IP, including 9 saves) have been steady at the back-end of the bullpen, it’s been the front-end of the pen  (Fr Cecil Tanner 4.45 ERA in 28.1 IP, Fr Michael Palazzone 5.34 ERA in 30.1 IP, Jr Jeff Walters 4.64 ERA in 33 IP, Jr Steve Esmonde  4.95 ERA in 20 IP and Jr Justin Earls 9.27 ERA in 22.1 IP) that has faltered of late.

The good news is that the ship can be righted.  With seven games left (3 against Vanderbilt (27-20, 10-13 in SEC), 1 against #10 Georgia Tech (31-11-1) at Turner Field and 3 @ South Carolina (30-18, 12-12 in SEC), along with the SEC tournament, the Dawgs still have a shot of hosting a NCAA Regional. However, the way things are currently going, that hope is quickly becoming an afterthought.

Welcome to Sunday’s matchup between the #17 Gators of Florida and the #6 Georgia Bulldogs.  Today’s meeting is the third and final meeting between these two rivals.  Florida took both games played in the series so far with a 10-9 win in a continuation game from Friday night’s rained delayed game and a 7-6 win on Saturday.  Both teams show an explosive offenses, but weakened bullpens.  In the last two games played, Florida has used 11 pitchers, some pitchers twice, and Georgia has used 10 pitchers, some pitchers twice.  Both games in this series has experienced a rain delay and it is a possibility we might see a rain delay again today.  The Bulldogs are looking to avoid a sweep by the Gators and falling farther down in the rankings.  Taking the mound for the Bulldogs is #40 RHP Justin Grimm who is 2-3 with a 4.42 ERA.  Taking the mound for the Gators is #24 LHP Alex Panteliodis who is 4-5 with a 3.78 ERA.  Updates with come ever half inning and the starting lineups are below. Enjoy the game. -Dave Tarter (more…)

Hawks fan's hopes ride on guards Mike Bibby and Joe Johnson, along with center Al Horford's shoulders.

It seems like deja vu all over again, doesn’t it? Think back to last year’s First Round series against the Boston Celtics. Now while the Hawk’s role has reversed (e.g. going from the 8-seed underdog last year to the 4th seed-favorite this year), in a way this series has been very reminicent in the sense that the Hawks have looked like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Each of the first six games have been decided by double-digits, with the Hawks naturally looking like world beaters in three of the games and a JV basketball squad in the other three. One difference between this series and last year’s first round matchup against the C’s (besides the complete lack of playoff experience last year’s squad had) was that the Hawks managed to win their first road playoff game since 1997 (which was against the 69-13 Chicago Bulls in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, who were on their way to their 2nd straight championship and 5th Title of the Michael Jordan era). The other one (and it’s a big one) is that this time around, Game 7 will be in Atlanta.

If history is an indicator, depending on which historical trend you view things, the Hawks could be in trouble.  On one hand, the Hawks are 2-8 all-time in Game 7’s (2-6 when they were the St. Louis Hawks and 0-3 since moving from St. Louis to Atlanta in 1968). On the other, they are 2-0 when hosting Game 7.  Add in the fact that on top of trying to win their first Game 7 since 1961, the Hawks are also attempting to win their first playoff series in 10 years and you can see that quite a lot is on the line for the Hawks when it comes to historical playoff trends.

And before I sign off, I would look to leave each of you with one final trend to consider: the last Atlanta pro sports franchise to advance out of the first round was the 2004 Atlanta Falcons, who crushed the St. Louis Rams 47-17 in the Divisional Round of the NFC playoffs on January 15th, 2005 before eventually losing in the NFC Championship Game to the Philadelphia Eagles.

It’s  been almost 4.5 years since Atlanta fans have been able to see one of their hometown teams win a series/game (in the case of the NFL). Go big or go home, Hawks.