ATHENS — The Georgia baseball team dropped an 8-5 decision to Missouri at Foley Field on Friday despite a career-high eight-strikeout outing from sophomore pitcher Blakely Brown.
Brown lifted the Bulldogs (14-18, 4-7) through 4.2 innings with eight strikeouts, both respective career-highs. After replacing Georgia starter Kevin Smith (1-4) in the third, the reliever retired 15 of the 18 batters he faced, only giving up three hits and two runs, one earned.
Missouri (22-9, 5-6) struck first with a two-run homerun from Trey Harris in the first inning, but Georgia returned with one run in the bottom of the inning to cut the deficit. Junior Keegan McGovern’s base hit scored Cam Shepherd from second to make the score 2-1 Tigers.
A trio of walks and four hits delivered Missouri’s next five runs in the top of the third, topped off by a Chris Cornelius RBI base hit. The Georgia bats chugged on in the bottom of the inning to record a 7-3 score with RBI hits from junior Will Campbell and freshman Aaron Schunk off Tigers starter Michael Plassmeyer.
Georgia sophomore Adam Sasser and freshman Will Proctor each collected RBI base hits off the SEC’s top-ranked pitcher by ERA, TJ Sikkema, who surrendered only his third earned run of the season in the outing.
Missouri sealed its final run off an error in the fourth inning to overcome Georgia’s scattering of 14 total hits. The Tigers' reliever Cole Bartlett collected the win to improve to 4-0 on the season.
Dawg Tracks
- Cam Shepherd’s double in the first inning marked his tenth of the season and extended his hitting streak to five games. The freshman also recorded a team-leading 12th multi-hit game in the third with a single.
- Freshman Will Proctor contributed three base hits, going 3-for-4 with an RBI.
Ike Cousins Head Coach Ike Stricklin
On Blakely Brown's performance...
"Blakely's got the best stuff on our club, there's no question about it. Today his fastball was up to 95. He's got a big-time breaking ball. The pitch that he's kind of experimented with is a two-seam fastball that is really working as a changeup for him. He was really good. He gave us a chance to win, held the score after the tough inning that he came into. He inherited some problems. The bloop hit with two outs was a backbreaker, an 0-2 bloop hit, but that happens. It's baseball. Bottom line is (Mizzou) found a way to get those runs in in the third inning and put us behind the eight ball, but after that he settled down and gave us a chance to win. We started creeping back in there. When we got (T.J. Sikkema) out of the game I felt pretty good about it. That's their go-to guy, and we were able to get him out of the game. I felt like we had a great chance to come back, we just couldn't get the big hit with runners in scoring position."
