ATHENS — If anyone is able to catch the license plate of the Florida State team bus as it leaves the Classic City, the Georgia baseball team would like to file a complaint.
The Seminoles ran over, then backed over, and then ran over again, the Bulldogs over a two-day stretch to capture the NCAA Athens Regional at Foley Field. Florida State moves on to next week’s super regional round.
Florida State (39-21) battered the Bulldogs, 12-3, in their first meeting on Saturday and put the finishing touches on the bludgeoning with an even more demoralizing, 10-1, victory Sunday in the finals.
The vaunted Georgia pitching staff, who was expected to be able to counter a Seminoles lineup that turned hot late in the season, was no match. Florida State scored 22 runs and pounded out 24 hits in the two postseason meetings.
And, a Georgia defense that set a team record in fielding percentage for the season (.981) committed three huge errors in Sunday’s matchup and had several plays on Saturday that was not treated as errors that normally would have been made but weren’t.
In all, it added up to a wasted weekend for a Bulldog squad (46-17) that felt it was built for a deep tournament run.
“This is a team that is built for the long haul. We had the ingredients to make a deep run,” Georgia coach Scott Stricklin said. “We just ran into a really hot team. They outplayed us.”
Georgia seemed poised to atone for Saturday’s loss after crushing Florida Atlantic 13-0 in an elimination game earlier in the day. But either the Florida State bats were just too red-hot to cool off or the Bulldogs wilted under the weight of having to win three games in two days or some combination of both.
“We’ve played in big games in front of big crowds all year so I don’t think it was anything other than they played extremely well and we didn’t,” Stricklin said. “I just hate that it ended this way. It hurts really bad. I hurt for the kids because they worked really hard all year and overcame a lot this season.
“But FSU was really, really good all weekend. They made all the plays in the field, they pitched well, and they were hot (at the plate) coming in and stayed that way.”
During the regular season, Florida State resembled very little of its No. 6 preseason national ranking. After Chase Haney struck out Patrick Sullivan to end the game and the regional, the Seminoles looked more like a No. 4 national seed than the Bulldogs.
“That is not a No. 3 seed in a regional,” Stricklin said. “That’s one of the best teams in the country. Their regular season didn’t go the way I think they thought it would but we knew they had a lot of talent. They certainly showed that this weekend.”
It didn’t take long for the Seminoles offense to pick up right where it left off on Saturday as Mike Salvatore yanked Georgia starter Cole Wilcox’s second pitch for a single to left. Reese Albert then followed with an opposite-field home run four pitches later on a 1-2 count for a quick 2-0 lead just two batters in.
Florida State added a pair of runs in the third. Albert walked to lead off the inning and Drew Mendoza reached on a single off the glove of Aaron Schunk. Mendoza then moved to third and Albert scored on a throwing error by Tucker Maxwell, just his second miscue of the season, on the play. Nelson drove in Mendoza with an RBI groundout to make it 4-0.
Florida State starter Conor Grady kept the Georgia offense off-balance early on issuing just a pair of walks over the first two innings. Grady went eight innings allowing just the one run on seven hits. Connor Tate got the first Bulldog hit to lead off the third but he was erased on a double play grounder by Maxwell.
The Seminoles knocked out Wilcox in the fourth with some two-out damage. Tim Becker, who belted three home runs in the regional after having none during the regular season, and Salvatore both walked and an Albert RBI single knocked in Becker for a 5-0 lead.
That would be the final batter for Wilcox, who went just 3 2/3 innings allowing five runs on five hits and five walks and struck out just one in 74 pitches. Zac Kristofak came on fanned Mendoza with runners at second and third to get out of the jam.
“Cole had trouble spotting his fastball and he just could never really get his control,” Stricklin said.
Florida State blew it open in the sixth. Salvatore roped a two-run double to center scoring Nander de Sedas and Carter Smith and then he scored one batter later on a double by Mendoza for an 8-0 lead. Mendoza scored on an RBI single by Robby Martin to make it 9-0.
The Dogs finally got on the board in the bottom of the sixth when Maxwell led off with a towering home run to right for his third homer of the regional.
The Seminoles scored once more in the eighth.
Despite the disappointing finish for a seconds straight campaign, Stricklin said they have improved the Georgia baseball brand.
“Our goal when we got here was to raise the expectations of the program,” he said. “We’ve done that. There is no secret ingredient to getting past this stage of the playoffs.
“If you want to keep advancing you have to play well and not make mistakes. We didn’t do that today.”
