Jump To Top of Page
SB: Dawgs comeback falls short vs. Arkansas in game one of series
The third-ranked Georgia softball team fell to No. 20 Arkansas 3-2 on Saturday afternoon at Jack Turner Stadium in front of a crowd of 1,863. Georgia loaded the bases in the seventh inning, but the late-inning comeback came up short in the series opener.
The Bulldogs are now 28-5 on the season and 5-2 in SEC play.
Jayda Kearney led the offense with a two-hit day. Georgia and Arkansas held each other to five hits each in the game.
Lilli Backes (12-2) suffered the loss, allowing three runs on four hits in her four-inning start. She struck out four Razorback hitters and walked one. Shelby Walters pitched three scoreless innings in out of the pen, giving up just one hit.
The Razorbacks (25-8, 4-3) stuck first with a three-run home run in the first inning to go in front 3-0.
Georgia capitalized on Arkansas miscues in the bottom of the sixth to break up the shutout. Kearney led off the inning with a single to left and was pinch ran for by Hayley Eaton. Following a walk to Sydney Kuma, both runners advanced into scoring position on a groundout. A wild pitch allowed Eaton to score and put Georgia on the board. On the same play, Kuma scored when the throw to the circle by the catcher was off the mark, making it a one-run game, 3-2. Another error, this time by the second baseman, allowed Ellie Armistead to reach and extend the inning. Armistead was stranded on second to end the frame.
Following a 1-2-3 top of the seventh by Walters, Georgia mounted a rally in the home half of the inning. The Bulldogs loaded the bases with two out, but a pop-up to short ended the rally.
Game two of the series is set for noon on Sunday, March 31. The matchup will air live on ESPN 2 from Jack Turner Stadium.
Head Coach Tony Baldwin
On the team’s performance…
“Great day for softball, another great crowd. At the end of the day, these are the days that you look forward to, and the outcomes are what they are. But I’m really proud of the team today. I thought Lilli [Backes] settled in, she didn’t have her A-stuff, but she kept competing and kept putting zeros up on the board. Shelby [Walters] came in and threw great. We put ourselves in a position; we just didn’t quite make the shot at the end. We just needed one more good at-bat. The people that we had up in that moment, I’ll take them any time, knowing full well that they aren’t going to come through every time. That’s just the game; we shot our shot, and we missed. We’ll recover and go back to work tomorrow.”
On scoring and not leaving runners on base…
“The hardest part of scoring is getting runners on base, and we did do that today. We’ve just got to continue to string together quality at-bats. We have one of the better offensives in the country because we have been pretty good at stringing together at-bats. We didn’t string quite enough together to put runs on the board but I feel good about going back out there and competing again tomorrow.”
Box Score
MGOLF: Dawgs win The Goodwin
The No. 22 Georgia men’s golf team has captured its second tournament championship of the year, taking The Goodwin tournament title after a one-under-par, 839 total on Saturday evening at TPC Harding Park.
Georgia’s third-round score of five-under, 275 was the second-lowest round of the event. The Bulldogs beat out nine teams ranked in the top 50 to win the event in its first year competing in the event. After winning the Puerto Rico Classic in February, the program has now collected multiple tournament wins in a season for the fifth time in the last six years.
Georgia finished one stroke ahead of second-place Utah. Host No. 44 Stanford finished in third with a four-over, 844 finish, followed by No. 8 Tennessee and No. 15 Georgia Tech in fourth and fifth respectively.
The team was paced by Ben van Wyk, who capped off the weekend t-3rd. After carding a three-under, 207, the graduate earned his best finish of the year and his fourth top-five result. Van Wyk finished the event with the second-best average on par fives at 4.17, earning three birdies and an eagle on the course’s two par five holes.
Buck Brumlow had the team’s lowest score on Saturday, shooting two-under to finish t-11. The junior tied for the second-most pars in the field with 41. Brumlow was also one of eight players to card an eagle during the tournament, earning his on number 16 during the third round. Georgia was the only school to have multiple players shoot eagles with Brumlow and van Wyk doing so.
Connor Creasy joined Brumlow for a t-11 result at two-under, 210. Creasy, a graduate student, totaled 11 birdies across 54 holes this weekend, tied for the sixth-most of the 168-person field. Senior Caleb Manuel competed individually and finished t-33 at three-over. Beck Burnette closed out the tournament with a one-under, 69 result, putting him at t-55 individually.
Georgia will close out the regular season in Naples, Fla. at the Calusa Cup, hosted by Iowa, at the Calusa Pines Golf Club on April 7-9.
The Goodwin presented by Palo Alto Networks
TPC Harding Park
San Francisco
Par 70, 7,193 Yards
Final Results
Team Leaderboard – Top 10
1. No. 22 Georgia 279-285-275=839 (-1)
2. Utah 284-279-277=840 (E)
3. No. 44 Stanford 279-287-278-844 (+4)
4. No. 8 Tennessee 279-286-280=845 (+5)
5. No. 15 Georgia Tech 283-284-279=846 (+6)
6 No. 45 BYU 280-288-280=848 (+8)
7. San Francisco 289-276-284=849 (+9)
8. Pepperdine 281-288-282=851 (+11)
9. No. 27 UCLA 287-286-279=852 (+12)
10. No. 24 Oregon 290-287-277=854 (+14)
Individual Leaderboard
1. Braxton Watts, Utah 71-66-68=205 (-5)
2. Michael Thorbjornsen Stanford 70-69-67=206 (-3)
t-3. Ban van Wyk, Georgia 69-67-71=207 (-3)
t-3. Jonathan Nielsen, Clemson 66-74-67=207 (-3)
t-3. Jakob Melin, San Francisco 69-70-68=207 (-3)
t-6. Sampson Zheng, California 68-72-68=208 (-2)
t-6. Kristoffer Kuvaas, Pepperdine 71-67-70=208 (-2)
t-6. Pablo Ereno, UCLA 70-68-70=208 (-2)
t-6. William Walsh, Pepperdine 70-68-70=208 (-2)
10. Omar Morales, UCLA 69-71-69=209 (-1)
Georgia Scores
t-3. Ban van Wyk 69-67-71=207 (-3)
t-11. Buck Brumlow 69-73-68=210 (E)
t-11. Connor Creasy 71-71-68=210 (E)
t-33. Caleb Manuel* 71-68-74=213 (+3)
t-55. Beck Burnette 70-77-69=216 (+6)
t-92. Camden Smith 76-74-70=220 (+10)
*Competing as individual
BSB: Tennessee hit two grand slams to even the series
Fifth-ranked Tennessee hit two grand slams to even an SEC series with 22nd-ranked Georgia Saturday, posting a 16-11 win in front of a record crowd of 5,677 fans at Lindsey Nelson Stadium.
The Vols (23-5, 4-4 SEC) grabbed a 3-0 lead in the first on a three-run home run by Dylan Dreiling off sophomore Leighton Finley. The Bulldogs (22-5, 4-4 SEC) responded in the third, sending 13 men to the plate as part of a seven-run outburst on seven hits including six coming with two outs. With one out, senior Corey Collins drew a walk. All-America Charlie Condon (career-high 5-for-6, 2 home runs, 3 RBI), the NCAA leader in batting, home runs and slugging percentage, blasted a two-run home run out of the park for his 18th of the year. Condon’s home run went 411 feet with an exit velocity of 109 miles per hour (mph). He would add a solo shot in the ninth to give him 44 career home runs in this his second season.
After UT right-hander Drew Beam retired junior Slate Alford, Georgia struck for five more runs in the third. Graduate Dylan Goldstein reached with a double and graduate Paul Toetz tied the game with a run-scoring double. Senior Fernando Gonzalez put Georgia in front with an RBI-single. Graduate Clayton Chadwick reached on an error and senior Sebastian Murillo crushed a three-run home run to cap the scoring with a 7-3 advantage. After two more Bulldogs reached, UT lifted Beam in favor of Kirby Connell.
UT got a run back with a solo home run by Blake Burke, his 10th of the season and looked for more. Robin Villeneuve followed and reached on a four-pitch walk. Then, Kavares Tears lined a missile headed up the middle with an exit velocity of 110 miles per hour that was snagged by Murillo who fired to Kolby Branch and then to Collins to complete a double play. Dreiling followed with a deep shot to center that Condon tracked down at the wall to end further damage. In the fifth with two on and nobody out, Georgia went to the bullpen in sophomore Kolten Smith.
In the fourth, Goldstein was hit by a Connell offering and then came around to score on an RBI-double by Toetz to make it 8-4. In the bottom of the fifth, the Vols grabbed a 10-4 lead with a six-run outburst highlighted by a grand slam by Dreiling. In the seventh, Georgia tied the contest with a two-run home run by Branch, his seventh of the year. UT answered with another six-run inning including a grand slam, this one from Dalton Bargo, to build a 16-10 lead after seven innings. In the ninth, Condon crushed his second home run of the game, this one off Nate Snead who hit triple digits during his 1.1 innings. Condon’s 19th home run of the year went off the batter’s eye and measured 413 feet with an exit velocity of 111 mph.
“We did a lot of uncharacteristic things tonight,” said Georgia’s Ike Cousins head baseball coach Wes Johnson. “We had some baserunning mistakes. We walked eight. We had a defensive play where we didn’t slow the game down. We let them speed us up a couple times defensively on a couple of plays and that ended up costing us. That’s going to happen when you play good teams if you don’t make plays. You give them freebies and eventually they’re going to run into a ball here and there and that was the difference in the game. We have to execute better than we did tonight. It’s tough to play on the road in this league. We’ll get back on the horse tomorrow. It’s a new day and we’ll be ready to compete.”
Connell picked up the win with five innings of relief to improve to 3-0. Smith fell to 2-2.
The rubber game of the series will be Sunday with first pitch at 2:02 p.m. The game will be available on the SEC Network and the Georgia Bulldog Sports Network.
Video Highlights
Box Score
Jump To Today’s Discussion Thread
Wonderful web site Lots of useful info here Im sending it to a few friends ans additionally sharing in delicious And obviously thanks to your effort