Athens — Truth be told, there was never going to be a happy ending to Georgia Tech's season. The Yellow Jackets could have won the College World Series and still they would have felt incomplete.

But going down like this — here, of all places — that really hurt.

Tech's season ended with an 18-6 loss to Georgia in the championship game of the NCAA Athens Regional. It was the worst loss of the season, both statistically and otherwise.

It wasn't so much the loss or even that it was to the Bulldogs that stung so badly. It was the way the Jackets (41-21) went down that will wake them in the middle of the night this week.

The normally sure-handed Jackets played like they wore concrete gloves. After not recording a single error in the NCAA tournament — the only team in the tourney that could make that claim until Monday — they committed six errors in the biggest game of the year. They knocked two Georgia pitchers out of the game without recording an out only to score two runs against three others.

"It just hurts, all of the above," Tech senior Brad Feltes said. "It hurts knowing my career is over at Georgia Tech. It hurts that it's at Georgia. But it would have hurt no matter where we were."

Monday's on-field defeat will fade away quickly compared to the real-life loss these players and coaches will remember for a lifetime: April 11, the day the Yellow Jackets learned teammate Michael Hutts had been found dead in his apartment of a drug overdose. Tech effectively lost two players that day as Ryan Tinkoff, Hutts' roommate who found him, did not play the rest of the season.

That the Jackets won 26 games before Hutts' death and only 15 afterward certainly was no coincidence.

"It was a tragedy that hit our team in the face," Georgia Tech coach Danny Hall said. "But I honestly think these guys did a tremendous job of putting it all back together. I'm very proud of my team."

"Keeping that team together through that tough time, you have to tip your hat to Coach Hall, that staff and those players," Georgia coach David Perno said.

There were a lot of positives Tech will take away from this season. In his first season as a full-time hitter — he pitched his first two seasons — junior right fielder Charlie Blackmon finished with a .394 average and 99 hits. Only 13 players in Tech history have had 100 hits in a season.

The Yellow Jackets were making their 22nd appearance in the last 24 NCAA tournaments, a mark matched by few programs. And they eclipsed the 40-win mark for the 20th time.

But all that was little consolation for the immediate pain Tech felt as Georgia celebrated wildly on the pitcher's mound. The Jackets' Atlanta home was just 70 miles away but it must have felt like a cross-country bus ride in the Jackets' minds.