Georgia baseball blasts Binghamton in NCAA Athens regional opener

A sellout crowd of 3,630 was on hand at Foley Field after skies cleared following a threatening storm front that brought moderate wind and showers.

Georgia will next play the winner of Friday night’s late game between Duke (37-19) and Oklahoma State (28-23) at 6:06 p.m. Saturday, while the Bearcats (29-25) will face the loser of the Friday night contest in an elimination game at 12:06 p.m. Saturday.

Georgia clubbed five home runs Friday, its nation-high total now at 138 — 96 of them coming in the friendly Foley Field confines, where the team improved to 30-4 this season.

Daniel Jackson, a sophomore transfer from Wofford, hit two three-run home runs, the second of which staked UGA to an 8-2 lead in the third inning.

Tre Phelps accounted for another two home runs, raising his season total to 10, the Bulldogs now boasting eight of nine players in the starting lineup with 10 or more home runs this season.

“It’s just getting back to slowing down the game a little bit, and home runs are going to happen when you’re working the middle of the field,” Johnson said. “This week was good for us, we needed to reset from an offensive standpoint and we were able to throw a lot of pitchers.”

Nolan McCarthy, a transfer from Kentucky, hit his 11th home run in the bottom of the eighth inning sparking a three-run inning that capped the UGA scoring and brought out a sixth Binghamton pitcher.

Georgia shortstop Kolby Branch was 4-for-4 at the plate — his four hits a career high — as the Bulldogs banged out 15 hits, drew 10 walks and scored in six of the eight innings they batted.

“That’s a heck of a ballclub we just played, that lineup is loaded,” said Binghamton’s coach Tim Sinicki, who’s in his 33rd year coaching at the New York school. “They hit those home runs, and I’m watching on the video board, and the pitches they hit we executed pretty well, they are good hitters.

“I told my assistant coaches in the fourth inning I was exhausted calling pitches because they wore me out, I didn’t know what to call after a while.”

Finley (3-2) delivered a career-high 114 pitches before exiting with two outs and the bases clear in the top of the seventh inning, locked in from the onset, as Johnson noted.

“When guys set the tone like that,” Johnson said, “... it calms everybody down, is the way I’d put it.”

Ohio State transfer Zach Brown pitched the final 2⅓ innings for the Bulldogs, allowing two runs after retiring the first two outs in the ninth, yielding a walk and back-to-back doubles.

Finley, a towering 6-foot-5 right-handed pitcher, scattered four hits, walked one and allowed two runs while fanning seven batters.

This season’s Georgia team has presented more quality in its pitching rotation, with staff ace Brian Curley (4-3, 3.21 ERA) primed for Saturday’s start against the winner of the Duke-Oklahoma State game.

The winner of the Athens Regional will face the winner of the Oxford (Miss.) Regional, which is hosted by national No. 10 seed Ole Miss and includes Georgia Tech, in a best-of-three Super Regional (June 6-9, times TBA).

The Bulldogs and Rebels are two of the record-13 teams from the SEC in the NCAA tournament — eight of them hosting among the 16 regional sites.

The Bulldogs grew deeper in the batting lineup Friday with the return of Golden Spikes Award semifinalist Robbie Burnett, UGA’s home runs (20), RBIs (66) and stolen bases (17) leader.

Burnett was back in the lineup for the first time since being sidelined with hamstring issues in the regular-season finale against Texas A&M on May 15.

Burnett was 0-for-4 hitting at the plate, but he did draw a walk and score a run while playing in right field.