‘It’s still baseball, right?’ UGA won’t change approach for NCAA Tournament

Tre Phelps remembers the feeling when Georgia fizzled in the NCAA regionals last season.

As talented as that team was, it lost to Duke and Oklahoma State and failed to advance to the super regionals.

Ahead of the Bulldogs hosting the Athens Regional for a third straight season, Phelps said Thursday that last year’s letdown “100%” served as motivation.

“I mean, that was, to me, disappointing,” he said. “Honestly, that’s the only way I can put it. Definitely a huge driving factor in why I wanted to come back and definitely leave this program in a much better spot that I know it should be in.”

In 2024, even bolstered by Golden Spikes Award winner Charlie Condon, Georgia lost in the super regionals.

The early exits the past two years have this year’s team aiming for the program’s first College World Series appearance since 2008.

Phelps said the team felt bad “for not taking a guy like Charlie Condon” to the CWS.

“So, just being able to keep our head down and know, like, that’s our one goal at the end of the day, and we’re not going to get there by looking straight at Omaha,” he said. “(We’re) definitely just looking at it game by game, practice by practice.”

With several veterans returning and by reloading with the transfer portal, Georgia enters the NCAA Tournament as an experienced group fresh off the program’s first SEC regular season title since 2008 and first-ever SEC Tournament championship.

The Bulldogs earned a No. 3 national seed, the best in team history, and will host the Northeast Conference-winning Long Island Sharks (30-20) at 7 p.m. Friday at Foley Field. Joey Volchko (9-2, 4.18 ERA) will get the start for Georgia. Boston College (36-21) and Liberty (41-19) will play in Friday’s first game.

Entering the regional, the focus for Georgia is keeping its approach the same. The Bulldogs have won 14 of their last 15 games.

“It’s still baseball, right?” Georgia coach Wes Johnson said. “We’re not going to make a bigger deal. I think that when you add emotion to games, when you add a heightened awareness, players come in a little more tense, tend to panic a little more if things don’t go their way immediately out of the shoot.

“So, our message has been real simple. We got another game right here at Foley Field. We know this field, obviously, extremely well. It’s about staying focused and getting 27 outs and having more runs on the scoreboard at the end of the night than they do.”

Keeping the same routine has helped Georgia get to this point, according to Phelps, after a few disappointing midweek losses earlier in the season.

“It’s huge,” he said. “I think we, we took a hit early, learning, like we lost a few midweeks, we lost a ... tough weekend game to Wright State. So now, just I feel like it was just a lack of focus. So, feel like being able to get that lesson early in the season and being able to be able to put the right pieces together at the right time has helped us out a lot down the stretch.”

In the SEC Tournament, the pressure was off Georgia, since its résumé was so strong it would have likely earned a top eight national seed even if it hadn’t dominated over the weekend.

Even if the stakes are higher heading into the double-elimination regional, that feeling of playing free and having fun (including celebrating with the team’s favorite Sour Power candy) is part of Georgia’s identity.