OXFORD, Miss. - The difference was slight Sunday evening. A smash to the third baseman adroitly handled. A fastball left over the plate. An excruciating inability to come up with a hit in the clutch.
It was a margin that ended Georgia Tech’s season in an elimination game at its NCAA regional. In a matchup of both teams playing their second game of the day and trying to keep their seasons alive, No. 2 seed Washington was victorious, defeating the third-seeded Yellow Jackets 4-2 at Swayze Field.
“I honestly think we had every chance to win the game tonight, we just didn’t do it,” Tech coach Danny Hall said. “Not any one person or one thing. They got the hits when they needed ’em and we couldn’t quite get a hit when we needed it.”
The Jackets were 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position against Washington, scoring both of their runs on consecutive bases-loaded walks in the bottom of the first. The first blow against the Jackets arrived after A.J. Murray and Connor Justus’ back-to-back walks in the rain-delayed first inning put them up 2-0. With the bases still loaded, Brandon Gold followed and drilled a 1-2 pitch at third baseman Chris Baker. Baker knocked down the grounder, stepped on third and threw out Gold for the inning-ending double play.
Tech coach Danny Hall called it “probably the key play of the game” and a momentum shifter.
“I think if we get a hit there or get another run, it just makes it harder for them to come back,” he said.
Said Washington coach Lindsay Meggs, “I think that was a huge play. The fact that we could keep them to two and we minimized the damage probably took a little wind out of their sails and gave us a little bit of hope that we could hang around until (starter Jared Fisher) settled in.”
Meggs’ team will play Ole Miss Monday at 3 p.m. EDT for the regional title, needing to win that game plus a winner-take-all game at 8 p.m. to take the regional title back to Seattle.
Tech starter Matthew Grimes sailed through 2 2/3 innings, even making a diving catch on a popped-up bunt for the first out of the third. Ironically, Grimes said he might have been shaken up on the play. With two out, he walked Braden Bishop on five pitches, then got behind Andrew Ely 3-0. Grimes returned the count to 3-2, but left a fastball over the middle. Ely did the rest, rocketing it into the right-field bullpen to tie the game at 2.
“He was just on it,” said Grimes of Ely, who hit just his third home run of the season. Grimes took the loss to fall to 5-3.
After Tech’s two-run first, the remainder of the game was a string of missed opportunities. Arden Pabst’s failed sacrifice bunt attempt in the second. A Gold line drive caught by Fisher in the third. A leadoff double by Daniel Spingola in the fifth nullified when he was thrown out at home trying to score from third on Matt Gonzalez’ bouncer to third. A two-on, one-out situation in the sixth that netted nothing.
“Coming up with that big hit, no one could do it, and on the other side, they were getting them,” said shortstop Mott Hyde, whose career closed with 252 career starts, most of any active player in the country, and 248 base hits, most of any active ACC player.
Washington went ahead in the sixth when the Huskies loaded the bases with one out and Robert Pehl singled to left. Baker hit a bouncer to first that scored another. The 4-2 score lead held up.
It was the story of Tech’s three-game stay at its 28th NCAA appearance in the past 30 years. The Jackets hit .214 at Swayze Field with four extra-base hits and were 2-for-19 with runners in scoring position. A team that improved its ERA by more than a run from last year (4.35 to 3.33) and broke the 2013 team’s fielding percentage record (while setting a school record for double plays) pitched and defended in Oxford, but couldn’t chase home base runners with key hits.
Tech’s only two hits with runners on second or third came in the top of the ninth against Jacksonville State in the Jackets’ first elimination game of the day. Gonzalez hit a two-out double to score two and Thomas Smith followed with a single for a third run to push Tech’s lead to 4-1. With reliever Dusty Isaacs closing the door, the Jackets won 4-2 to advance to the Sunday night game.
Washington (41-16-1) was relegated to the Sunday night elimination game by losing 2-1 to Ole Miss Sunday afternoon, returning to the field about an hour after the end of the Ole Miss loss.
Tech finishes the season at 37-27, tying the 2013 team for the second-lowest victory total in Hall’s 21 years. It is, though, a commendable total for a team that typically started four freshmen, lost two All-Americans off the 2013 team and also lost its top two starting pitchers to injury at the beginning of the season. It is also counterbalanced by the Jackets’ second ACC title in three years, won in stirring fashion.
“I think they’re really athletic,” said Meggs, the Washington coach. “They’re young and they’re just going to keep getting better.”
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