Season series and more on line for Tech, Georgia

Georgia and Georgia Tech’s baseball teams meet at Turner Field on Tuesday night for the third and final time this year with the season series tied at 1-1. That alone puts enough on the line.

But for both teams, the game carries the significance of an 11th-hour attempt to impress the NCAA tournament selection committee. This is the last week of the regular season and both teams are scrambling to qualify for their conference tournaments.

“It’s all hands on deck,” Georgia coach Scott Stricklin said. “Every game is important at this point in the season. It’s a huge game from an RPI standpoint. And, of course, this is a big one just because it’s Georgia Tech.”

According to the website boydsworld.com, Tech is No. 34 in RPI and Georgia is No. 46. Boyd Nation, who operates the site, said that for ACC and SEC teams, an RPI ranking of 45 or better and a .500 record or better in conference play is “a lock” to get into the NCAA tournament.

That does not describe either team, though. The Yellow Jackets are 29-23 overall and 14-16 in the ACC. The Bulldogs are 25-25-1 overall and 10-16-1 in the SEC.

Tech coach Danny Hall said he is “not at all” comfortable with his team’s positioning for an NCAA berth, which would be its 28th in 30 seasons.

“I think we need to have a good week and that’s why I said that the important thing for us is to finish strong this week and hopefully we get in the ACC tournament and hopefully we can win some games in the tournament,” Hall said.

Tech and Georgia both won on their home fields earlier this season, 1-0 in Athens and 4-1 in Atlanta. This will be the 12th year the teams have played at Turner Field in a benefit game for Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. A crowd of 20,000 is expected (7 p.m., Fox Sports South). Last year, Georgia gave Tech a 17-0 walloping, the second-most lopsided win for Georgia in the series that dates back to 1898.

Tech has won three of the past four season series, although Georgia won last year 2-1.

An NCAA berth would be an achievement for both teams. Stricklin, a former assistant at Tech under Hall, is in his first year at Georgia after the dismissal of coach David Perno, who was fired after the Bulldogs missed the NCAA tournament three of the past four years. He was 21-32 last season.

“We’ve had a lot of close games and we haven’t won them all,” Stricklin said. “But our goal was to get this program back into a position where we are confident we can play with anybody and that’s where we are.”

Loaded with freshmen and having lost two All-Americans to the pros, Tech began the season unranked for the first time in Hall’s 21 seasons. But the Jackets have won series against two RPI top-10 teams (Florida State and Miami) and three against top-50 teams (those two plus North Carolina) to put themselves in position for the NCAA tournament.