On Saturday night, the Texas baseball team will open its 39th appearance at the College World Series with a game against seven-time Omaha participant Georgia.
Texas and Georgia are two of the five SEC programs in the eight-team field, but the conference alignment is where the familiarity between the two teams ends. Despite finishing in first and second place in the SEC standings, Texas and Georgia did not meet during the regular season. The two teams then missed each other at last month’s SEC Tournament.
That makes UT’s sweep of Georgia in Austin last season the last meeting between the two schools.
According to DraftKings, Georgia enters the College World Series with the best odds to win it all (Georgia and North Carolina are both +275, which edges out Texas at +300). Georgia’s lofty odds are warranted. At No. 3, Georgia is the highest-seeded team left in the NCAA Tournament’s bracket. The Bulldogs also swept the SEC’s regular season and tournament championships.
Over the past decade, the 2024 Tennessee and 2019 Vanderbilt teams are the only programs to win a national championship during the same season that they won the SEC’s regular season and tournament titles. Georgia is looking to join the exclusive club.
Led by Golden Spikes Award front-runner Daniel Jackson, Georgia has been mashing the baseball this season. The Bulldogs lead all teams with the 174 home runs they’ve hit this season. Just three others have gone deep 130 times this year, and Oklahoma’s 150 homers rank second.
How do those power numbers stack up historically? Only the 1997 LSU (188) and 2024 Tennessee (184) teams have hit more home runs in a single season. If the season ended today, Georgia’s average of 2.76 home runs per game would be a Division I record.
This week, Georgia will take its swings at a ballpark that plays much deeper than its home field. Charles Schwab Field lists dimensions of 335 feet to both left and right field, 375 feet to its left-center and right-center alleys and 408 feet to center field. Georgia’s Foley Field is 350 feet to left field but shorter to every other section of the ballpark (including just 314 feet to right field).
The good news for Georgia? The Bulldogs scored 24 runs while sweeping Mississippi State in the super regionals. The bad news for Georgia? The Bulldogs allowed 21 runs.
Georgia enters the College World Series with a 4.92 ERA, which ranks 58th nationally and sixth among the teams that got to Omaha. The Bulldogs have gotten 100 strikeouts this season from both fifth-year right-hander Caden Aoki and junior right-hander Joey Volchko, who was Texas infielder Temo Becerra’s teammate the previous two years at Stanford.