With pressure off, Georgia looks to ‘play free’ in SEC baseball tournament

The Bulldogs will face either No. 8 Mississippi State, which earned a bye to the second round, or No. 16 Missouri or No. 9 Ole Miss, which play in the first round Tuesday. Georgia’s quarterfinal game will take place at 4 p.m. Thursday in Hoover, Alabama.

The Bulldogs have also set themselves up to not put pressure on their pitching staff, with regionals around the corner (starting May 29). Georgia coach Wes Johnson said he’d wait to see who his team faces, but the plan will be to stick to the regular pitching routine, even if it gets Friday off if it advances to the semifinals. That would put Joey Volchko (8-2, 4.22 ERA) on the mound Thursday.

“For the first time since I’ve been here, you know, our pitching staff is in a position to not be stressed in Hoover,” Johnson said. “This is the first year, obviously, being able to win the regular season puts you in a position not to have to play till Thursday, and you can get your guys back and get them recovered. And there’s just so many things that you’re able to do that you haven’t been (able to).

“ … It’s always nice not to have to go into Hoover and — quote, unquote — play for your postseason life, and we’re not in that position.”

In Johnson’s view, the SEC Tournament shouldn’t affect the Bulldogs’ seeding for the NCAA Tournament given Georgia’s overall résumé.

The Bulldogs (43-12 overall, 23-7 SEC), who set a program record for SEC wins this season, only lost one series (dropping two of three games to Florida on April 10-12). They dominated in league play, from sweeping Mississippi State in a top-five matchup in Starkville to closing out the regular season by taking two of three games at No. 4 Auburn.

“I mean, our body of work, we won 11 out of our last 12, so you know, they can’t say that we weren’t playing good down the stretch,” Johnson said. “They can’t say we weren’t playing good on the road. They can’t say we didn’t play good at home. We didn’t have a losing week all year. Yeah, I don’t think it has much bearing. I don’t think you’re going to jump a (No. 2) Georgia Tech or a (No. 1) UCLA.”

That said, even if the pressure’s off and the Bulldogs already feel they’re in the driver’s seat for the postseason, that doesn’t mean they don’t want to win the SEC Tournament.

“I think the competitor in us, yeah, obviously we want to go and win the tournament, we want to go win every single game, want to win it by a lot,” said third baseman Tre Phelps, who was named first-team All-SEC on Monday. “I think obviously it goes by, focus on the first game at a time by whoever we get, and we’ll obviously be watching once we get out of practice (Tuesday), how that’s kind of gonna be going, but just being able to focus on whatever the first game is there.”

As the No. 1 seed, Georgia knows that it will get everyone’s best shot in the SEC Tournament, and that’s how the Bulldogs like it, Phelps said.

“That you get a bigger target on your back, so you know you get everybody’s best game, and I feel like we play better when we get other people’s best games,” Phelps said of the advantages of the being the No. 1 seed. “I think that’s going to be our biggest advantage, being able to know that people want to play us a lot tougher.”