Power still missing, Georgia eliminated from College World Series

And a season that will be remembered for a long time by Georgia baseball fans was over.

The Bulldogs’ joyride reached its final destination Wednesday night after they took their second loss in their double-elimination bracket at the College World Series, an 11-4 defeat to the Sooners.

“When you get a group of people that all love each other and are all pulling on the same rope for however long we were together — since August — since that moment that we all got here on the same day, we’ve been pulling on the same rope until we got to Omaha," shortstop Kolby Branch said.

Needing two wins over the Sooners (41-22) to reach the CWS final, Georgia (53-14) got none. The pursuit of their first national championship since 1990 will continue into 2027.

“I think that the University of Georgia will have a good baseball program for the next however many years,” Branch said. “I believe in this place.”

While players could smile and even laugh in the postgame news conference as they reflected on the season, when Georgia’s first CWS season since 2008 is remembered, the question of what happened to the team’s high-powered offense will accompany those memories.

A team built on a foundation of unrivaled power and exceptional chemistry may have brought the latter to Omaha, but it left the former back in Athens.

In its four games, Georgia hit .183 and slugged .336, well under its season averages of .326 and .628 before Omaha, both top five in Division I.

In Omaha, the Bulldogs generated a total of 16 runs in four games against Texas and Oklahoma after averaging 7.6 in league play in the regular season and scoring a total of 24 in their two super-regional wins over Mississippi State.

“That hadn’t been like us all season,” Branch said. “And so we just kind of had an off weekend. And that happens in baseball. Sometimes you’re rolling and sometimes we just kind of lost a little bit of the mojo.”

Against the SEC during the regular season, the Bulldogs struck out 1.9 times for every walk. In Omaha, it was 3.3 strikeouts per walk.

After the first Oklahoma loss Monday, Johnson said players needed to slow the game down and be more ready to hit. After Tuesday’s win over Texas, he said he thought first-team All-American Tre Phelps had been pressing in the Monday loss to Oklahoma.

There was no such talk Wednesday.

“I mean, after awhile, you get wore down and you’re not going to stay hot,” Johnson said. “And so I don’t think there’s anything we did different. We just got cold at the wrong time.”

His counterpart at Oklahoma shared a similar observation.

“There wasn’t a secret sauce or magic dust that we threw on top of them,” Oklahoma coach Skip Johnson told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It’s baseball. They had a couple bad days against us. I don’t know. They’re good.”

The light and shadows of Charles Schwab Field appeared to affect the Bulldogs, who played in the evening session for all four of their games as the sun set on Omaha. They weren’t alone. In the first 10 CWS games, teams playing in the afternoon hit .276 and slugged .442. In the evening games, the numbers were .201 and .309, respectively.

“You get to the early innings in these later games, the shadows are starting to creep onto the pitcher’s mound,” North Carolina infielder Gavin Gallaher said after his team’s game Wednesday afternoon. “Sometimes, the guy’s releasing it from the light and it’s going straight into a shadow in the dark. ... I mean, it’s tough, but at the end of the day, both teams are dealing with it.”

Wednesday’s conditions didn’t stop Oklahoma from smashing five home runs off Georgia pitching. The Bulldogs, who finish the season with a Division I best and school-record 179 home runs, had one, by Branch in the bottom of the ninth with the game out of reach.

“I thought we had some things, had some chances a couple times to get back into the game,” Wes Johnson said. “But they executed pitches all night long. They got great swings in hitter’s counts and didn’t miss their pitch.”

Left unsaid was that the Bulldogs, who were 1-for-11 with runners on base, did not.

In four games at the CWS, Phelps and national player of the year Daniel Jackson were a combined 6-for-38 with three extra-base hits at the top of the order.

“I think just some pitches that I usually would get to got away from me,” Phelps said.

The game did end with a measure of good feeling. In the top of the ninth, Johnson used two lesser-used relievers to give them the experience of playing in this iconic baseball festival.

In the bottom of the ninth, after Jackson doubled in what was surely his final collegiate at-bat, Johnson removed him for a pinch-runner so he could receive applause from the Bulldogs faithful.

In what also will likely be his final college swing, Branch led off the inning with a home run, giving him the heartwarming moment of high-fiving his brother Kyle, the Sooners second baseman, as he rounded the bases. They became the first set of brothers to play in a CWS game against each other.

“Can’t script it up any better,” Kolby said.

Oklahoma, which made the 64-team tournament field despite a losing record in conference play, will play North Carolina in a three-game series for the national championship starting Saturday. Having ousted Georgia Tech in the Atlanta Regional, the Sooners can claim Georgia state championship bragging rights.

In the bigger picture, to be one of the final four teams standing is a tribute to a team that was picked to finish ninth in the SEC before the season.

The Bulldogs became just the 23rd team in SEC history to win both the regular-season and tournament championships. The tournament title was Georgia’s first. Their 53 wins set a school record. It all rightly earned the Bulldogs the No. 3 national seed.

But, Wednesday night, as a magical season came to an end, it was little consolation.

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