ATHENS. Ga. — Georgia Tech had to win two elimination games just to get its first shot at nonconference rival Georgia in the NCAA tournament's Athens Regional.
It took a little extra effort, but the Bulldogs made sure the Yellow Jackets didn't get a second chance.
Georgia sophomore Kolby Branch hit a tying solo home run in top of the eighth inning, and Corey Collins capped the team's three-run ninth with a two-out, two-run double as the Bulldogs, seeded No. 7 nationally, rallied to beat the Jackets 8-6 on Sunday night and earn a spot in the super regionals.
In the postgame news conference, Collins said he had to ask how many innings the game had gone.
"I didn't even know," he said in quotes posted at Georgia's athletic site. "But we fought the whole time, and that just sealed the deal. We fought all year to get here, and we brought it back home and we defended our turf, and it was great to be with these guys and just take it to the next level, and that's what we wanted to do."
The Bulldogs (42-15) will be home again next weekend for that best-of-three super regional against No. 10 North Carolina State (36-20), which advanced by going 3-0 in its Raleigh Regional, just as Georgia did in Athens. At stake in the series between the Bulldogs of the Southeastern Conference and the Wolfpack of the Atlantic Coast Conference will be a berth at the College World Series, which starts June 14 in Omaha, Nebraska.
Georgia's first regional championship since 2008 comes in its first season under head coach Wes Johnson, who was the pitching coach last season for LSU as the Tigers won the College World Series.
"I tell the players all the time that you can't ever hit the panic button," Johnson said in the postgame news conference. "It's a long game. It's the teams who can stay focused, it's the teams who can understand that they've got to get us out 27 outs as well that keep teams in games like this."
Georgia Tech (33-25), an ACC program playing as the home team in front of 3,745 at the Bulldogs' Foley Field in the regional final, loaded the bases with nobody out in the bottom of the 10th. Leighton Finley took over for Chandler Marsh on the mound after the first two batters reached base, and Finley surrendered a single to Cam Jones before striking out Drew Burress. Matthew Ellis followed with a sacrifice fly for the second out, providing the final margin, and John Giesler grounded out for the third.
Marsh got the win, improving to 2-0 this season, while Finley got his first save after starting the regional opener Friday afternoon and throwing 81 pitches in that outing.
Georgia starter Zach Harris went six innings against the Jackets, allowing five runs (four earned) on eight hits and four walks with strikeouts, settling down after the early trouble.
AP photo by Stew Milne / Georgia's Slate Alford hits a single against Army during the opening game of the NCAA tournament's Athens Regional on Friday.The Bullldogs, who were down 5-2 after two innings, had steadily chipped away at Tech's lead.
Clayton Chadwick led off the fifth with a single and scored on a single by Charlie Condon, whose .445 average leads the nation, to get Georgia within two. One inning before Branch's tying shot, freshman Tre Phelps hit his own solo homer to get the Bulldogs within a run.
Dylan Goldstein and Slate Alford drove in first-inning runs for the Bulldogs, but the Jackets cut Georgia's 2-0 lead in half in the bottom of the frame when Burress tripled and scored on a single by Ellis. Vahn Lackey hit a three-run homer in the second, when Giesler added an RBI single to give the Jackets a 5-2 lead.
Georgia's only baserunner from the second to the fourth inning was Phelps, who was hit by a pitch with one out and left stranded on consecutive flyouts. After striking for a run in the fifth, the Bulldogs went three up, three down in the sixth, then left a pair of runners on base in the seventh before the homers by Phelps and Branch forced the extra inning.
Georgia entered the regional final knowing it needed only one victory against Tech to advance out of the double-elimination event, while the Jackets had to win Sunday evening just to force a rematch Monday they would also need to win.
The Bulldogs improved to 7-2 against the Jackets in NCAA postseason play and 221-169-2 overall against their rivals from Atlanta, having also beaten them twice during the regular season this year. Georgia won 3-1 in Athens on March 2 and 11-9 a day later at Lawrenceville's Coolray Field — the home of the Gwinnett Stripers, the Triple-A affiliate of the Atlanta Braves — and the Bulldogs were also leading 9-3 at Tech on March 1 when play was suspended in the bottom of the fifth due to rain, with that game never completed.
Tech, seeded third within the four-team regional this weekend, beat No. 2 UNC Wilmington 3-1 in an elimination game earlier Sunday. The Seahawks had pushed the Jackets into the losers' bracket with a 9-0 romp on Friday, but Tech bounced back with a 4-2 win against No. 4 Army on Saturday.
Tech is an NCAA tournament regular, but the program's most recent of six regional championships was won in 2006, the same year the Jackets made their third CWS trip.
Georgia beat Army 8-7 in a back-and-forth game Friday before crushing the Seahawks 11-2 on Saturday.
The Bulldogs are seeking the program's seventh College World Series appearance overall but first since 2008, when they finished second. Georgia's only national championship in baseball was the 1990 CWS title.
The NCAA's 64-team NCAA field this year included 11 SEC teams, the most in the league's history, and Georgia is one of four from the conference already through to super regionals, with some regionals wrapping up Monday with second games in the finals.
In addition to the Bulldogs, No. 1 Tennessee, No. 2 Kentucky, No. 3 Texas A&M have advanced, and Florida and reigning national champion LSU still have that opportunity. Florida beat host site Oklahoma State 5-2 on Sunday night to force a second game in the Stillwater Regional final, while LSU beat host site North Carolina 8-4 to do the same in the Chapel Hill Regional.