No.15 Oregon State Heads to Georgia This Weekend

The Bulldogs, who went 47-23 last season, will be playing their season-opener.

OSU pitcher Eddie Kunz Photo: OSU Athletics

CORVALLIS - Oregon State resumes its baseball schedule this weekend with a rematch from last season’s College World Series. The 15th-ranked Beavers (4-0 overall) visit Georgia (0-0) for a three-game series with games Friday at 2:00 PM PST, Saturday at 11:00 AM PST and Sunday at 10:00 AM PST.

OSU and Georgia met up in the second round of bracket play at the 2006 CWS, with the Beavers taking a 5-3 win.

That was the first of six victories in elimination games for OSU in Omaha en route to the national championship.

“Georgia has an excellent baseball program,” OSU head coach Pat Casey said. “They had a great team last season, and they have every reason to expect to have a great team again this season.

The Bulldogs, who went 47-23 last season, will be playing their season-opener.

Georgia isn’t in the USA Today/ESPN coaches poll top 25, but received votes worth 26th place.

The series will be at Foley Field, where Georgia won the Athens Regional and the Athens Super Regional in 2006.

OSU, which is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its varsity baseball program this season, will be making its first-ever visit to a Southeastern Conference diamond.

“It’s going to be a tremendous experience for our team to go play in another great college ballpark, in a great college baseball setting,” Casey said.

“Georgia has a terrific following, and playing in front of a big crowd always gives the game greater intensity. We’re looking forward to playing in that kind of atmosphere.”

The Beavers opened their season with a four-game sweep at Hawai’i-Hilo from Jan. 25th-27th, including a combined no-hitter by four pitchers on Opening Day.

By the end of the weekend, all 32 OSU players who made the trip had seen action against the Vulcans.

“It’s hard to really evaluate too much off of that, because it was our first time out,” Casey said of the series at UHH. “Ninety percent of our position players are new, they were anxious and they were amped up, so they need to burn off some of the energy. I think about guys like Andy Jenkins (OSU’s first baseman in 2004 and 2005) who hit .270 as a junior and came back and hit .380 as a senior, and he didn’t even start the first 10 games (as a senior). You think about the jumps that people make after they get comfortable, and we have a lot of guys who can gain confidence as they play at this level. You can see guys who are pressing a little bit early.”

But, Casey noted, any time you can win four games in a weekend, you’ll take it.

“Now we have to take another step up this weekend, against a club that was among the final eight teams in the nation playing last season,” Casey said.

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