Top of the order, Cole Wilcox carry Georgia to series-clinching win over Richmond
No comebacks were needed for Georgia on Saturday.
A day after coach Scott Stricklin’s Bulldogs (2-0) overcame a four-run deficit to top the Richmond Spiders (0-2) in the season opener, they surged to an early lead and protected it on the strength of a strong afternoon from the pitching staff to win 9-3 at Foley Field.
The Georgia offensive attack was led by the trio of center fielder Ben Anderson, shortstop Cam Shepherd and left fielder Tucker Bradley at the top of the order. Anderson reached base five times and scored four runs, and Shepherd collected three hits and a drove in a trio of runs.
Bradley continued his strong start to the season against the Spiders. After collecting two hits and driving in the season opener, he finished Saturday’s game 3-for-4 with three RBIs, and he crushed his first home run of the year off the scoreboard in right field. Overall, the top three hitters in the order went 9-for-12 with seven runs scored and six RBIs.
Bradley’s home run followed an RBI double from Shepherd in the first that scored Anderson. Just nine pitches into the bottom of the initial frame, the Bulldogs led 3-0.
“That’s one thing Coach Stricklin said before the game is just continue to pound them, use the energy from last night,” Anderson said. “I think we did that well.”
Bradley came through again in the bottom of the second with an RBI single, scoring Anderson and pushing the lead to 4-0.
The Bulldogs piled on in the fourth, scoring three times. A passed ball to score Anderson for the third time was sandwiched between RBI singles from Shepherd and right fielder Riley King. After trailing 6-2 after four innings last night, Georgia carried a 7-0 lead into the fifth on Saturday.
That was plenty of support for sophomore starting pitcher Cole Wilcox, who credited the early runs with taking some pressure off of him. Regarded as a potential first-round pick in this year’s MLB draft, he didn’t disappoint in his season debut.
“Last year, I feel like I was working on a lot of things and it wasn’t much pitch making,” Wilcox said. “This year, it was all pitch making, all that, just going out there and getting outs and just grinding out innings. I stepped on the mound today, my heartbeat was a lot slower than it was this time last year.”
In five innings of work, he struck out a career-high eight batters while allowing just five hits and one run. The final two punchouts came with the bases loaded in the fifth after the Spiders had already scratched across a run. But Wilcox bore down and fanned the top two hitters in the Richmond order to escape the jam.
“When you go out there and you kind of cruise and you sit back in your recliner and it’s easy, what do you take from that?” head coach Scott Stricklin said. “Early in the season, we want to see these guys get into some situations. He got a double play ball, he got a big strikeout. I thought he pitched really, really well.”
The Spiders mounted a rally against new Georgia hurler Justin Glover in the sixth, plating a pair of runs to cut the lead to 7-3. But the senior pitcher escaped with no further damage, and the Bulldog staff finished the game with three hitless innings on their way to a series-clinching win.
This story was originally published February 15, 2020 at 4:47 PM.