Georgia and FSU were clearly the two heavyweights in this regional after both teams routed their lesser competitors Sacred Heart and Jacksonville. After a 6-4 loss to FSU, the teams met in the finals of the double-elimination round robin, with Georgia needing two straight victories to advance.

Georgia took the first game in convincing fashion, 7-1, setting up the winner-advances, loser-goes-home final game. After Florida State jumped out to a 1-0 lead in he first, Joey Side, the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player, continued to do what he has done all year for the Bulldogs—hit a home run to give his team the lead.

An uncharacteristically dominant pitching performance by the starting pitching staff—albeit by a freshman spot-starter named Trevor Holden—combined with Josh Fields’ 15th save, secured the win for the Bulldogs. The save, however, was not without some ninth-inning drama, as Fields quelled a rally where FSU cut the lead to 3-2 to earn his Georgia single-season record-tying save.

Georgia’s high-powered offense has been its key to success all season. Featuring a lineup with five .300+ hitters and three hitters with double-digit home runs—including Josh Morris’ 23—the Bulldogs’ bats can attack with the long-ball or the hit-and-run. Once they are on base, they are just as dangerous, as evidenced by their 63-for-79 success rate when stealing bases. Flaunting an offense with a dangerous combination of speed, power and contact, there is no single strategy for stopping Head Coach David Perno’s Bulldogs.

And this Georgia team needs every run they can muster, with a starting pitching staff that is shoddy at best. Consistently bailed out by timely hitting and a spectacular bullpen, featuring Rip Warren and Josh Fields, the starting pitching is clearly this Bulldogs’ Achilles Heel. Their three starting pitchers all sport unsightly ERAs above 4.00, which is usually overshadowed by the fact that each has seven or more wins. This statistical anomaly is explained solely by the fact that in when the Georgia pitching has given up seven or more runs (26), they have lost only half (13) of those games, thanks to their powerful offense.

If Georgia can string together a few more decent starts, and their offense keeps rolling as they have been all season, the No. 8 Bulldogs will be poised to make some noise in Omaha.