Mercer was set for its conference baseball tournament, but Georgia, Tech, GSU, GSU, and Kennesaw State sweated
By Michael A. Lough
The Sports Report
centralgasports@gmail.com
Mercer hasn’t had much suspense regarding conference tournament play for awhile, and Georgia Tech has pretty much been in for a week or so.
Everybody else in the state? Plenty of sweating.
Georgia qualified for the SEC gathering in Hoover, Ala. with a last-day win over LSU.
Georgia State and Georgia Southern are two of the final two teams in the Sun Belt Tournament in Montgomery, Ala., as the ninth and 10th seeds. The Panthers and Eagles went 16-14 in SBC play, a game ahead of Old Dominion, which won the Georgia Southern Series in early April and lost the Georgia State series this weekend.
And the Eagles and Panthers will play each other in the second game of the first day, the loser going home.
The top eight make the ASUN tournament at Stetson. Kennesaw State is done, after finishing 10th with a 14-16 conference record, 25-29 overall. The defending conference champs’ fate was all but sealed with a three-game sweep last week by lowly North Alabama (8-22 in ASUN play).
They did take two from second seed Florida Gulf Coast this weekend, but needed help. As it turns out, they finished tied for ninth, and would have lost a tiebreaker with eighth-place Austin Peay if the Governors had lost Saturday and been tied with KSU.
Mercer (32-23) is stumbling into the tournament after it looked like the Bears would storm in, after sweeping then-first place Wofford and beating Georgia Tech in a rain-shortened game on Tuesday.
They’re 4-6 in their last 10 games, and the streak of 12 straight seasons with at least 35 wins – with LSU and Vanderbilt – is in serious jeopardy.
They suffered a rare home sweep to Samford, that jumped from third last week to sole regular-season champ.
Georgia is 4-6 in its last 10, ending with a win over No. 5 LSU. Tech has lost four straight and is 3-7.
Georgia Tech (30-25/12-18) is in Pool B in the ACC Tournament. The Yellow Jackets, sixth in the Coastal, are seeded 11th overall.
The ACC will release the schedule Sunday morning.
Georgia Southern is 4-6, with a four-game losing streak in that stretch, three to Georgia State, 5-5 in the last 10, a five-game winning streak following a five-game losing streak.
The teams’ RPI through Saturday’s games: No. 41 Georgia; No. 51 Georgia Tech; No. 93 Georgia State; No. 95 Georgia Southern; No. 108 Mercer; No. 168.
Conference tournaments, state’s first game
Southern, Greenville, S.C., Tuesday; Mercer vs. Wofford/UNC Greensboro/Western Carolina winner, Friday, 12:30 p.m.
SEC, Hoover, Ala., Tuesday: Georgia vs. South Carolina, Tuesday, 10:30 a.m.
ACC, Durham, N.C., Tuesday: (Probable) Georgia Tech vs. North Carolina, TBA
Sun Belt, Montgomery, Ala., Tuesday: Georgia Southern vs. Georgia State, Tuesday, 7:30 p.m.