The Red and Black

Issue date: 6/19/08 Section: Sports

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The Georgia baseball team is now one win away from the championship series at the College World Series.

After breathtaking wins against Miami and Stanford in their first two games, the Diamond Dogs now await the winner of Wednesday's losers' bracket game between those same two teams. The game finished after press time.

In the double elimination College World Series, either team will have to top Georgia twice to stop the Bulldogs from making it to the best-of-three championship series.

After a two-and-done showing in 2006, the pair of late-inning wins has several Bulldogs speechless.

"Unbelievable," said shortstop Gordon Beckham in a news release. Beckham is one of three finalists for the Golden Spikes National Player of the Year.

"You can substitute a lot of words for that, but this is exactly the way we wanted to do it. We usually do it the hard way through the Regional and the Super Regional, and we've started off really well here, obviously, with 2-0."

Down 3-2 going into the seventh in Monday's win over Stanford, the Bulldogs continued to embrace their flair for the dramatic.

After the Cardinal outed the first two Georgia batters of the inning, Beckham and sophomore Rich Poythress walked. Junior transfer Bryce Massanari launched a ball that was just inches to the right of the foul pole in right field, and then was hit by the next pitch.

Matt Cerione then came up big for the Bulldogs and the much-maligned bottom of the order, singling to center to bring in the tying and go-ahead runs. That made the Diamond Dogs 2-0 in Omaha for the first time since 1990 - the year they won their sole national championship.

"We've got a little time off, and we can rest and recuperate to get ready for Friday," Beckham said. "I think that it's just a tribute to this team on how hard we've played these last two games. We've been down, and we've come back. We've won two games against two very good teams and I give them all the credit in the world, but we've come out on top."

All that came after an even more dramatic win over top-ranked Miami on Saturday. Down 4-3 going into the ninth and again down to their final out, Georgia rallied for four runs and their second win over the nation's No. 1 team this season (they beat then-top-ranked Arizona to start the season).

"That's one of the best wins that I've ever been a part of and to do it on this stage like we did, competing for all nine innings, was a lot of fun," said senior third baseman Ryan Peisel, who drove in the first three Georgia runs on his 22nd birthday.

"We just battled all night. It was sweet redemption for a lot of us guys who went two and 'cue in 2006."

After Massanari singled to start the ninth and Cerione bunted him over, Robbie O'Bryan struck out, but reached on a wild pitch. Freshman Lyle Allen then singled to drive in the tying run before a throwing error on a David Thoms grounder allowed two more to score. Peisel added the final run on an RBI single to seal the 7-4 win.

"Miami's the best team we've played all year," coach David Perno said. "Up and down the lineup, they have tremendous hitters, a tremendous starter and they have a great bullpen. We had to coach every pitch. (Joshua) Fields fought like there was no tomorrow. We played every pitch hard. We played close to our identity and just kept battling, hanging in there and hoping the big inning would get there when we needed it to."

Georgia's bullpen, bolstered by the presence of Stephen Dodson (the Diamond Dogs' Saturday starter during conference play), has been phenomenal.

In pitching 11 innings, including the final six of the Stanford game, the Bulldog bullpen has allowed just one run.

Alex McRee has earned a win, and closer Joshua Fields earned his 17th save of the season against Stanford.

"I know the Lord has blessed me very much this year, but having guys like that who can go the seventh and eighth innings so that I can throw the ninth innings...takes a huge amount of pressure off of me," Fields said.

Perno said that Trevor Holder, who started the first game against Miami, gets the nod on Friday.

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