Georgia wins sixth straight SEC game, shuts out MS State

13 minutes ago Georgia Athletics

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ATHENS, Georgia — The 16th-ranked Georgia Bulldogs defeated the Mississippi State Bulldogs, 3-0, Friday night at Jack Turner Stadium.

Georgia is now 25-6 on the season and 5-1 in SEC play. It’s the Bulldogs’ eighth straight win, the longest streak of the season. Georgia has won six consecutive SEC contests, the most since 2013.

Madison Kerpics (10-4) went six innings and a third shutout, allowing three hits. She hit five Bulldogs with no walks. Shelby Walters pitched the final 0.2 innings en route to his second save of the season.

The offense collected eight hits on the night. Dallis Goodnight was 4 for 4 at the plate with a run and an RBI. Jayda Kearney, Lyndi Rae Davis, Sydney Chambley and Sydney Kuma scored the other four hits.

The Bulldogs got on the board in the second inning. A double from Chambley propelled Davis to third place, who reached him on a first single. Kuma picked the pitcher as Davis headed home. Ellie Armistead reached first on a Mississippi State error (22-9, 3-1) as Chambley scored to take a 2-0 lead.

Goodnight bunt for a hit and stole second with two outs in fourth. Kearney reached a defenseman’s pick as Goodnight finished third and headed home to increase Georgia’s lead to three points.

Mississippi State held a seventh round rally. With two over and one over, Walters took over in the circle. A bunt for a shot loaded the bases. Walters caused a flyout in the center and the choice of a defender in the middle to thwart the rally and secure the 3-0 shutout.

Georgia is back in action Saturday afternoon for Game 2 of the series starting at 12 p.m., live on SEC Network.

Head Coach Tony Baldwin
On the team’s performance… “I thought at the end of the day, that first SEC game of the weekend, there was still a bit of a feel. I thought we were ready to play. I thought Maddie [Kerpics] really settled in and launched well in the middle of the innings. I think that’s where we took control of the game. I think we had two or three bats away from it, which was still a few runs on the board. You just fight for those little inches. They did a good job mixing up the pitching. All in all, it was a good ball game. Tomorrow we have to come back and compete again and keep playing good defense. We don’t give a very good manager a race, we will win a lot of those games.”

Being 6-1 in the SEC…” I’ve mentioned a few times that I think our early schedule really set us up for this. We faced some really good pitching. We faced a lot of different types of pitching, right-handers and left-handers, hard pitchers and soft pitchers. I’ve said it many times that if anyone sees more changes in the first four weeks of the season, God bless them because that we’ve seen them all. Our team learned to fight early. Credit to Stanford. They came in and kind of punched us in the mouth and then Charlotte did the same thing. This weekend was a bit of a gut check. Since that time, we’ve responded well. I think we have a tough team, and a resilient team. Madison [Kerpics] and Shelby [Walters] have worked very well together, and that has been a big difference in winning some of those close games over the past few weekends.”

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