Stricklin addresses perception of program heading into SEC Tournament
SEC Tournament
WHAT: Georgia (27-29) vs Ole Miss (40-16 )
WHERE: Hoover Met, Hoover, Ala.
WHEN: Tuesday, 2 p.m.
AT STAKE: The winner advances to the double-elimination round of the tournament while the loser is eliminated from the tournament.
STARTING PITCHERS: Georgia – Heath Holder (4-4, 3.34); Ole Miss – Brady Bramlett (7-3, 3.19)
TV: SEC Network
When it comes to overall perception and how some fans view the Georgia baseball program, Bulldog skipper Scott Stricklin isn’t naïve.
In three years as head coach, the Bulldogs failed to finish over .500 the first two and barring a deep run at this week’s SEC Tournament in Hoover will not do so for a third consecutive campaign. He also knows there are those who question the current state of the program, and whether or not anything is better since he took over for David Perno in June of 2013, something Stricklin addressed Monday during an exclusive interview with UGASports.com
“At the end of the day that’s what we’re judged by and we know it as coaches,” Stricklin said. “When we get into this profession you can have great kids in the community, have high GPAs and do all the things you need to do but at the end of the day you’ve got to win more games than you lose.”
So far, that hasn’t happened.
After winning 26 games in each of his first two years (26-29-1 in 2014, 27-28 in 2015), Georgia’s victory total entering Tuesday’s game against Ole Miss in the SEC Tourney (2 p.m., SEC Network) stands just one better at 27, a fact that hasn’t set well with many fans.
While there has been absolutely no indication from Georgia officials that Stricklin’s job is in any sort of jeopardy, patience is not a virtue for many who point to the deep pool of high school talent in a state with the advantages of the HOPE Scholarship and wonder why the Bulldogs haven’t already turned the corner under their third-year head coach.
“No, I get it. It’s (patience) not one of mine either. I’m as impatient as anybody. We want it to happen now,” Stricklin said. “But at the end of the day, to build a program, to build it right, it takes some time – it doesn’t happen overnight. That's what we’re doing - we’re building it and we’re building it the right way. We’ve got great kids coming in. We’ve got great kids in this program. We just need to build it to a level to be able to compete in this conference.”
But how long will that take?
Perennial league powers like LSU, Mississippi State, Florida, Ole Miss, South Carolina, and more recently Vanderbilt and Texas A&M, won’t be going anywhere soon.
Like all sports, it starts and ends with recruiting.
“We made the decision that we were going to go the high school route. We were going to recruit high school kids and develop them,” Stricklin said. “When you do that it means you’re committing sophomores in high school, so it does take some time.”
However, Stricklin insists the Bulldogs aren’t that far away, pointing to the incoming signing class as a major reason why.
“The kids who are coming in next year, that’s the difference-making class. The guys who will be new in this program, those are the kids when we got the job in June of 2013, they just finished their freshmen year in school, so these were the kids we started to watch; we’ve watched them develop and we’ve seen them play so much. These are that first group of kids and they’ll be freshmen next year. It’s taken them a while to get here but next year’s class we feel is a difference maker,” Stricklin said. “They’re really, really good top to bottom, so when you look comparatively at some of the high ranking players who have gone to other schools, you’ll see a lot of those kids are going to be on our campus next fall.”
According to Perfectgame.org, a national website that covers college baseball, Georgia’s 2016 class is one of the better groups in the country.
The Bulldogs rank 14th, eighth in the SEC with their 14 signees. While that may not seem so impressive at face value, four of those 14 signees rank among the website’s Top 100 high school players, which is just one below the five boasted by Vanderbilt, Ole Miss, Arkansas and Kentucky, equals the four signed by LSU and more than both South Carolina (3) and Florida (2).
Of course, the Major League Draft set for June 9 will remain a concern.
Signees Cam Shepherd (SS, Peachtree Ridge) and pitcher Anthony Locey (Houston County) are potential early round picks who Stricklin will have his fingers crossed on.
“There’s a couple of them we’re a little worried about,” Stricklin said. “Certainly, if you can come in and be an impact player in the SEC, there are 30 (Major League) teams who feel the same way about those players, that they’re really talented and they’re good.”
However, he’s also confident that the long hours of work he and his staff have put in with the respective families will pay off and everyone will make it to Athens come August.
“We’ve had great talks with the kids and their parents over the last couple of years, we’ve developed a relationship with the kids and their families and we feel really good about their commitment to Georgia, their commitment to going to college,” he said. “Sure, they all have aspirations of playing pro ball but in their cases, they have to be drafted high enough to do that. That’s the tricky part, how high are they supposed to go. But we feel really good about the kids we signed, where they are and about them coming to campus.”