No. 4 Auburn gets one last chance to prove how far it has come when it hosts No. 5 Georgia at Plainsman Park from Thursday through Saturday to close the regular season.
The Tigers, 35-16 overall and 16-11 in the SEC, enter the three-game series with six straight SEC series wins in a single season for the first time since 1995. Georgia, 41-11 and 21-6, brings the kind of late-May pressure Auburn has spent the last month living with.
First pitch is set for Thursday and Friday at 7 p.m. CT, with Saturday at 2 p.m. The first two games will be shown nationally on SEC Network, while Saturday will stream on SEC Network+. A limited number of general admission single-game tickets remain available.
Auburn has made itself comfortable in difficult company. Georgia is the Tigers’ fifth straight top-10 opponent to end the regular season, and Auburn is 8-4 against those teams over the last four weeks. Since April 16, Auburn has played 12 of its last 15 games away from home, went 8-4 in those road games and faced ranked teams in 10 of them. The Tigers are 14-13 against ranked opponents this season.
That run has not just been long. It has been revealing. Auburn is 32-1 when outhitting the opponent and 25-2 when it scores six or more runs, numbers that explain how often it has turned tight games into wins and why the weekend against Georgia feels less like a finish line than another test of whether this surge can hold.
Coach Butch Thompson did not downplay the scale of what his team has already survived. “We’ve been fighting like crazy. I think our guys have done an amazing job. What a journey this has been,” he said.
He also made clear what is coming next. “We’re excited to host these guys, the national leaders in home runs, top five in about every offensive category. We’ll have our work cut out for us. We’ve played some of the best teams, and now we’re seeing the summit. The best team in our league is coming here to finish so we’re excited about that,” Thompson said.
The pitching matchups underline how much is at stake. Thursday’s scheduled starters are Jake Marciano and Joey Volchko. Friday’s matchup is Andreas Alvarez against Dylan Vigue. Auburn is set to start Alex Petrovic on Saturday. The Tigers’ starting rotation will be the same three pitchers for the seventh straight week, a level of stability that has carried them through one of the hardest stretches of the season.
That consistency has helped Auburn keep pace through a schedule that has not let up. The Tigers have spent the last four weeks trading blows with top-10 opponents and have gone 8-4 in that span. They have also had to do it with much of the recent schedule on the road, which makes this final home series feel like a reward and a warning at the same time: the team’s progress is real, but the margin against Georgia will be thin.
For Auburn baseball, the weekend is about more than closing the books on the regular season. It is about showing whether a team that has already beaten the odds can do it once more against one of the league’s best offenses, in front of a home crowd, with postseason stakes waiting just ahead.
