05/27 at 07:32 PM

Georgia coach David Perno had a phrase handy for the team that does everything it has to — schedules tough competition, endures the grind of the SEC season — and still sees its season end without getting a shot at Omaha.

“I told (the players), flat out, we don’t want to be the ‘sympathy team,’” Perno said. “The team that played the tough schedule, had tough adversity during the year.”

The Bulldogs had a direct hand in making Auburn a “sympathy team” with their 3-2 win on Thursday.

The loss dropped the Tigers to 29-29, making it so that — while other measures on their resume gave them a healthy NCAA standing — they were disqualified from regional consideration because they fell just short of the minimum requirement of being a game over .500.

Season over.

“We certainly put ourselves in this position,” Auburn coach John Pawlowski said. “The rules are what they are. I thought weekends, we competed with the very
best in the country. Unfortunately, we just didn’t have enough people to compete in midweek.”

If the Tigers had beaten Bethune-Cookman on March 2, they’d be awaiting their NCAA destination right now.

Same goes for Jacksonville State (March 22), Troy (April 5), South Alabama (April 19 and May 17) and Samford (April 26 and May 10).

A win in any one of those seven games and the Tigers make the NCAA Tournament.

But Auburn went 14-11 against non-SEC competition, with only three of those losses — two to Arizona State and one to Virginia — coming against teams ranked higher in the RPI.

Or how about holding onto a six-run lead with three outs to go instead of letting up nine in the ninth inning of a 14-11 loss to Georgia on May 8?

Or winning more than one out of three against Tennessee, the last-place team in the league, in the final SEC weekend?

Auburn came within three outs of doing that, but ended up on the short end of a 4-3 score in the Sunday finale, a game in which the Tigers left 11 runners on base.

The Tigers needed just two wins in their final seven games to clinch an NCAA berth.

They came up with one, mustering a .216 batting average in their six losses — only .200 with runners in scoring position — and scoring just 2.8 runs per game.

“We could look back at the season, we had a lot of opportunities in a lot of games,” Patterson said. “We blew some leads, didn’t get guys in when we needed to, just like all season. We struggled midweek and it definitely adds up and catches up to you.

“And that’s what happened to us.”

The loss to Georgia on Thursday was a fitting microcosm.

Creede Simpson was thrown out trying to stretch a single into a double to end the third inning, with Justin Fradejas already on third and first-team All-SEC hitter Casey McElroy coming up.

McElroy hit a home run to start the fourth, then Auburn put runners on first and third with no out and didn’t get anything out of it.

Cullen Wacker was caught stealing on apparent hit and runs twice, both to end innings.

The Tigers managed only two baserunners after the fifth inning and struck out four times.

“It’s hard to put your finger on it,” Pawlowski said. “You’re working hard, guys are giving good effort. It’s just frustrating.”

The Tigers will lose five players from their lineup — Fradejas, Patterson, Wes Gilmer, Justin Hargett and second-team All-SEC catcher Tony Caldwell — to
graduation.

They return nearly all of their pitching staff aside from relievers Sean Ray and Bradley Hendrix, that is if staff ace Derek Varnadore — who said he planned to
return to Auburn next year — doesn’t find the lure of professional baseball too appealing.

Pawlowski said the goal for next year will be finding more pitching depth to bolster a staff that had only about four or five pitchers it could consistently count on
in a pinch toward the end of the year.

It could be the first step in cutting back on those debilitating losses — both in conference and out — that cost this year’s Tigers NCAA play.

“We need to be able to sustain,” Pawlowski said. “We had some guys, especially in the pitching staff, go down at different times during the season. That’s
probably one of the biggest areas, not just the pitching staff, just overall depth on our team.

“That’s certainly something we’re working on right now.”