Kolby Branch helps Georgia bully Mississippi State

By Kyle Tatelbaum
UGA Sports Communications

Kolby Branch didn’t need a farewell tour to make his final game at Foley Field matter. He just needed a few swings.

Batting in the eight-hole during the Georgia baseball team’s dramatic, 10-inning 11-9 win over Mississippi State on Sunday, a win that sent the third-seeded Bulldogs to the College World Series, the veteran shortstop turned in one of the most complete performances of his career. He went 3-for-4 with two solo home runs and a walk, quietly commanding the game in a way that has defined his time in Athens. Production, poise and presence.

It was fitting.

Because for as long as Branch has worn red and black, his impact has rarely been about volume. It has been about certainty.

“Yeah, Kolby, we call him ‘Sheriff’ or ‘Captain’ or whatever,” Georgia’s Ike Cousins Head Baseball Coach Wes Johnson said Friday, before the Bulldogs hosted No. 14 Mississippi State in the Athens Regional.

“I mean, he’s just been in this league. He’s an old player. Old players in this league, nothing really surprises them. Kolby’s not going to see a breaking ball he hasn’t seen before or a fastball he hasn’t seen.”

That showed up in every at-bat.

Branch arrived at Georgia with credentials. He earned Freshman All-American honors from Collegiate Baseball in his first year at Baylor before being one of Johnson’s first impact transfers. Branch hit the ground running and cemented himself at shortstop. Since then, he has been an everyday presence, steady in the field, reliable at the plate, and central in the clubhouse.

That last part is what his teammates feel most.

“Having Kolby as kind of our main leader is great,” catcher Daniel Jackson, who hit the game-winning two-run homer to beat State, 11-9, in 10 innings on Sunday, said Friday. “He’s always calm, cool, and collected, not too emotional, and kind of gets us going in the right direction.”

It is a kind of leadership that does not demand attention, but consistently earns it.

And for Branch, it has always been tied to something bigger than a single game, even one like this.

“I said that on Friday, or whenever I said it, I said it all year,” Branch said. “I get chills thinking about it. But I truly do go home and think about Omaha, and I think about going to that place, and taking Georgia back to this place, and securing the legacy that Georgia needs to have in Omaha.”

That vision has been shaped by both belief and memory.

The 2024 season ended one step short, a loss to N.C. State that still lingers for the players who were there.

“I know that hurt,” Branch said. “That hurt me and Tre (Phelps), and Coach Wes, Paul Farley … those are the guys that have been here. And I still remember that. I remember going to bed that night, going, “We’re gonna go to Omaha, we’re gonna win this game,” and it just didn’t work out.

“And that’s how baseball is.”

But baseball, as Branch understands it, is also about return.

About getting another chance. About staying long enough to see things come back around.

And so now that we’ve gotten that third game and that second game, and now we’re on to Omaha, it’s kind of a full circle moment,” he said.

That’s what made Sunday at Foley Field feel less like the end of a chapter, but a setup for a story. 

Because while the stat line will stand — three hits, two home runs, one walk — the deeper imprint of Kolby Branch’s final home game is harder to measure. It lives in the steadiness he brought to the infield. The calm he brought to the dugout. The expectation he helped build.

In many ways, it lives in the fact that nothing about the moment seemed too big for him.

Just another game.

Just another set of at-bats.

Just another reminder that experience, when paired with purpose, can still take over a ballgame.

And for Georgia, that has meant having someone at shortstop who has already seen it all — and still believes there is more ahead.