Slipping away

• By CARL DUBOIS
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Apr 21, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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The SEC standings dispute the idea, but based on the 180-degree difference in the way Georgia and LSU viewed their unfinished business that finished 10-10 after 12 innings Sunday, deep down maybe there really is no tying in baseball.

“It felt like a win to us,” Georgia coach David Perno said by cell phone before boarding a flight at Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport.

“When you’re down 10-3 in the seventh inning and you bring guys in off the bench, and they do the job and get you back in it, and you shut out the other team for six innings, that’s good stuff for us.”

“It feels like a loss,” LSU right fielder Derek Helenihi said.

“You get 16 hits, you score 10 runs, you think you’re going to win a ballgame,” he said.

Nobody won it, not in a way measurable in the standings, but Georgia left Baton Rouge in a much better mood than LSU’s state of mind. The Bulldogs (27-12-1) haven’t lost in their past 11 conference games and remain a solid first place at 14-3-1.

LSU (23-16-1) is 11th at 6-11-1, good for fifth in the SEC West.

The game, which began at 12:08 p.m., had a 4 p.m. SEC travel curfew, after which the top of an inning could not begin. The score was 10-10 when the 11th inning ended at 3:58 p.m., marking the transition to the 12th and final inning.

Your final score: Georgia 10, LSU 10. Please buckle up and drive home safely.

In the case of the Bulldogs, it meant a police escort for their bus ride to the airport. The game ended at 4:11 p.m., and their flight to Atlanta was scheduled to leave at 5:35 p.m.