ATHENS, Ga. – Three University of Georgia baseball stars were selected on the first day of the MLB Draft on Saturday, capping off a historic season for the baseball program.

Major League Baseball selections

What we know:

Bulldog catcher Daniel Jackson, pitcher Joey Volchko and outfielder Rylan Lujo were all chosen during the first four rounds of the draft in Philadelphia. 

Jackson was selected 37th overall in the first round by the Colorado Rockies. 

The Chicago White Sox drafted Volchko in the third round with the 77th pick, and the Los Angeles Angels took Lujo in the fourth round with the 109th pick.

Jackson, a Sandy Springs native, swept every major award this past season, including the Golden Spikes Award and Dick Howser Trophy. He hit .379 with 32 home runs and 87 RBI. 

Volchko served as the team’s pitching ace, going 11-2 with 119 strikeouts, while Lujo started 52 games in centerfield and hit .358. 

The draft choices follow a school-record 53-win season where Georgia captured the SEC regular season and tournament titles before finishing third at the College World Series.

Draft rounds and rules

The draft featured four rounds and 135 total picks on Saturday. Major league teams have until 5 p.m. July 27 to sign players drafted out of high schools and four-year colleges. Georgia has now had at least one player selected in the draft every year since 1987.

What we don’t know:

Officials have not yet confirmed the financial details of the minor league contracts or signing bonuses for the three drafted players. It is also unknown if any additional Georgia players will be selected during the later rounds of the draft.

What’s next:

The draft will conclude Sunday with rounds 5 through 20.

It’s hard to have a better start to the decade than the Georgia Bulldogs have during the 2020s.

They’ve finished ranked inside the top seven of the final AP Poll in each season of the 2020s. Georgia has appeared in four of the six College Football Playoffs in this current decade and the Bulldogs are the only team in the sport to have won multiple national championships since the start of the 2020 season.

Chip Patterson of CBS Sports stated that as it stands right now, the Bulldogs are in fact the team of the 2020s.

“From the start of the 2021 season through the end of 2023, Georgia went 42-2 with two national championship game wins and the only defeats coming to Nick Saban and Alabama in SEC Championship Game appearances,” Patterson wrote. “And while the winning percentage has dipped a bit in the last two seasons (23-5), those years have each included SEC Championship Game wins. Kirby Smart helped build the juggernaut of the 2010s with Saban, and as we stare down the final four years of the 2020s, he’s currently driving the frontrunner to be the team of the decade.”

Patterson notes that Ohio State is nipping on the heels of the Bulldogs, despite Georgia having a 3-1 edge in terms of conference championships.

Georgia is the only team with multiple national championships in this current decade, but Ohio State, Indiana and Alabama all seem like possible threats to get a second.

Oregon, Texas, Miami and Notre Dame appear to be annual threats to win a national championship. Especially in a world with an expanded College Football Playoff.

We’re past the halfway point when it comes to this decade, yet there are still four seasons left for one team to stake its claim as the dominant program of the decade. While the Bulldogs have gotten out to an early lead, there is still time for someone else to catch them.

So what do the Bulldogs have to do to ensure they remain in position to be the team of the decade?

The simplest answer is to grab another national championship. Alabama won four during the 2010s, with Smart serving as the defensive coordinator for three of them. Nebraska won three in the 1990s, while Miami did the same in the 1980s.

To get a third national title though Georgia will need more breaks than it got in 2021 or 2022. Those titles came in an era where there were just four teams in the College Football Playoff. Georgia also played just eight SEC games in those seasons. Going forward, the Bulldogs, and every other SEC team, will play nine conference games each season.

There’s also the other notable change that comes because of changes to NIL rules and the transfer portal. While NIL was legal during the 2021 and 2022 seasons, it’s a totally different beast now in terms of the way it impacts team building.

As for the transfer portal, we’ve already seen how Georgia has had to prioritize retention with its current roster. While Georgia brought in only nine players via the transfer portal, it also only lost 12 members from last season’s team. Both of those marks are the fewest in the SEC.

While Georgia has a plan when it comes to working the transfer portal, one of the questions that will ultimately define how the Bulldogs finish out the decade comes in the form of talent acquisition.

The Bulldogs signed a top 5 high school recruiting class in every recruiting cycle from 2020 through 2025 using the 247Sports Composite rankings.

Georgia’s 2020 and 2024 recruiting classes were ranked No. 1 in the country. But the 2026 recruiting cycle ranked sixth. The current 2027 class sits at No. 13, with only a small handful of targets remaining uncommitted.

Potential changes to the way the sport is governed are possible, but who knows what further consequences potential government intervention will have on the sport.

For as much as has changed in the sport from when the decade began, Georgia has been able to find stability in a way not every contender has in recent years. Consider that this year will be the fourth straight that Glenn Schumann and Mike Bobo have served as the offensive and defensive coordinators at Georgia.

Georgia’s staying power is a big reason why some view Smart as one of the top coaches in the sport.

“The argument for Smart is his program remains the gold standard for elite, sustained success even as the expanded CFP, the portal and NIL have in many ways made his job tougher,” ESPN’s Max Olson said. “He has maintained an incredibly high standard at Georgia with no bad years, finishing in the top seven of the AP poll in nine consecutive seasons, with eight trips to the SEC title game.”

If the Bulldogs continue to find themselves in the College Football Playoff, eventually the breaks will go their way. In 2022, Ohio State’s Noah Ruggles missed a 50-yard field goal attempt as time expired. Last season, Ole Miss kicker Lucas Carneiro made a 47-yard field goal in the final moments of the College Football Playoff.

Smart has always built Georgia to sustain. It’s a big reason why to this point in the decade, the Bulldogs are viewed as the team of the decade.

To ensure that title sticks throughout the rest of the decade, the Bulldogs are going to need to continue to accumulate talent at an elite level. That aspect will almost certainly look different compared to the beginning of the decade.

Ultimately, national championships will go a long way in shaping which team ends the decade as the defining team. Ohio State likely isn’t going anywhere, while Texas and others seem committed to spending whatever it takes to stay atop the sport.

Georgia is the only SEC team to make the College Football Playoff in each of the last two seasons. Oregon, Indiana and Ohio State are the only other teams to make it in both seasons.

No team has yet won a College Football Playoff game in multiple 12-team formats. Perhaps that speaks to how difficult it will be to maintain success on an annual basis.

This demonstrates just how much more difficult the task ahead is for the Georgia Bulldogs.

CRISP COUNTY, Ga. (WGXA) — Four teenagers are facing multiple felony charges for the murder of a 20-year-old man in Cordele last month.

On Friday, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced the arrests of 17-year-old Bianca Armani King-Knight, 17-year-old Kaylee Posey, and 19-year-old William Troy Posey all from Crisp County and 19-year-old Trenton Donnell Lane from Wilcox County, in connection to a shooting that left one person dead and another injured on the 1000 block of Dayton Road.

The GBI identified the victim as Correnthian Jeremiah Cooks, 20, who died at a local hospital after being found shot on around 6:45 p.m. on June 27. While the other male victim received treatment and was later released.

All four teenagers were charged with one count of felony murder and three counts of aggravated assault on June 29 and are currently being held at the Crisp County Jail.

The investigation remains ongoing, and anyone with information is urged to contact the GBI Regional Investigative Office in Americus at (229)-931-2439, the Cordele Police Department at (229) 273-3102 or submit an anonymous tip online.

Stick with WGXA as we learn more and keep you ready for what’s next.