For the UK baseball team, April has not been the kindest of months. With Georgia capturing the series sweep on Sunday afternoon in a 5-4 game, the Cats have now lost seven straight games, and have been swept in each of their last two Southeastern Conference series.

The Bulldogs, ranked No. 3 in the country by USA Today and ESPN, are one of the more powerful teams in the country at the plate. On Sunday, starting left handed pitcher James Paxton was up to the challenge only allowing two runs in the first four innings of work.

Paxton looked to be getting into a groove against the high-powered Bulldogs, retiring six straight batters before walking Georgia third baseman Colby May after a dozen pitches in the fifth inning. That proved to be fatal for the Cats, as the country’s leader in RBI, Georgia first baseman Rich Poythress, jacked a deep home run out of right-center field with two outs already gone to give the Bulldogs a one-run lead.

“James just came out and did awesome, he was pounding the ball in the zone and you have to give Rich props,” sophomore second baseman Chris Bisson said. “James made one mistake and he just let one fly … James battled all game long and I just tip my hat to them, Georgia came out with the win today.”

The game was a classic example of two contrasting styles between UK’s small-ball approach and Georgia’s power-ball approach. The Cats held Georgia to a mere three hits in the game’s final seven innings, but the Bulldogs scored three runs in those innings thanks to Poythress’s two-run home run in the fifth and catcher Joey Lewis’s game-winning solo home-run in the ninth inning.

“We like home runs too,” UK baseball head coach Gary Henderson said. “They have people over there that have about as much power as anyone in the country I’d imagine. They took advantage of us leaving a couple balls up.”

The Cats left 33 people on base in the three-game series with the SEC East-leading Bulldogs, including the first four runners of the game all in scoring position and the last runner of the game on third. The Bulldogs, to the contrary, only left three men on base, and no men on base after the second inning.

For the Cats, the mindset is to keep looking forward and not worry about the past. Bisson said the Cats had a meeting in the team video room where they looked at statistics from last season. Bisson said Louisiana State, the 2008 SEC Tournament’s champion, was struggling terribly last year at this point. Bisson said he believes the Cats are capable to make a similar run this year.

“I feel like everybody has to show up every day and prove themselves,” Bisson said. “We don’t look at the past, I feel like every new game we just have to listen to Coach Henderson. (He’s) big on guys look forward, not backward, the past is the past. All we can do is just fight every day. I feel like we do that real well, it’s just not going our way right now.”

The Cats jumped out to an early lead in the first inning against Georgia, and after giving up the lead in the second inning, took it back in the third, scoring one run in each of the game’s first three innings. Henderson said he was really pleased with the competitiveness of the Cats, as they reached base in every inning but one, and scoring position in six of the nine innings of play.

“Sometimes it may sound trite, but at a certain level the competitiveness of your club is everything,” Henderson said. “If we keep competing like we did today, it’s going to turn the course, we have half the conference to play. I’m proud of the effort we got today, clearly we have to figure out a way to get a ‘W.’ ”