Texas served Georgia baseball an SEC reality check Friday night, snapping a seven-game win streak in the conference by a 5-1 count in Austin.

The No. 3-ranked Bulldogs (29-3, 8-2 SEC) lost the first round of its hyped weekend war between its elite offense and the No. 5-ranked Longhorns’ elite pitching.

Texas (24-4, 9-1) starter Jared Spencer dealt his best performance of the season after three rocky SEC starts. The senior left-hander tossed a masterful 7-2/3 innings of one-run ball on 112 total pitches.

He also fanned a career-high 11 Bulldogs with two hits and four walks.

“He threw the ball well, commanded three pitches in the strike zone and he makes it tough on us,” UGA coach Wes Johnson told 960 The Ref. “We’ve got to do a better job with two (strikes).”

The Bulldogs will hope to have better luck against another elite Texas arm in Luke Harrison at 3 p.m. on Saturday. Georgia will start Brian Curley on the mound for his third career SEC start.

Johnson did say that Harrison is a very different type of pitcher than Spencer, a potential silver lining after the offense was nearly silent.

“Way different look tomorrow,” Johnson said. “I mean, that guy right there was 95 to 97 for 100-something pitches, throwing an upper-80s slider with a changeup.”

Georgia’s Friday starter, Charlie Goldstein, matched Spencer’s start through three innings before falling apart in the fourth. Goldstein gave up three earned runs on several extra-base hits before the Longhorns chased him for good.

Goldstein did not allow a hit until Rylan Galvan singled on a hard ground ball in the fourth. The catcher stole second and third base on consecutive pitches to move to third with one out.

Then Texas’ offense found its stride, hammering an RBI double down the line to be quickly followed by a two-run homer. Another double on the next at-bat ended Goldstein’s day.

Goldstein finished with three earned runs on four hits and two walks in 3-1/3 innings.

Matthew Hoskins relieved Goldstein and actually stranded the bases loaded to end the frame. Georgia’s offense made the same mistake in the next half-inning, keeping the Texas lead at 3-0.

Then another two-run homer off Hoskins expanded the lead to 5-0. Georgia scored its only run on a seventh-inning homer from Nolan McCarthy.

Slate Alford and Robbie Burnett gave Georgia a chance to scare the home crowd in the eighth inning. UGA’s top two hitters drew two-out walks to end Spencer’s day and put a couple of runners on for clutch power hitter Ryland Zaborowski.

Zaborowski hit a hard ground ball that looked like it would reach left field, but Texas shortstop Jalin Flores laid out to grab the grounder and get Alford at third base to end the inning.

The Bulldog offense, which entered the weekend leading the country with 84 homers on the season, struggled to ‘feed the trees’ on Friday. A strong wind blowing in from left field to the first-base dugout kept many balls from taking flight.

Georgia didn’t have many hard-hit balls at all, to be clear, due to Spencer’s dominance.

But on a night where the Bulldogs likely needed to shorten up and simply get on base, they only mustered three hits and four walks. Georgia was a mere 0-for-2 hitting with runners in scoring position.

“We’ve got to foul off more pitches, we’ve got to grind out at-bats longer,” Johnson said. “Doesn’t mean you’re always going to get a hit, doesn’t mean you’re going to strike out, but we’ve got to do a better job.”

Georgia did get a strong performance from relief pitcher Eric Hammond. The USC transfer relieved Hoskins in the fifth inning and didn’t allow a hit for the last 3-1/3 innings of action.

Texas is no doubt the best team that UGA has played so far this season. The Longhorns are the first top-10 team on Georgia’s schedule.

It was a dose of the real SEC for the Bulldogs after a dreamlike start to the season. The conference’s depth of talent is unmatched, and that was shown throughout the league on Friday.

The Bulldogs weren’t the only top-10 SEC team to struggle to start the weekend. Unranked Kentucky walked off No. 9 Ole Miss while No. 16 Auburn run-ruled Alabama 10-0.

Beating a top-5 team is never an easy task, especially on the road in an environment as hostile as Austin. The Longhorns upset then-No. 2-ranked LSU in a home road series win two weekends ago.

It’s why Johnson was so focused on the next game just minutes after Georgia walked Auburn off on Sunday to complete a sweep. The win marked an 8-1 record through nine of Georgia’s 30 SEC games, but it didn’t mean much more to Johnson.

“It means we’ve got 21 of these things left, and this league don’t care, man,” Johnson said on Sunday. “You’d better be hooked up and ready to go. They don’t care.”