STARKVILLE — The twists and turns of a baseball season can prevent teams from reaching their goals, while others can turn a once bleak situation into an unexpected postseason run.
After nearly securing its ninth College World Series appearance, the Mississippi State baseball team can look back on the 2011 season and several turning points where its season could have went a different direction.
The beginning of April saw a five-game winning streak turn into a 2-8 stretch that included a sweep at the University of Georgia and series losses to Arkansas and Florida.
MSU was held to two runs or less in eight of 21 league games. It also had to overcome an unsettled pitching rotation. By the time the Bulldogs rallied from a three-run deficit to salvage a win in the Alabama series, three pitchers had been featured in the role of Sunday starter. Devin Jones, who opened the season as the Friday starter, was moved to the bullpen. Sophomore Chris Stratton would later start on all three weekend slots.
The Bulldogs were five games under .500 in the Southeastern Conference following the Alabama series and their chances of making the SEC tournament looked bleak.
The Bulldogs had no choice but to get on a winning streak, and there was good news: Their last three SEC series would against teams that wouldn”t qualify for the SEC or the NCAA tournaments.
MSU took full advantage, going 9-3 with series wins at Tennessee and Ole Miss. Its pitching staff materialized, with bullpen dynamo Luis Pollorena becoming a starter and Nick Routt returning to form.
Despite losing two of three to LSU and relying on other results in an ultra-tight race to finish in a three-way tie for second place in the SEC”s Western Division, the Bulldogs earned a trip to Hoover, Ala., for the first time in coach John Cohen”s three years in charge.
“It”s a totally different season now,” Cohen said the day after finishing second in the West. “Postseason is totally different. It doesn”t matter what seed you are. We got to beat the best team to get to where you want to go, and that”s the way we got to look at it. Hopefully the good things will roll for us and we”ll get to where we want to be.”
MSU”s performance in the SEC tournament did little to secure confidence it was ready to win a trophy or to make a serious postseason run, even though it lost held a three-run lead late in the game against Florida only to lose 7-5.
After going 0-2 in the SEC tournament, the Bulldogs nervously awaited their first NCAA tournament berth since 2007.
Once it was official MSU was in, the “good things started to roll” for Cohen and the Bulldogs.
MSU was sent to the Atlanta Regional, where it opened with rival Southern Mississippi, which it defeated earlier in the season. To get to a Super Regional, the Bulldogs would have to beat top-20 teams Georgia Tech and USM and Ohio Valley Conference champion Austin Peay.
MSU looked like a polished postseason team, beating all three and not allowing more than three runs in a game. Pollorena, Evan Mitchell, and Routt gave the Bulldogs quality starts — at least six innings and no more than three runs allowed — for the first time since early March. MSU also scored six or more runs before the fifth inning in the final two games of the regional.
For the first time all season, the Bulldogs had an effective combination of pitching and offense to go with stellar defense, especially in their outfield.
The production came mostly from the seven seniors in the starting lineup, especially second baseman Nick Vickerson, who finished the 2011 postseason with more than 10 RBIs and three home runs. Vickerson was responsible for all of MSU”s postseason home runs and led the Bulldogs in scoring.
Senior third baseman Jarrod Parks was a Ferriss Trophy finalist and was the SEC”s regular-season batting champion.
“When we”re all swinging the bat like we did (in Atlanta), you can see how dangerous this team can be,” Vickerson said.
The way things came together in Atlanta, it wasn”t surprising to see MSU take Florida to the brink of an upset on its home field. The Gators had been there before, two seasons prior when Southern Miss shocked them and clinched its first CWS appearance. Florida knew to expect a fight, and MSU, despite being blown out 11-1 in the Gainesville Super Regional opener, gave it one.
Vickerson”s postseason heroics continued with a two-run, walkoff home run that lifted MSU to a 4-3 win in Game 2. He had another home run in Game 3 to help MSU take a 6-4 lead, which eventually turned into an 8-6 loss that ended the Bulldogs” run.
“I think they”ve improved as the season”s gone on and gotten a lot out of their players,” Florida coach Kevin O”Sullivan said. “This is not an easy place to play and this is a good team. They took us down to wire and I knew it would be that way. It”s another team in this league that has a great coaching staff and is gonna be hard to deal with in years to come.”
Cohen talked extensively about the grind of playing in the SEC, which had seven teams make the NCAA tournament. “The best league in America” might not have done them any favors during a grueling regular season — MSU went 14-16 in conference play — but it prepared the Bulldogs for a postseason that has laid a foundation.
“I think this resembled 10 consecutive weeks in the SEC,” Cohen said Sunday. “Every weekend”s just like this. There was a little more at stake, this one deal, but there”s a lot at stake every weekend in our league. I think we have some extremely talented young guys, as talented as anybody in the Southeastern Conference, to really get us where we need to be in the future.”
Though the Bulldogs lose players who accounted for 225 of their 338 RBIs and must replace their infield, all of their pitching could return. The only question mark on the mound is Devin Jones, who was a ninth-round pick by the Baltimore Orioles in the MLB draft last week.
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