STARKVILLE — The margin of error is gone for the Mississippi State baseball team.
After losing 14 of its last 22 games, MSU is on the outside looking in for an at-large bid in the NCAA tournament after losing three of its first four Southeastern Conference series.
It only gets tougher from here. Starting at 6:35 p.m. Friday, MSU (21-14, 5-7 SEC) will face No. 2 Texas A&M (31-2, 9-2) in Game 1 of a three-game series in College Station, Texas. The series will be the Bulldogs’ first of three in the next four weekends against ranked teams. The Aggies are ranked No. 1 in the Collegiate Baseball and USA Today polls. They are No. 2 in the Baseball America rankings.
But MSU coach John Cohen isn’t pressing the panic button with such a tough opponent on deck.
“You just can’t look that far ahead,” Cohen said when asked what his team needs to do to put itself in position for an at-large bid. “There’s so much baseball to be played, and I think if you asked any of the 14 coaches in our league, they’d tell you the same thing.
“I kind of feel like in some respect we’re right there. … Everything hasn’t come together yet, but you know it will.”
The Bulldogs backed up Cohen’s confidence last weekend by scoring 27 runs in three games to take two of three games from then-No. 22 South Carolina. It was MSU’s first SEC series win of the season, and its first series win overall since sweeping Arizona and Samford in the last weekend of February. That weekend victory was part of a 13-0 run to open the season, a stretch that has been forgotten thanks to a 7-12 record in March.
South Carolina took the series finale 13-7 on Sunday. Memphis beat MSU 7-1 on Tuesday. That loss dropped MSU’s Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) to No. 122 in the country, MSU’s lowest this season. The RPI is a tool the NCAA tournament selection committee uses to pick the at-large teams for the field.
MSU’s players aren’t overreacting, either, despite the fact that Division I Baseball’s midseason projection of the NCAA tournament field of 64 doesn’t include MSU. Ole Miss and Southern Mississippi also aren’t included.
“We all kind of know where we stand,” MSU senior outfielder Jake Vickerson said. “We play some big teams coming up, obviously starting with A&M, so we have an opportunity to work on that and take care of that. It’s kind of in our own hands.”
Vickerson has a team-high .364 batting average. He went 8-for-12 against South Carolina to raise his SEC batting average to .382.
With his confidence high, Vickerson also is optimistic about his team’s chances for a revival.
“The conference championship is still on the line,” Vickerson said. “We’re still shooting for that. We dug ourselves a little bit of a hole, but we get to play all the top teams, so there’s a chance to gain some ground.”
MSU is five games behind Western Division-leading Texas A&M entering the second half of the conference season.
Cohen believes his team is close and that a turnaround is there for the taking.
“I really believe we’re in very, very good shape, but you kind of have to be from the inside to understand that and know where we are,” Cohen said. “I think our kids are ready to play a very, very good Texas A&M club.”
While MSU dropped two of three games to Texas A&M last season in Starkville, College Station has been kind to the Bulldogs. MSU has won seven of its eight games at Texas A&M, and the Bulldogs swept a series between the teams in 2013, a weekend that helped the Bulldogs make a run to the College World Series championship series.
But this season Texas A&M is second in the SEC in batting average (.319), second in runs (252), and first in ERA (2.11). Missouri and Alabama are the only schools to beat Texas A&M.
Cohen said he could see Texas A&M becoming one of the top teams in the country two years ago.
“You could see they had a really good club at its core,” Cohen said. “But the pieces had not had enough experience.”
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brandon Walker on Twitter @BWonStateBeat
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