STARKVILLE — Jake Mangum knew he was going to have a bigger role as a sophomore.
But Mangum didn’t know how being asked to pitch was going to affect his hitting, so he set a goal not to let success or failure in one area impact the other.
The No. 22 Mississippi State baseball team is glad Mangum strayed from that idea a bit Sunday.
After allowing seven hits and four earned runs in two innings, Mangum had two hits and drove in two runs to spark MSU to a 10-6 victory against Kentucky before a crowd of 8,082 at Dudy Noble Field.
The win gave MSU the series victory and moved it into a tie with Kentucky, Arkansas, and Auburn for first place in the SEC.
“This was a phenomenal weekend,” MSU coach Andy Cannizaro said. “I am proud at how well our kids battled. They just weren’t going to take no today. The atmosphere was great. The crowds were great. I am really proud at how hard we competed. Sunday is will over skill in this league. We showed great will and determination.”
By the end of Mangum’s stint on the mound, Kentucky (22-11, 8-4 Southeastern Conference) led 3-1 entering the third inning. But Mangum erased that deficit with a fourth-inning single that drove in second baseman Hunter Stovall, who reached on an RBI single.
Mangum’s second hit changed the game for good.
In the sixth, Mangum tripled down the left-field line on the first pitch he saw to score Stovall and Elijah MacNamee. As he slide into third, a throwing error by the shortstop allowed him to pop up from his head-first slide and score to make it 7-4.
“To help us out at that point in time helped out a lot,” said Mangum, who admitted his two innings on the mound were fresh on his mind as he approached that at-bat.
MSU (22-12, 8-4) added three more runs in the seventh without Mangum. Cannizaro said Mangum jammed his wrist sliding into third, adding he did everything he could to be ready for his next at-bat but found himself unable to grip the bat in the on-deck circle.
In a rush, Cannizaro called on Harrison Bragg to pinch hit. Bragg drove the first pitch he saw, a breaking ball, over the left-field wall for his first home run of the season.
“I was really pleased not only with the result, but with the aggression and intent he got into the box with today,” Cannizaro said of Bragg.
Trey Jolly limited Kentucky to three hits and one run in 5 1/3 innings. One of the hits Jolly allowed was to the first batter he faced, but he retired nine in a row from the fifth through the seventh.
Cannizaro said Jolly commanded his slider in the lower half of the strike zone, which he saw as the key against what was to date the best lineup in the SEC.
“I started getting confident after the first inning,” Jolly said. “In the second inning, I started feeling really good, and in the third inning I got on a roll.”
Kentucky hit a two-run home run after Jolly left the game, but MSU used three pitchers to record the final five outs. Closer Spencer Price recorded four of them for his 10th save.
MacNamee had three hits and scored three runs, while Ryan Gridley, Cody Brown, and Hunter Stovall (three runs, RBI) had two hits. Brent Rooker was 1-for-2 with two runs scored.
MSU will play host to Mississippi Valley State (4-21) at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday. It will travel to Columbia, South Carolina, later this week for a three-game SEC weekend series at South Carolina (21-10, 7-5).
n Blackman, Golsan lead Ole Miss past Alabama: At Oxford, Tate Blackman and Will Golsan helped Ole Miss build an early lead en route to an 8-2 victory against Alabama on Sunday afternoon at Swayze Field.
Blackman and Golsan combined for five hits and five RBIs at the top of the lineup to give the Rebels (20-12, 6-6) their fourth three-game sweep of the season.
Ole Miss used two-out hitting to score all eight of its runs. Blackman went 3-for-4 with three runs scored and two RBIs. Golsan, a former standout at New Hope High School, belted a two-run home run as part of a two-hit, three-RBI day. Tim Rowe added two doubles, and Ryan Olenek drove in two runs.
In his second SEC start, freshman Ryan Rolison (4-1) allowed one run on five hits to earn the win. The Jackson, Tennessee, native tied his career high with seven strikeouts. He walked two. Will Ethridge threw 1 1/3 innings without giving up a run. Dallas Woolfolk finished a game for the third time this week.
The Crimson Tide (13-19, 2-10) also tallied 10 hits. Hunter Alexander had three, and Gene Wood also had a multi-hit game. Alabama used five pitchers. Starter Sam Finnerty (1-3) lasted three innings and took the loss.
Ole Miss will travel to Hattiesburg to battle Southern Mississippi at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Pete Taylor Park.
Alabama will play host to Alabama-Birmingham at 6 p.m. Tuesday.
n Southern Mississippi loses to Florida International: At Hattiesburg, Scott Berry didn’t mince words following a disappointing Sunday afternoon at Pete Taylor Park.
“We had a chance to have a really great weekend and close (a series sweep) out, but we didn’t do anything well enough to do that against a team that was hungry for a win,” Berry said. “I felt like the effort was there. I felt like we never quit even down to the last.
“But we missed on opportunities. We never got any stops after we scored. … We didn’t run the bases well, and we didn’t play catch well.”
As a result, Southern Mississippi lost to Florida International 10-4 before a crowd of 3,141 in the finale of a three-game Conference USA series.
The No. 21 Golden Eagles (26-7, 10-2 C-USA) had locked up the series win with back-to-back victories Friday and Saturday.
But nine Southern Miss pitchers allowed 13 hits and issued a season-high-tying eight walks as the Panthers (18-14, 6-6) scored in every inning except the first and last.
The Golden Eagles also stranded nine runners and committed a season-high four errors. The 10 runs were the most Southern Miss had allowed to a conference opponent and third-most all season.
Despite the loss, Southern Miss remained atop C-USA after Florida Atlantic and Old Dominion lost Sunday and fell to 9-3 and a game behind Southern Miss.
“We’ve got to play better and move forward as a club,” Berry said. “We’re 26-7, so we’ve played good baseball through 33 games, but we’re 2-2 this week (including an extra-inning, midweek loss to Ole Miss). We played .500 ball and we’ve got to play better than that.”
Matt Wallner hit a solo home run in the sixth, his 11th of the season and second of the series. Wallner is only the second freshman in Southern Miss baseball history to hit 10 or more home runs in a season, and trails only former catcher Darren Welch, who hit 13 homers in 1999.
This week, Wallner broke a second-place tie with Cliff Wren (1996) and Brad Willcutt (2002), who hit nine each as a freshmen, and already had passed Doug Cronk (1986), Tommy Davis (1992), and B.A. Vollmuth (2009), who each hit eight as first-year Golden Eagles.
But the Panthers all but wrapped the game up three runs in the seventh and Zack Soria’s solo home run to lead off the top of the eighth inning.
Southern Miss scratched a run in the bottom of the seventh on Dylan Burdeaux’s RBI single, but failed to build any sustained momentum throughout the game.
Junior Colleges
n EMCC loses to East Central in doubleheader: At Decatur, After dropping a hard-fought 9-8 decision in the opener on a walk-off, East Mississippi Community College lost to East Central C.C. 10-4 in the nightcap Saturday afternoon at the Clark/Gay Baseball Complex.
The Lions had 10 hits as a team in the opener, led by 2-for-4 outings at the plate by Anthony Hickman and Corley Reynolds.
In the seven-inning nightcap, the Warriors posted multi-run efforts during each of the first three frames to take an early 8-1 advantage and establish control of the game. Two unearned runs in the second off EMCC starting pitcher Bubba Stockstill was sandwiched between three-run frames in the first and third that were highlighted by two-out, two-run hits by Tyler Ladner and Luke Yancey, respectively.
Late in the game, the teams swapped two-run homers to decide the final margin. In the bottom of the sixth, Brandon Clark’s two-run shot off EMCC’s Walker Kelly stretched the Warriors’ lead to 10-2. The Lions countered an inning later with Alex Knight’s pinch-hit, two-run blast to the opposite field off Preston Krummel to account for the final score.
With nine hits as a team in the second game, the Lions were led by Marcus Ragan, who had an RBI triple in the third and a seventh-inning double. Mike Farnell and Austin Lowther also added two hits apiece for EMCC.
EMCC (14-12, 4-8 Mississippi Association of Community and Junior Colleges) will play host to Coahoma C.C. at noon Tuesday.
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter, @Brett_Hudson
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 41 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.