OMAHA, Neb. — Baseball isn’t easy, and Luke Alexander made peace with that as the sport was proving it to him. That peace is the only way Mississippi State’s junior shortstop could have survived the valley to be the hero for a third time.
Alexander felt the game’s cruel streak for the entire month of May, when his batting average dropped from .222 to .207, just to drop six more points in the first two games of the NCAA tournament. Contact was not the problem; he struck out just eight times 42 at-bats. Luck was all he needed.
Luck is what he has received in the NCAA tournament. Eleven hits in his last seven games makes the bottom of the MSU (38-27) lineup imposing as it continues on in the College World Series; Alexander is the reason it continues on without a loss, as his walkoff single beat Washington 1-0 Saturday night.
“Twenty-one years old, I finally realized that baseball is a tough game and you have to be a man to play baseball,” Alexander said. “You have to be very-strong minded and let things go.”
The run continues with the 6 p.m. Monday (ESPN) game against North Carolina, which beat Oregon State 8-6 Saturday. When the Tar Heels work around to the 7-hole in the Bulldog lineup, they are dealing with one of the most confident hitters in Omaha.
Such confidence was hard to find for anyone against Washington starter Joe DeMers, who needed just 72 pitches to hold MSU scoreless through 7 1/3 innings, doing so with just two strikeouts. DeMers did it with a hard-breaking two-seam fastball, a complementary slider and the ability to show changeup when needed.
DeMers is the kind of pitcher that uses movement not to force swings and misses, but to inspire weak contact. As Alexander put it, “He’s a guy that you get yourself out.”
Alexander did none of it. In his three cracks at DeMers, he singled twice and — as a throwback to his fortunes from May — hit a ball hard right to Washington left fielder Mason Cerrillo.
The pitching change did not phase him. When Washington turned to Alex Hardy, the man on the mound didn’t matter to Alexander as much as the moment.
“Sometimes early in the count, he can get a little careless and swing out of the zone at some sliders and some fastballs up, but when he gets to his two-strike approach, he really locks in,” MSU assistant coach Jake Gautreau told The Dispatch. “He takes pitches he would normally swing at, and I’m like, ‘Hey man, why don’t you do that (all the time)?’
“It’s the same thing when he’s in those big spots, those big situations. There’s a little different look in his eye, there’s different body language. I can feel it, I can see the confidence in him. For whatever reason, he locks in, bears down and usually has a good at-bat.”
In this instance, he was in that zone from the beginning. The Huskies clearly had the book on Alexander, giving him a first-pitch slider — one Alexander expected, but deemed it too low for his liking. He expected slider again on the 0-2 count but it was over the plate, so Alexander made them pay.
Junior center fielder Jake Mangum saw it fitting that the player he has repeatedly called, “the lifeblood of this program,” was the man of the hour once again. On the subject of the Belmont native who committed to MSU as an eighth-grader and has kept at his craft ever since, consistently giving MSU what it needs in the tensest moments, Mangum could do nothing but sit back in his chair in awe.
Finally, another positive moment for a player who kept a positive attitude when most would not.
“To defend him, I’ve been telling people all year long it’s the most productive .220 season I’ve ever seen,” Gautreau said.
After Saturday, it’s a .222 season with three victories ending with the ping from his bat.
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter @Brett_Hudson
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