BATON ROUGE, La. — LSU catcher Alex Milazzo tightened his grip on the tape of his bat and flung the barrel toward an impending Will Bednar pitch.

Three times it looked as though Bednar grooved a changeup as the offering danced toward the middle of the plate. Three times his devilish slider smacked into Logan Tanner’s catcher’s mitt with the movement of a wiffle ball at a summer cookout as Milazzo looked on with befuddlement.

“It was electric,” Bednar said of striking out Milazzo through an excited breath. “Logan Tanner hyped me up, too, and it was just awesome.”

Turning in his longest outing of the season, Bednar struck out seven in five innings as he guided No. 3 Mississippi State (16-3, 2-0 SEC) to a 3-0 win over No. 19 LSU (15-5, 0-2) and secured the Bulldogs’ third series win in Baton Rouge since 2006.

One night after MSU ace Christian MacLeod retired 13 consecutive batters following an erratic first inning, Bednar matched his mark almost identically Saturday.

Finding the zone on his first three pitches they offered a varied look at the stuff that has scouts drooling over his potential. First was a 93 mile per hour fastball. Second was a tailing slider at 81 miles per hour. Bednar closed things out with a 95 mile per hour fastball that sent LSU leadoff man Dylan Crews to second when shortstop Lane Forsythe fielded a hard grounder and threw it to the fence on the turn.

A single by Tre’ Morgan made a dicey first inning even more adventurous. But as MacLeod did in Friday’s first inning, Bednar locked in. He struck out Cade Doughty on five pitches. An inning-ending double play followed. Stepping off the mound, Bednar let out a yell and flexed toward the Bulldog dugout as Forsythe sent a quick toss from Scotty Dubrule into first baseman Josh Hatcher’s glove to end the frame.

Shaky first inning behind him, Bednar then rolled through the Tigers lineup. He retired 13 batters in a row between the end of the first and through the fifth inning. Between the third and fourth, he struck out five in a row.

After sitting down his 12th and 13th consecutive batters, Bednar put two runners aboard with two outs in the fifth via a Jordan Thompson single and a five-pitch walk of Collier Cranford. With a Forsythe sac fly the lone difference in the score and LSU threatening, Bednar slammed the door shut with a 2-2 slider past Milazzo.

“When he’s able to spin that thing in there, it kind of tunnels so you can’t tell which side (of the plate it’s going to),” MSU head coach Chris Lemonis said of Bednar’s slider. “You saw some big swings and misses tonight.”

“In game they were on fastball a lot,” Bednar added, “so I was able to get them off that with a lot of sliders.”

Following Bednar’s gem, sophomore Preston Johnson and second-year freshman Landon Sims combined for four innings of relief. Sims, who entered Saturday with an absurd 10:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio, shot down LSU’s late-inning rally attempt when he forced Gavin Dugas into a groundout to third with two outs and runners on the corners to close the eighth inning.

“You can relax and you can play free, and when you play free you play your best,” fourth-year senior Rowdey Jordan, who notched an RBI single on the night, said of the effect MSU’s bullpen has on the team’s late-game psyche. “And I think that’s what happens when you have guys like like Landon Sims on the mound.”

Reaching the LSU bullpen after a dazzling seven-inning start from Landon Marceaux — who extended his unearned run streak to 31.1 innings dating back to 2020 — the Bulldogs added a third insurance tally in the top of the ninth when Josh Hatcher chopped a pitch from reliever Blake Money to second, scoring Luke Hancock from third.

Sims then took the mound once more, promptly closing out the Bulldogs’ series-clinching victory with a 1-2-3 ninth.

“That’s the nice thing about being able to go on the road,” Lemonis said. “You’re able to take all these competitors — Landon and Will and a lot of our guys — and they just don’t back down. You know you’re going to have to face some adversity…and (Sims) stepped up.”

Ben Portnoy reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @bportnoy15.