Over the weekend in Texas, the Mississippi State softball team faced perhaps the toughest competition it has seen since its 2019 Southeastern Conference slate.
The Bulldogs played a doubleheader with a solid small-conference program in Texas State and faced ranked teams in Texas and Baylor, all on the road. They also faced Houston in a neutral-site game Saturday in Austin.
And all in all, Mississippi State (8-4) turned in an uneven performance over the weekend at the Lone Star State Invitational. The Bulldogs split with the Bobcats in San Marcos, beat the Cougars and lost to the Longhorns and Bears for a 2-3 performance.
“Four of the five games this weekend are true road games,” Mississippi State coach Samantha Ricketts said in a news release. “Playing four of five true road games really gets us ready to go into a tough Southeastern Conference schedule. … They’re not always going to be shutout, one-run ballgames. We’re going to have to be able to bounce back, score some runs and hold the opponent down. I really think it’s something we can move forward from if we’re learning from the battle and the lessons we’ve had early on.”
On Friday in San Marcos, the Bulldogs were hurt by missed opportunities on offense. On Saturday in Austin, they nearly completed but couldn’t quite finish a considerable comeback. On Sunday in Waco, early pitching struggles were too great an obstacle to overcome.
Now with four losses on the season, Mississippi State has already lost more games in 2021 than it did in 2020. The Bulldogs went 25-3 in their abbreviated season, though they played just one ranked team: No. 9 Oregon.
Mississippi State won’t have any respite with its next game, a nonconference contest against Southeastern Conference foe Alabama — the No. 3 team in the country — on Wednesday in Tuscaloosa.
Here’s a look at how the Bulldogs fared in each of their games this weekend.
No. 23 Baylor 10, Mississippi State 6, Sunday
Junior left-hander Grace Fagan was tagged for five runs in the first inning, and the Bulldogs never overcame that early deficit in a 10-6 loss.
Mississippi State trailed 5-2 after the first before Baylor added two more runs against Annie Willis in the second. The Bulldogs made it a 7-5 game in the third on back-to-back homers by Mia Davidson and Fa Leilua and got within one run on a Chloe Malau’ulu single in the fourth.
But Baylor responded with three RBI singles in the bottom of the fourth inning to push the lead to four runs.
Mississippi State didn’t score again despite threatening with a runner on in the fifth and two in the sixth. The Bulldogs stranded all three runners and went down 1-2-3 in the seventh.
The Bears scored their five first-inning runs on a single, a hit-by-pitch, a wild pitch and a two-run double. An error and a single brought home Baylor’s two runs in the second.
“That’s a team that doesn’t strike out a lot,” Ricketts said. “They put the ball in play. We’ve got to be able to make some plays and find a way to pitch to soft contact. Credit to them, they do a great job of forcing you with the amount of balls they put in play. Overall, we just needed to do a better job of limiting the base hits and the big hit to follow that.”
Mississippi State 3, Houston 0, Saturday
The Bulldogs got their best pitching performance of the season so far on Saturday against Houston.
Willis hurled a complete-game shutout, allowing just three hits and striking out four Cougars.
“I thought Annie did a great job of attacking the zone and settling in from the first inning,” Ricketts said. “She really looked like the Annie that we expect to see, mixing speeds and location and getting ahead early in the count often.”
Leilua’s three-run homer in the bottom of the third provided all the offense the Bulldogs needed, scoring Malau’ulu and Davidson to give the Dawgs a 3-0 lead.
“Fa has done a great job of working on hitting different pitches hard,” Ricketts said. “That was a changeup she sat on to be able to pick up some runs early in the game when we needed it. It was big for our momentum to get Annie some support early.”
No. 7 Texas 8, Mississippi State 7, Saturday
After falling behind 8-1 early against Texas, the Bulldogs showed they could hang around with one of the best teams in the nation.
But they couldn’t muster quite enough offense to beat the Longhorns on Saturday. Mississippi State scored six unanswered runs to make it an 8-7 game but couldn’t scratch across the tying score.
The Bulldogs’ rally began in the top of the fourth when Carter Spexarth plated two runs with a single to left field. Paige Cook, Christian Quinn and Chloe Malau’ulu all had RBI singles in the inning.
Mia Davidson scored Cook with a double in the sixth, but Leilua struck out with two runners aboard to end the inning. The Bulldogs had nothing doing in the seventh as Texas closed out the 8-7 victory.
Still, Ricketts praised the team’s fight against the Longhorns.
“That’s something we take a lot of pride in, being able to come back, to not give in and keep fighting back and be scrappy,” she said. “We’ve yet to really play our complete game. Have our pitchers keep us in it a little bit longer there, and I think we definitely had the fight back to compete at the end.”
The Longhorns built an 8-1 lead thanks to a five-run third inning capped by a three-run homer. Back-to-back homers in the first inning accounted for Texas’ first three runs.
Mississippi State 6, Texas State 2, Friday (Game 2)
A big fourth inning provided all the offense the Bulldogs needed to finish Friday’s doubleheader with a 6-2 win.
Spexarth, Davidson and Leilua all went deep as Mississippi State scored all six of its runs in the frame. Spexarth led off the inning with a solo home run before Davidson clubbed a three-run shot and Leilua went back to back with a homer of her own.
Quinn doubled home Cook before Davidson’s blast to left center field helped MSU open up the game against the team it couldn’t put away earlier Friday.
“I really liked to see the fight and how we came together to string together quite a few hits there. It comes back to the energy and momentum,” Ricketts said. “That’s something we’ve been preaching a lot, for them to stay on it even when it doesn’t go our way the first or second time through the lineup. They just never doubted that we were going to find a way to score some runs there. That goes back to the maturity of the group.”
The Dawgs’ first three runs were the first allowed this season by Texas State starter Jessica Mullins, who no-hit Abilene Christian on Monday.
Fagan earned the win in the circle for Mississippi State with 4.2 innings of one-run ball. She struck out four against one walk and gave up five hits. Alyssa Loza finished out the fifth inning and pitched a clean sixth, and Aspen Wesley gave up a run in the seventh.
Sophomore shortstop Madisyn Kennedy returned from an ankle injury to start the game, making her first appearance of the season.
Texas State 4, Mississippi State 3, Friday (Game 1)
Missed chances came back to hurt the Bulldogs in their second loss of the season, a 4-3 setback in Friday’s tournament opener in San Marcos.
Mississippi State left a runner on base in five of seven innings, and pinch runner Brylie St. Clair was caught stealing second for the game’s penultimate out as the Bulldogs fought to answer the Bobcats’ go-ahead run.
A double by Texas State’s ArieAnn Bell off Wesley brought home Kylie George for that winning tally in the bottom of the sixth. The Bobcats tied the game an inning earlier on Tara Oltmann’s two-run home run.
Baylee Lemons got things started for Texas State with a solo shot off Emily Williams in the fourth, breaking the shutout.
Mississippi State got a run in the first when Leilua hammered a ball to right center for a double to score Davidson. The ball hit a flagpole beyond the playing field and ricocheted back onto the turf, but it was not ruled a home run, and the Bulldogs had to settle for just one run rather than two.
They added a pair to their lead on RBI singles by Cook and Quinn in the fourth inning, but Texas State scored the game’s final four runs to take the win.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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