PEARL — Mississippi State was so close to flipping the script Tuesday night with so many factors stacked against the Bulldogs.
The pitching staff was already overworked from a taxing and frustrating series loss to Florida over the weekend. A weather delay lasting nearly an hour could have thrown starter Noah Sullivan off his game. And MSU had already blown a three-run lead earlier, only to seemingly take control with a pair of big hits in the sixth. But freshman Ryan McPherson, on the mound for his fourth inning of work, could not close it out.
With one out in the bottom of the ninth, Austin Fawley took McPherson deep for a game-tying two-run home run. In the 10th, after two wild pitches from Luke Dotson eluded catcher Ross Highfill, Will Furniss lined a walk-off single as No. 23 Ole Miss handed the Bulldogs a crushing 8-7 loss in the Governor’s Cup at Trustmark Park.
“That one hurts. That one always hurts,” outfielder Bryce Chance said. “For it to end like that, it’s super frustrating. I thought we played pretty (well), but like it’s been the last couple weeks, it just hasn’t been enough.”
MSU (24-17) took advantage of most of its scoring opportunities after wasting too many of them against the Gators. Ace Reese drove in the game’s first run with a sacrifice fly in the opening inning, and the Bulldogs added two more in the third after starting the inning with three straight hits. Sullivan, meanwhile, was still sharp after the delay and was in control through three.
But as he worked into the fourth for the first time all year, Sullivan ran into trouble, issuing a leadoff walk and then a double before a sacrifice fly put the Rebels (29-12) on the board. Ole Miss cut the lead to one later in the inning, then took the lead in the fifth on a two-run homer by Furniss off Jacob Pruitt. An error by Reese at third base pushed across another tally.
“We had a lot of guys shut down today, so we needed those guys to hold on,” MSU head coach Chris Lemonis said. “I thought Jacob Pruitt had his best stuff of the year. He kind of had a funky inning, gave up a couple, but I think we could make a (defensive) play for him in there.”
The Bulldogs rallied right back in the sixth, loading the bases with one out for Chance. Playing less than 20 minutes from his hometown of Ridgeland, Chance lined a two-run single to right-center to tie the game. MSU scored two more runs to retake the lead when Highfill, from nearby Madison, hit a bouncer up the middle for an infield hit that led to a throwing error.
A subsequent single from Gehrig Frei forced a Rebels pitching change, and the Bulldogs were held hitless the rest of the way by Taylor Rabe and Hudson Calhoun. Ole Miss used eight pitchers in the game, but it was Calhoun who nailed things down in the late innings, striking out seven of the 10 batters he faced.
“The offense kind of stalled. We let them take a little bit of the momentum,” Chance said. “Momentum swings in SEC baseball games, that’s the name of the game. You try to hold onto the momentum as long as you can, and when it gets away from you, it hurts.”
McPherson relieved Pruitt after MSU’s four-run sixth and dealt with traffic on the basepaths in every inning, but escaped a jam in the seventh when Chance made an excellent running catch on a fly ball to deep center. Chance made another nice play in the eighth to help McPherson work around a leadoff single.
Following a strikeout to start the ninth, Isaac Humphrey lined a first-pitch single to center field, and then on a 1-1 offering, Fawley punished a mistake pitch from McPherson over the heart of the plate and crushed it well over the wall in left.
“(We were) just trying to mix and match,” Lemonis said. “If it had been a lefty coming to the plate, we’d probably have gone to (Dotson). But because it was a righty, we wanted to stay with the spin. They’ve struggled with spin.”
Dotson entered after the game-tying long ball and sent the game to extra innings, but after allowing a leadoff single, Highfill’s struggles to block balls in the dirt allowed Brayden Randle to advance to third. From there, Furniss delivered the final blow.
Tuesday night’s game does not count in the Southeastern Conference standings, but it was still the Bulldogs’ 10th loss to an SEC team in which they led at some point. The bullpen, thought to be a strength early in the season, continues to have issues with protecting leads.
MSU starts a three-game series at No. 11 Auburn on Friday evening.
“I’m not going to sit here and say we’ve lost confidence and it’s all over,” Lemonis said. “We need to get some on the road. We know how many (games) are left and how many we need, and we have to go and get a couple.”
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