STARKVILLE — The Diamond Dawgs fell flat in their first conference series at Dudy Noble Field this weekend, dropping all three games to SEC newcomers Texas in painful fashion. 

MSU (13-7) failed to find consistency at the plate against the No. 11 Longhorns and paid for it at the end of each game, getting swept at home to start their 2025 SEC campaign. 

Bulldogs head coach Chris Lemonis put it plainly when asked to sum up his team’s performance over the weekend: “Not enough.”

The Bulldogs were in good positions late in all three games of the series. On Friday, a disastrous five-run seventh inning that was MSU’s undoing as they watched a two-run lead turn into a three-run deficit. On Sunday, The Bulldogs saw two close games slip away in the top of the seventh during a shortened doubleheader, missing out on opportunities to salvage something from the weekend.  

“They just did more than we did,” Lemonis said. “The two-out hit, two-strike at-bats, plays in the field. A very competitive weekend, but you’ve got to win the game. You have to do something at a special time of the game to win the game, and they kept doing it and we didn’t.”

Lemonis has had a rough time in SEC play since the memorable 2021 national championship season. The Bulldogs have been swept in nine SEC series since then, and the Texas sweep was the sixth one to happen at The Dude. 

“It sucks, you’re supposed to win at home and win the close games at home, and we just don’t do enough,” Lemonis said after the doubleheader on Sunday. “We don’t get the big hit or the runner in. Tip your hat to them, they did. They had two-out hits and made some great plays in the field the last inning of all three games to see it out.”

The Bulldogs left eight runners on base in Game 2 and six on base in Games 1 and 3. The team only committed one error throughout the series and the bullpen only had one real blip on Friday, the Bulldogs just couldn’t get their bats going when it mattered, following their nine hits on Friday with just 10 hits across both games on Sunday.

Lemonis didn’t just stress the lack of hits, he also stressed the need for better awareness at the plate in general. It’s not just about getting guys on base; it’s about being able to get them home and not waste an opportunity. Over the weekend, several of those opportunities passed the Bulldogs by, and it cost them.
“It’s not about getting a hit, it’s about having a good at-bat,” Lemonis said. “Sometimes, you hit a ball right at somebody, it is what it is, but we’re having a bad at-bat in that moment. We had it in the first inning of the earlier game, we had the bases loaded and we threw a bad at-bat in there. You just have to be better than that. You can blow the game open right there if you have a better at-bat.”

MSU will try to shake its poor start to conference play with a midweek game against Jackson State at 6 p.m. today. They need to get right quickly because there are no weeks off in the SEC. It’s a 30-game gauntlet against some of the best in the country each week, and the Bulldogs have two straight weekends on the road ahead of them. This weekend they will travel to Norman to face No. 10 Oklahoma followed by a trip to Baton Rouge to face No. 2 LSU a week later.