BILOXI — Mississippi State improved to 13-4 on the baseball diamond on Wednesday, defeating Nicholls, 2-1, at the Hancock Whitney Classic in Biloxi. The Bulldogs went 2-0 on the coast with the Wednesday win and their 9-4 victory against Old Dominion on Tuesday, making it six wins in a row heading back to Starkville for the start of Southeastern Conference play. 

Ace Reese got the first run home with a groundout in the third inning and Aaron Downs added the eventual winning run on a wild pitch in the fourth. 

The Colonels made it a game with a run in the fifth inning, but the Bulldog bullpen came in to clean up in the final third of the game. MSU reliever Nolan Stevens was credited with the win after coming in for Noah Sullivan, and Kevin Mannell and Ryan McPherson finished the job late in the game. McPherson allowed no hits and registered four strikeouts in two innings of work to close out the win. 

“It’s a win and a pretty clean game,” Bulldogs head coach Chris Lemonis said to the media after the game. “I thought we pitched pretty good, played good defense, obviously. I thought we swung it pretty good early. They made three or four diving plays in the outfield and infield, and then it just settled into that kind of game. I tip my hat to them, they played good defense and their pitchers made pitches all day long. Curveballs in negative counts and that made it tough on us.”                    

The Bulldogs are riding a six-game winning streak into SEC play this weekend. The run began with a dominant 18-3 win over No. 22 Southern Miss last week, which seemed to wake up the bats. They’ve scored nine or more runs in four of the six games, and despite the close call against Nicholls, the team is feeling better about where they’re headed, thanks to their hot form at the plate. 

“It’s always big,” Lemonis said of the six-game run. “Baseball is momentum and confidence, and  I think our kids are playing good baseball right now. We feel good, we have a great opponent with Texas coming into the Dude on Friday night.”    

The Bulldogs aren’t the only team on a winning streak, though. 

Their next opponents, No. 11 Texas (14-1) come to Starkville red-hot. They have won 14 straight and average nearly eight runs per game. Their only loss came in a 4-3 extra-inning defeat to Louisville in their first game of the season. They responded by beating Ole Miss 10-0 and No. 17 Oklahoma State 14-8. 

The Longhorns batting .310 as a team, led by Ethan Mendoza, who has an average of .423 with four home runs and 14 RBIs. 

The series this weekend will be the first meeting between the two programs since the Bulldogs’ 4-3 victory in the 2021 College World Series on the way to winning the national championship. That’s the level both programs aspire to as the Bulldogs officially welcome the Longhorns into the SEC. 

“You’ve got to go out and perform,” he said when asked how to keep the momentum going. “You gotta earn it in the SEC. It’s one game at a time. We get 30 of them and then we have to go out and compete our tails off. I like our group. The league is so competitive, everybody is good.  It’s about going out there and playing great baseball.”  

The Bulldogs and Longhorns meet in Game 1 of the three-game series at 6 p.m. today at Dudy Noble Field. The game will be streamed on SEC Network + via the ESPN app.