MSU will face Texas Tech Mississippi State Softball junior pitcher Delainey Everett hadn’t pitched more than three innings before the Bulldogs’ do-or-die game against Oklahoma (52-10) Sunday.
Everett had tallied just 13.1 total innings all season before Game 3 of the Norman Super Regional, but with history and State’s season on the line, Everett never left the circle. She dominated the nation’s second-best scoring offense, pitching all seven innings and clinching MSU’s (43-19) first ever Women’s College World Series appearance in a 6-0 defeat of the Sooners.
“This is literally everything we have worked for,” an out-of-breath Everett said on the ESPN broadcast. “This team is built for May, we got all the weapons that we need. We’re just rolling right now.”
Everett’s father, Brandon, died unexpectedly in January of 2025, and she said, on the day she had her career best outing, it was her mother and father’s anniversary.
“This was for them,” Everett said.
Everett allowed just three hits and three walks on 91 pitches. She kept the ball in the park, a feat which many had failed this season. Oklahoma had the second-most home runs in the country this season, and while they put a lot of balls in the air Sunday, none left the yard.
Oklahoma hadn’t been shut out all season. To find the last shutout loss for the Sooners, you’d have to go back to 2019, when the Sooners fell 1-0 in the WCWS against Alabama. Oklahoma had a combined 16 runs in the first game of the super regional.
The Bulldogs were just as excellent offensively. MSU recorded nine hits against three different Sooner pitchers. Freshman outfielder Kinley Keller led the Bulldogs in RBI with three. Senior outfielder Morgan Bernardini followed with two RBI and sophomore Paige Ernstes had one.
Keller started the scoring in the first inning with a one-out single that scored two. She put State on the board again in the third with an infield single to put the Bulldogs up 3-0.
Ernstes put State up 4-0 with a solo shot to left field in the fourth inning. With some life left in the packed Love’s Field, Bernardini quieted the Sooner crowd with a two-run homer to left in the fifth.
State’s historic win ended a historic run from the Sooners. Oklahoma, the eight-time national champion and former home of State Head Coach Samantha Ricketts, had not missed the WCWS since 2015. The Bulldogs handed Oklahoma its first loss in a Super Regional since 2015 in its comeback 11-9 win in Game 1 Friday. Mississippi State’s 6-0 lead on Bernardini’s home run marked the largest deficit Oklahoma had faced in five seasons, according to the ESPN Broadcast.
According to the broadcast, MSU is the first team to ever reach the WCWS by beating Oklahoma.
MSU will face Texas Tech at 11 a.m. Friday in the Bulldogs’ inaugural WCWS game. The game will be broadcast on ESPN.
Jake is the Mississippi State athletics reporter for The Dispatch.
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