It’s no secret the Mississippi State softball team has been scorching hot in the month of May.

That continued Friday with a well-earned 3-1 win over Boston University in the Bulldogs’ first game of NCAA Regionals in Stillwater, Oklahoma. The Bulldogs used solid pitching and good at-bats to enter the winners’ bracket, and they’ll face overall No. 5 seed Oklahoma State at 1 p.m. Saturday.

The Bulldogs barely settled into the game before they found themselves trailing Friday. The Terriers got two one-out singles in the second to bring up center fielder AJ Huerta-Leipner, who sent a double into left center field, scoring a run. Jen Horita was gunning for the plate to try to stretch BU’s lead, but Bulldogs shortstop Madisyn Kennedy had different plans. Kennedy took the relay throw and sent a bullet to the plate and Mia Davidson applied the tag, keeping the score at 1-0.

“I was really just playing softball, going with it and letting the game play itself,” Kennedy said in a news release from Mississippi State. “In the end, I guess you can say it was (significant), but I was just playing the game as it comes.”

The play at the plate seemed to shift the momentum that BU briefly held. The Bulldogs jumped on the board themselves in the bottom of the second, as Kennedy came up big in the clutch again with a double into the gap in left-center. With the game tied, Mississippi State could settle in and play its game, throw strikes and try to piece together solid at-bats for the next five innings.

Mia Davidson once again came up big in a key spot with a fielder’s choice with the bases loaded to score Chloe Malau’ulu and put MSU up 2-1 in the fifth. The Bulldogs got an insurance run in the bottom of the sixth with a Montana Davidson single up the middle to score Christian Quinn.

Up 3-1, Mississippi State didn’t hesitate to bring on closer Alyssa Loza to shut the door in the top of the seventh. Loza retired the Terriers in order to send MSU to the winners’ bracket.

“I think we did a good job of our preparation early this week,” coach Samantha Ricketts said. “(Boston) is a No. 3 seed in this regional for a reason, so we wanted to make sure we came out one game at a time and one pitch and one inning.”

Mississippi State will now have to face Oklahoma State, the No. 5 national seed. The Cowgirls had no trouble with No. 4 seed Campbell on Friday with a 10-0 run-rule victory. The Cowgirls go into Saturday with 43 wins on the season to only nine losses, one of the best records in the country.

But the Bulldogs will still give their best effort, just as they have down the stretch. Ricketts said the key to success going forward is “to continue with that approach, of doing it together as a team, you know, just focusing on the details and what we can control that’s in front of us.”

With a win, Mississippi State will play in the regional championship game Sunday. With a loss, the Bulldogs would face an elimination game against the winner of Campbell and BU at around 6 p.m. Saturday.

Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.