STARKVILLE — It was everything you would have expected when one of the Southeastern Conference’s best baseball teams hosted the league’s last-place club.

One team swung the bats well all afternoon, shut down the opposing offense and made nice plays on defense. The other played catch-up inning after inning, gave up countless big hits and kicked the ball around the diamond.

Of course, it was hard to tell which team was supposed to be which.

No. 3 Mississippi State (36-13, 17-10 SEC) found itself chasing Missouri (14-33, 7-20) all day as the Tigers won 16-8 on Saturday, clinched a series win at Dudy Noble Field and led the Bulldogs to do some soul-searching after a second straight loss to a team they should have handled rather easily.

“They owned the weekend from the get-go,” Mississippi State coach Chris Lemonis said. “They pressured us from the offensive side, and they played good defense. They just outplayed us. It’s frustrating. We’re at this point in the season, playing at home, playing for a lot, and we just didn’t have a good effort.”

Mississippi State came back in the seventh inning to win Thursday’s game 5-4, but the following 18 innings proved the Bulldogs’ uneven game wasn’t exactly an outlier. Right fielder Tanner Allen promised “better baseball” to come after Friday’s 7-6 loss, but it could only be found coming from the first-base visitors’ dugout for most of Saturday’s game.

Against starter Houston Harding, the Tigers looked as good as the gold of their uniforms, striking for a two-run single by Clayton Peterson in the first and a solo home run by Peterson’s twin brother Alex in the second. In the third, pinch-hitter Brandt Belk blew the game open — or so it seemed — with a grand slam off reliever Cade Smith.

But the Bulldogs made a game of it with four runs apiece in the fourth and fifth. Luke Hancock and Logan Tanner blasted back-to-back home runs to lead off the fourth, and Tanner Leggett had a two-run double in the fifth.

Missouri, however, never stopped adding on. The Tigers maintained a two-run lead after Leggett’s two-bagger thanks to another homer by Peterson and a run on a wild pitch in the top of the fifth.

In the seventh, singles by Joshua Day and Luke Mann added two more Tigers runs. A wild pitch scored a run before Luke Mann clocked a three-run homer to right in the ninth.

Meanwhile, Mississippi State’s offense went silent. The Bulldogs stranded a runner in the sixth, seventh and eighth with some help from the Tigers’ defense. Rowdey Jordan was robbed leading off the bottom of the eighth on a diving catch in right-center, one of several fine plays in the field by the visitors.

Mississippi State could hardly claim the same defensive prowess. Harding bobbled a comebacker in the first that extended the inning and allowed for Peterson’s two-run single, Kellum Clark failed to field a single into left, and Lane Forsythe committed two errors on one play in the ninth.

“We didn’t play good enough defense to win this game, so it plays a huge part in our success,” Jordan said. “Monday, we’re going to get back after it. We’re going to keep working, we’re going to get better, and we’re going to clean it up.”

When all was said and done, the Tigers hadn’t just beaten the Bulldogs for the second straight day but had significantly outplayed them in a loss likely to hurt Mississippi State’s case for a national seed. MSU was named one of 20 potential NCAA Regional hosts Friday and should be one of the final 16 barring a similar performance next weekend at Alabama, but the Bulldogs will have to put this weekend far behind them to have a chance at being a top-eight seed and hosting the Super Regional round.

“We’ve got work to do, I would imagine,” Lemonis said, pointing to the hit the Bulldogs’ RPI took this weekend. “We’ve got to win some games is what we’ve got to do.”

Before going on the road to face the Crimson Tide from Thursday to Saturday, Mississippi State will host Jacksonville State at Dudy Noble for a midweek game at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday. By that point, Lemonis hopes to understand why his Bulldogs played so poorly this weekend.

“We kind of just laid an egg, and I’ve got to figure out why,” he said.

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