Mississippi State Baseball has an opportunity to get the last laugh this weekend.
The Bulldogs are set to face the Georgia Bulldogs in Athens, Georgia, for a super regional weekend with a chance to clinch its first College World Series appearance since 2021. For State, the matchup may resurrect some bad memories from earlier in the season.
MSU went 0-4 against Georgia this season; a three game series sweep at Dudy Noble Field in early April, and a 5-3 loss in the quarterfinals of the SEC tournament. Over the four games, State’s largest margin of defeat was three runs in an 8-5 loss in 10 innings.
“It was a great college baseball series,” MSU head coach Brian O’Connor said of UGA’s regular-season sweep. “We just came out on the wrong end in all three ball games. And there is lessons to be learned from that.”
If moral victories exist, State’s ability to keep it close is something a lot of teams have failed at doing this season. Not including its games against MSU, only seven of UGA’s 30 SEC games ended within two runs. UGA won six of those seven.
Just three, not including MSU’s 10-9 defeat, ended within one run — Georgia won them all. UGA finished the season 23-7 in conference play, and won the SEC regular season and conference tournament.
“You don’t do what they did in the SEC regular season, nobody was even close; they ran away with it,” head coach Brian O’Connor said. “And then to win the SEC tournament… they’re one of the better ball clubs that I’ve seen in a long time.”
When answering the question of what went wrong in State’s four losses against UGA, it’d be easy to look at the stats and rosters of both ball clubs and conclude that Georgia is flat out a better team this season. While that’s true, MSU was so close to pulling a win out in every game against the nation’s top-remaining seed.
Here’s a deeper look at the deciding factors in State’s four losses against Georgia.
One-dimensional baseball
MSU failed to play a complete game on both sides of the ball in its four contests against UGA.
In game one, the offense looked unstoppable, scoring nine runs on 14 hits. But the pitching let the elite offensive showcase down, allowing 10 runs on 10 hits in 10 walks in State’s 10-9 loss.
The very next day, the roles reversed.
Sophomore Tomas Valincius pitched 7.1 innings of four-hit, two-run and 10-strikeout baseball, but the offense couldn’t reciprocate. The Bulldogs left 13 runners on base in the 3-1 loss.
“Their starter, we had him on the ropes, and we didn’t knock him out of the game,” O’Connor said of the 3-1 loss.
The offense got back in the swing of things in the third game of the series, taking an early 3-0 lead. MSU pitched seven guys in the Sunday game, and allowed a UGA four-spot in the fifth and three runs in the top of the 10th to get swept in the regular-season series.
So far this year, State has played one dimensional baseball against UGA, failing to capitalize on offensive outbursts or dominant pitching against the SEC’s top teams.
Getting down early
Playing from behind against one of the nation’s top teams is never ideal.
In half of MSU’s games against Georgia this season, UGA got out to early leads. State went down 9-2 in the first game against UGA, clawing its way back into the game before falling a run short. In the quarterfinals of the SEC tournament, MSU was down 4-1, a hill the Bulldogs couldn’t climb in a 5-3 defeat.
MSU took the first lead in games two and three, but never did enough early to put pressure on the Bulldogs. MSU’s lone run in the second game of the regular season series came in the first inning, but State never capitalized on its influx of baserunners to widen its lead. In the 8-5 game three, State took an early 3-0 lead, but failed to do anything else before four UGA runs in the fifth inning put Georgia in control.
To pull off the upset this weekend, MSU needs to put the pressure on UGA early.
Jake is the Mississippi State athletics reporter for The Dispatch.
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