STARKVILLE — It didn’t take Aquana Brownlee long to make amends.
After a ground ball from Abilene Christian’s Catrin Hoffman skirted past her glove for a two-out RBI double in the top of the third inning, the Mississippi State first baseman had a ready answer.
Brownlee socked a solo home run to left center field in the bottom of the third, tying the score and setting the stage for a Bulldogs surge.
“It seems to always work that way that if you make a big error you’re going to come up the next inning, so it was really glad to see her maturity to get a big hit for us there,” Mississippi State coach Samantha Ricketts said.
Pitcher Matalasi Faapito and freshman Nadia Barbary went back to back in the fourth inning, putting MSU (14-4) in the lead for good in a 6-1 win over ACU (4-13).
The Bulldogs won both of their games on the first day of The Snowman (Alex Wilcox Memorial) tournament. The event spreads awareness of ovarian cancer, the disease that claimed the life of former MSU player Alex Wilcox after one season with the team in 2018.
For the first season since then, no Bulldog on the active roster shared a dugout with Wilcox in Starkville, but her memory lives on.
Mississippi State handed out symptom cards with the other three teams in the tournament, flashed facts about ovarian cancer on the left-field scoreboard and flew a teal flag with the slogan “No One Fights Alone” behind the center-field wall.
“It’s something her family talks about a lot: if by sharing her story we can save one more young woman by detecting the signs early, then it’s worth it,” Ricketts said. “We’re going to do our part.”
Against ACU, the Bulldogs didn’t allow a single run after Hoffman’s third-inning double.
Faapito earned the win in the circle with four innings of one-run ball, and Aspen Wesley pitched three innings of relief.
For the fifth time in 22 pitching appearances for MSU, Faapito also hit a home run.
“I knew that if I had confidence in the circle and I was doing well in the circle that I could bring that to hitting,” she said.
Saleyna Daniel added an RBI single in the fifth, and Barbary drove in her second run with a sac fly.
Paige Cook capped the scoring with an RBI triple in the sixth inning.
Mississippi State 7, Dartmouth 1
In the Bulldogs’ first game Friday, Dartmouth’s first hit came off MSU freshman pitcher Josey Marron. Literally.
A comebacker by Ashley Frantz that deflected off Marron’s body in the circle gave the Big Green their first hit, but it didn’t come until the sixth inning.
“I actually didn’t even know it was the first hit of the game, but just bouncing back,” Marron said. “I knew my teammates were behind me and had my back. I was smooth sailing still.”
It was the only hit allowed by Marron in her six scoreless innings of work as she lowered her season ERA to 1.06 in a team-high 33 frames.
Mississippi State came just one run short of ending the game early but couldn’t push across an eighth run.
The Big Green broke the shutout against MSU reliever Grace Fagan on a pair of hits and an error in the seventh inning. A double by Kelly Beaupre got Dartmouth on the board.
Chloe Malau’ulu had Mississippi State’s only multihit game, which featured a line-drive, two-run homer to left center field in the bottom of the second.
The blast put the Bulldogs up 5-0 after they set the tone with a three-run first. MSU loaded the bases with nobody out and scored on back-to-back groundouts before Daniel had a two-out RBI single.
Cook had a sac fly for MSU in the fourth, and Brownlee drove in her team-leading 21st run with a single into left field.
Mississippi State will face Murray State at 12:30 p.m. Saturday before a rematch with ACU at 3 p.m.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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