STARKVILLE — Samantha Ricketts can’t find the words.
Her team can’t find the offense.
And just two weekends into Southeastern Conference play, the fate of Mississippi State softball’s 2021 season might already be hanging in the balance.
The Bulldogs coach was as hard pressed to come up with the proper verbiage to characterize her team’s struggles at the plate as her hitters were against No. 5 Florida (21-2, 5-1 SEC) in the Bulldogs’ fourth straight shutout loss, an 8-0 run-rule defeat Sunday at Nusz Park.
“I just think there’s a lot of pressing,” Ricketts said. “I don’t know if I really have a word to put with it, because we’re still kind of going through it.”
Mississippi State (15-11, 0-6 SEC) managed just two hits against Gators ace Elizabeth Hightower, who pitched a complete-game shutout Friday and closed out Saturday’s game. The Bulldogs have scored just one run in six conference games and still seek their first SEC win.
“One thing that we talked about was that this conference is tough from top to bottom — it’s a grind,” Ricketts said. “You don’t get a game off or a weekend off.”
This weekend in Starkville, Florida showed Mississippi State that it can’t even afford to take a single half-inning off. The Gators piled up nine runs in the top of the seventh inning to turn Saturday’s game into a rout, and they did the same Sunday with six runs in the fourth. Two bases-loaded walks, two singles and an error pushed Florida’s lead from 2-0 to 8-0.
“That’s a top-five team for a reason, and when you’re giving them four outs an inning, they’re going to make you pay for it,” Ricketts said.
Once again, the Bulldogs had watched their opponents put up their biggest offensive frame of the game immediately after Mississippi State missed its own opportunity. Three straight Dawgs made outs after sophomore center fielder Brylie St. Clair ripped a single into center and fifth-year senior right fielder Christian Quinn reached on an error to open the bottom of the third.
Then Florida turned a 2-0 game into a blowout, and Mississippi State couldn’t respond.
After graduate first baseman Fa Leilua walked to lead off the bottom of the fourth, the next six Bulldogs went down in order to give the Gators a run-rule victory in five innings. It extended Mississippi State’s scoreless streak to 34 innings — the team hasn’t plated a single run since the very first inning of their March 14 game at Ole Miss. That series, too, ended with an 8-0 run-rule contest the following day.
Still, the Bulldogs have had their chances. They stranded four runners Sunday, six Saturday and seven in Friday’s 1-0 loss. Ricketts said even a single hit could begin to turn things, though her players must be able to stay in games regardless.
“I think that one big hit is just going to be a little bit of a sigh of relief, but we also talked about not being tied to the results: Can we be OK without getting the hit and stick to our plan?” she said.
The Bulldogs will soon find out as the SEC grind continues next weekend at No. 17 Arkansas. A home midweek game with Central Arkansas looms first at 4 p.m. Tuesday as Mississippi State hopes to snap its six-game losing streak.
“I know it’s very hard to stay positive these first two weekends, but we’re going to have to find a way to right the ship a little bit because we’ve still got a lot of games ahead of us,” Ricketts said.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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