STARKVILLE – The final nail was the most painful for Mississippi State on Thursday night. After falling behind 10-2 to a prolific Georgia team, the home team Bulldogs didn’t give up. They clawed their way back and put up a pair of runs in the bottom of the ninth with leadoff hitter Aidan Teel up to bat. He connected on a pitch that bounced over to first, and the game was over.
No. 5 Georgia won 10-9 to take Game One of the series and hand No. 4 MSU its first home loss of the season.
“You make your own breaks, and we didn’t make our own breaks tonight,” MSU head coach Brian O’Connor said. “We didn’t execute with runners in scoring position on 0-2, 1-2 counts on the mound. Too many walks and things like that, but from an offensive standpoint, we had 14 hits. We just didn’t make the pitches in the clutch and gave them too many free passes.”
O’Connor had a straightforward approach in his analysis after the game, pointing out the flaws as well as the fact that, despite the early mistakes, there was a lot to be proud of in the performance. The Bulldogs scored four runs on two outs to give themselves a chance in the final three innings while relievers Peyton Fowler and Jack Bauer gave excellent performances out of the bullpen to stoke the flames of hope late in the ballgame.
“I shared with the team, I was proud of them, their fight,” O’Connor continued. “A lot of ball clubs would roll over, and that’s not this club. This is one of 30 games. You’ve got to take it as that, and then you have to turn your attention tomorrow with a chance to even the series. And certainly we’ll need to be better fundamentally tomorrow to come out on top.”
Sloppy Start
MSU’s problem early on wasn’t just keeping up with the Georgia batters, it was handing the visitors runs along the way. Georgia picked up three runs thanks to passed balls at catcher. Two were direct, with runners getting home from third base, while one set up a runner in position to score on a sacrifice flyball after he was at second base.
The first five innings saw five different pitchers take the mound as well, with starter Charlie Foster making it just two innings, Tyler Pitzer another two, and Jack Gleason and Dane Burns struggling to get out of the fifth inning. The Georgia offense made it 10-2 that inning with a wild pitch score and three RBI hits.
“We’ve been showing so much better than that from a pitching and catching standpoint, so that was disappointing to see for sure,” O’Connor said. “The fact that in the first five innings they had scored all their runs. I talked to the team after and shared with them, from a defensive standpoint, you never know which run is going to cost you the game. The four we gave up in the fifth, that was huge. You can overcome single run innings, but a crooked number is difficult to overcome.”
It was a rough night on offense as well. The Bulldog batters stranded 10 runners, seven through the first five innings, and left the bases loaded in the third inning with an opportunity to even the contest early in the game. Instead, it took until the final three innings. They were down by three in the ninth and managed to get a pair of runs home, but leaving it late always ran the risk of heartbreak.
Promising Pitching
Fowler and Bauer seemed unlikely forces to steady the game for MSU down the stretch of the game. When Fowler first came in it looked as though the visitors might run-rule the hosts, but the pair combined to post four zeros on the board after five straight innings of at least one run by the UGA batters.
The freshman southpaw was particularly impressive after coming on in the seventh inning. He faced 11 batters on the night, allowing no runs despite a couple of hits and a loaded bases situation in the ninth, and recorded a pair of strikeouts. He got some help from Chris Billingsley Jr. as well, who came on to record a strikeout with bases loaded in the ninth to set up the final comeback push.
“The bright spot was what we did pitching-wise in the back part of the game,” O’Connor said. “We’ve got to be better behind the plate, it’s got to be cleaner. We’ve got to be technically better than we showed tonight for sure, but proud of those guys.”
The Bulldogs will meet again on Friday in Game Two at 6 p.m.
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