COLLEGE STATION, Texas – After hammering Texas A&M with 13 runs in Game 1 victory on Thursday, Mississippi State’s baseball looked like it was in prime condition to leave College Station with one last SEC victory to close out the regular season.
Instead, it was the No. 13 Bulldogs (39-16, 16-14 SEC) who found themselves on the losing end of the final two games as the team tried to keep up the offense of the No. 10 Aggies (39-13, 18-11 SEC) in back-to-back narrow losses. MSU traded blows with the Aggies all game on Friday in a 11-9 loss. State hit four home runs on 12 hits and Texas A&M belted three on 16 hits. The Aggies plated two runs in each of the first two innings and then added four in the third to pull ahead early. Trailing 8-5, State got within one run of a tied game after it scored two more runs in the fourth, but A&M responded with two runs in the fifth and one last run in the sixth. Noah Sullivan delivered a two-run blast in the sixth for State, but the comeback dried up from there.
The series came down to Saturday’s finale in another slugfest that went the Aggies way. The Bulldogs piled on 11 hits and three more homers but it wasn’t enough in a 7-6 loss. Again, A&M pulled ahead early with a 3-1 after the fourth inning, but Ace Reese and Sullivan each went long for three runs to quickly nab the 4-3 lead. The Bulldogs gave up two runs in the seventh but added them back in the top of the eighth on a two-run shot by Jacob Parker to reclaim the lead and left the squad only needing three more outs to clinch the series. In the bottom of the eighth, Texas A&M got a single by Bear Harrison for what became the two-game winning runs.
Now the Bulldogs are headed to the SEC Tournament, where they landed as the No. 8 seed with a first-round bye. They’ll play either No. 16 seed Missouri or No. 9 Ole Miss at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday in Hoover, Alabama, and the winner of that game moves on to play No. 1 seed Georgia in the quarterfinals.
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