Mississippi State’s softball team rallied for three runs in the bottom of the seventh to walk off Kentucky with a 4-3 win in the first round of the SEC Tournament on Tuesday.
Taylor Troutman delivered the heroics late when she belted a bases-loaded ground ball to first base and reached on a fielding error. Amid the chaos Morgan Stiles, who tied the game up with a two-run double, plated the game-winning run. State’s walkoff was its second-ever in the SEC Tournament and first since a 1998 win over Georgia.
No. 10-seeded State (38-17) got on the board in the first in the third inning during another Wildcat (26-29) fielding error before Kentucky tied the game up in the fourth with a solo homer by Karissa Hamilton. The No. 15-seeded Wildcats grabbed the lead and the momentum in the sixth on another shot by Hamiltion – this time scoring two runs. In the seventh, a single by Kiarra Sells got the Bulldogs back on the bases before Morgan Bernardini reached on a fielding error and Kinley Keller singled to load the bags and set up the comeback.
Peja Goold, who was selected by the Oklahoma City Spark as the No. 10 pick in the second round of the Athletes Unlimited Softball League college draft, started in the circle and held Kentucky to three hits and one earned run with five strikeouts through the first four innings. Alyssa Faircloth came in and got the win and finished with two hits and 2 earned runs allowed.
The win for the No. 19 Bulldogs helps cleanse the sour taste of ending the regular season with an SEC series loss at rival Ole Miss late last week, during which stretches of top-notch pitching couldn’t overcome its stagnant offense.
Faircloth helped deliver Bulldogs a 1-0 victory with an impressive outing in Thursday’s Game 1 against the Rebels. She allowed only two baserunners and one hit during the shutout and piled up 14 strikeouts to keep the Rebels (32-23, 6-18) off the board.
“I mean, just a phenomenal game by Alyssa,” head coach Samantha Ricketts said. “She just does what we know she can do, and she looked confident and poised and attacked. She wanted the ball. I just loved the composure out of her, the way she attacked the zone, mixed speeds, kept them off balance and just really kept the momentum in our dugout the whole game.”
MSU piled on six hits and took the lead in the second inning on a solo homer by Sells and that was all it needed to take a 1-0 lead in the series. The second game went down to the wire on Friday as the teams traded blows all the way to the final inning. Xiane Romero belted a solo homer in the top of the seventh to tie the game at 2-2, but in the bottom half, Ole Miss’ Kennedy Bunker responded with a solo shot of her own for the walk-off series-tying 3-2 win.
The series came down to Saturday’s Game 3 in which the Rebels returned the shutout favor and blanked the Bulldogs, 3-0. Both teams pitched six straight scoreless innings but the Rebels’ Rachel Connors broke the silence with a walk-off three-run blast in the bottom of the seventh. Faircloth worked the entire game and finished with seven strikeouts and just one walk but gave up five hits. MSU was held to just three hits by Emilee Boyer, who walked three and fanned three.
“Alyssa just continues to give us a chance. Another great outing from her, just one missed pitch,” Ricketts said. “But, you know, we have to find a way to produce. You can get some runs on the board, and it’s going to have to happen soon. I think we have to show some fight, get some grit, and going into (the) postseason we’ve got to get something rolling here in the next couple days.”
Yesterday’s victory in the tournament sends the Bulldogs to a second-round match against No. 7 seed Arkansas, which had a first-round bye.
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