The Bulldogs (11-2) lost for the second game in a row to another Top-10 opponent, this time to Southern Miss. The Golden Eagles came in ranked No. 10 in the latest D1Baseball poll, and look set to move up again after a 7-6 home win over No. 4 MSU on Tuesday, which saw both teams test their young bullpens and veteran bats in a fight to the finish.
The Bulldogs had to go to their bullpen a bit sooner than O’Connor had hoped after starter Brendan Sweeney got off to a rough start. He gave up four runs, three earned runs, from three hits in 1.2 innings before Jack Gleason came out to steady the ship.
“Tough, hard-fought game. Southern Miss has a really good ball club,” MSU head coach Brian O’Connor said on the postgame radio show. “They jumped us there in the first, and Sweeney just didn’t look himself tonight. His velocity was down for some reason, but again, really proud of our club. We were down 5-0, came storming back to make it 5-3, and then took the lead, and just couldn’t hold them in the seventh inning with the young freshman out there. Proud of the fight of our guys, we just have to do a better job in the early part of the game.”
There would be seven total Bulldogs on the mound over the course of the game, going against nine arms from the Golden Eagles as part of their plan for the bullpen game.
No one from USM pitched more than 1.2 innings, with each of the first three frames going according to plan for the hosts. The Bulldogs managed just two hits in the first four frames of action before waking up with a three-run showing in the fifth inning.
They would rally again in the seventh inning to take a 6-5 lead before surrendering two runs in the bottom half. There might have been more left on the field in the final innings, but it was the slow start that stuck out to the coaches.
“We had too many strikeouts in the first four innings of the game,” O’Connor said. “The middle, the back part, I thought our competitive spirit was really good, and we showed a lot of poise, but we need to be better in that first half.”
Missed opportunity
With the lead came the pressure of facing the heart of the USM batting order in the seventh inning, a task handed to freshman Maddox Miller. The Hattiesburg native showed the right stuff to have a strong homecoming performance, but luck wasn’t on MSU’s side.
Twice in the seventh inning, Miller got batters to strike out swinging with runners in scoring position. On both occasions, the low pitches snuck past catcher Andrew Raymond and back to the wall behind the plate, allowing the batters to reach and the runners to score on wild pitches.
For a bullpen game on short rest, the game in Hattiesburg was an opportunity to test the depth of MSU’s pitching staff. O’Connor and pitching coach Justin Parker have gotten a look at several young arms who they hope can establish themselves ahead of SEC play, and being thrown into fire against Top-10 opposition in back-to-back games gave them even more reps to dish out.
“We’re going to need a lot of guys on the mound,” O’Connor said. “We got a look at a few guys this weekend in Arlington. Coach Parker and I met on that long bus ride and talked about how much we’re going to need Parker Rhodes and Dane Burns in his role. It was good to have Charlie Foster out there, and we’ll build off that… Maddox Webb came in there in a situation with no outs, runner at first and managed it through the best part of their lineup. We need to continue to run those guys out there to give them experience and see for sure what we’ve got.”
Schedule change
MSU announced on Wednesday that the Lipscomb series has moved up to a Thursday start because of a forecast for poor weather this weekend. Game 1 will begin today at 6 p.m., and Games 2 and 3 are TBA with the weather set to arrive on Friday evening.
It means there will be just one day of rest between games again for the Bulldogs, but they’ll be back home after nearly a week on the road.
There were no regrets from the Bulldogs, though, and O’Connor is happy to have had four tests against quality opponents early in the season.
“I’m glad we played here tonight rather than playing at home after a highly competitive weekend in Arlington. To come here to Southern Miss, another really good ball club to play on the road, it gets your attention. It brings the best out of us, and even though this is a loss, and that’s painful for these players. We’ll grow from this. I thought the last half of the game we showed a lot of poise.”
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