STARKVILLE — Fa Leilua knew what was coming.
When the Mississippi State first baseman stepped to the plate in the seventh inning of Sunday’s game against Western Kentucky at Nusz Park, she was 0 for 3 on the day. The Hilltoppers had just walked senior catcher Mia Davidson with one out and a 5-4 lead, opting to deal with Leilua instead.
“I was hyped,” she said. “I just love being doubted. My whole life, I’ve been doubted.”
Leilua worked a full count against WKU starter Kelsey Aikey, still in the circle with hopes of finishing a complete game. She waited on an offspeed delivery and crushed it to left field.
Then, there was no doubt.
Leilua’s two-run walk-off home run — her second game-ending homer in as many days — gave Mississippi State (13-5) a 5-4 comeback win over Western Kentucky (9-3) in Sunday’s Bulldog Invitational championship game in Starkville.
The graduate student tossed her bat end over end, directed her screams of excitement into a silent visitors’ dugout on her way to first base and jogged slowly around the diamond. Mobbed by throngs of teammates as soon as she touched home plate, Leilua had come through again to deliver the Bulldogs a dramatic victory.
“Turning that around in huge moments like that was definitely like the world lifted off my shoulders,” she said.
Just 22 hours prior, she had done the same. Leilua ended Saturday night’s semifinal against Alcorn State by leading off the bottom of the eighth inning with a solo shot in nearly the same place. And once again, she capped a late MSU rally as the Bulldogs finished their final nonconference tournament with a 5-0 record.
Leilua’s homer followed an important two-run shot in the sixth by junior outfielder Anna Kate Segars, who got the pitch she was hoping to see from Aikey and took it over the fence in right field, near the foul pole.
“That’s the pitch I was wanting all along, and I just made sure that I didn’t miss it — put a good swing on it so that we’d have a good opportunity of scoring some runs,” Segars said.
She helped the Bulldogs’ offense snap into life in the late innings for what felt like the hundredth time in a season just 18 games old. Mississippi State trailed 4-0 before Davidson singled to score junior outfielder Chloe Malau’ulu from second in the fifth and Segars followed with her blast the next inning.
Bulldogs coach Samantha Ricketts noted that her team wouldn’t have even had the chance to make Sunday’s late comeback without the contributions of senior ace Emily Williams, who was summoned out of the bullpen in the fifth. Williams finished the contest with three hitless innings, striking out six and earning the win for her troubles, and Ricketts said her contributions rivaled Leilua’s game-winning heroics.
“To have Emily Williams come out and just completely shut the door the way she did and keep the momentum in our dugout against a good-hitting team was just as clutch as what Fa did for us there at the end,” Ricketts said.
The Bulldogs did something similar when Annie Willis pitched six scoreless in relief against Alcorn State, although Ricketts noted Mississippi State doesn’t always want to wind up having to rely on its aces to keep deficits manageable.
“We love to be able to bring in our best pitchers with the game on the line at the end of the game and have them be fresh,” Ricketts said. “We can do a little bit better job of getting there without giving up runs early. We have the staff to do it.”
After Williams struck out the side in order in the sixth and pitched a 1-2-3 seventh, Ricketts knew what was coming when Leilua dug into the batter’s box in the seventh with the game dangling precariously from the tip of her bat. The coach had seen her star hitter bury the Braves on Saturday evening and knew she was overdue for a hit on Sunday afternoon.
“I think with Fa, it’s not a matter of if she’s going to do it,” Ricketts said. “It’s when.”
And although the timing of Mississippi State’s second straight last-minute comeback made the Bulldogs check their blood pressure and search for gray hairs before Leilua launched a softball into heliocentric orbit, Segars said the team’s newfound flair for the dramatic is ingrained in its DNA — meaning more moments like Sunday’s final pitch are sure to follow.
“This is Mississippi State softball,” Segars said. “This is what we do. We don’t go away. We continue to fight ’til the very end — ’til there’s no outs left.”
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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