If Mississippi State is to win the Charlottesville Regional, the Bulldogs will have to do it the hard way.
No. 12 seed Virginia took Saturday evening’s back-and-forth winners’ bracket game 5-4, pushing across the winning run in the ninth inning when MSU second baseman Amani Larry could not handle a bouncer up the middle. The Bulldogs will play St. John’s in an elimination game Sunday, and if they win, will have to defeat the Cavaliers twice to advance.
MSU (39-22) had scoring chances aplenty, but was just 4-for-19 with runners on base and 1-for-7 with men in scoring position, stranding nine baserunners in the game. Eric Becker drove in four runs for Virginia (43-15), tying the game with a two-run single in the seventh off Jurrangelo Cijntje, and the Cavaliers capitalized on a leadoff double in the ninth.
Reliever Tyson Hardin, back on the mound for his second inning of work, gave up that leadoff double to slugger Harrison Didawick, then walked Henry Godbout to set up a possible double play. Becker’s ground ball to second was hit too slowly to turn two, putting runners at the corners with one out.
If Larry had fielded Bobby Whalen’s grounder cleanly, he could have started an inning-ending double play, but the ball bounced off his glove and trickled away.
After Becker opened the scoring with a two-run triple in the second, the Bulldogs rallied with two outs in the third. David Mershon and Dakota Jordan each singled, and Hunter Hines — facing Virginia’s best pitcher, left-hander Evan Blanco — turned on the first pitch over the heart of the plate and landed it 444 feet away beyond the center-field fence for a three-run shot that gave the Bulldogs a one-run lead.
Of the lefty slugger’s 15 homers this season, nine have come against southpaws. MSU added another run in the fourth on an infield single from Bryce Chance, who advanced to second on a groundout and scored all the way from there on a pickoff throw that sailed into center field. Chance, Hines and David Mershon all had multi-hit evenings.
Cijntje settled down after giving up those two runs in the second, not giving up another hit until the sixth, but showed signs of fatigue in the seventh. He allowed four runs, all earned, over seven innings on seven hits, striking out five and issuing just one walk on a season-high 107 pitches.
Takeaways
1. MSU’s lineup is so much more complete with Hines producing. The junior first baseman singled in his final at-bat Friday night to snap an 0-for-27 skid, then made good contact on a flyout to center in his first at-bat Saturday before the big fly in the third.
With Mershon and Jordan producing, not to mention Connor Hujsak hitting behind Hines, the Bulldogs can hang with any pitching staff in the country. But Hujsak, a week after providing so many heroics at the Southeastern Conference Tournament, is 0-for-8 so far in the regional.
2. Defense is paramount this time of year. Cijntje, drafted in the 18th round in 2022 by the Milwaukee Brewers as a shortstop, showed off his athleticism fielding his position on the mound multiple times Saturday, including when he started a key double play in the sixth. Hines tumbled into the MSU dugout to make an acrobatic catch for the final out in the fifth.
Fielding percentage is not the best way to measure defense, but a year after the Bulldogs were dead last in the SEC in that category, they sit atop the conference this season. On the flip side, if not for Larry’s mishandling of Whalen’s ball in the ninth, MSU and Virginia might still be playing.
3. The Bulldogs will be thin on pitching depth going forward. MSU could not have asked for much more out of its top two starters, getting a combined 15 innings from Khal Stephen and Cijntje. But tasked with winning three games in two days, the Bulldogs will need all hands on deck.
Brooks Auger, coming off a dazzling performance against Ole Miss in the opening game of the SEC Tournament, will start Sunday against the Red Storm, and Pico Kohn would presumably start Sunday evening against the Cavaliers should MSU win. After that, it would likely be a bullpen game Monday if the Bulldogs get that far.
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