STARKVILLE — Over the last four seasons, South Alabama has become something of a nemesis to the Southeastern Conference.
The Jaguars entered Wednesday night’s game at Nusz Park with wins over South Carolina, Alabama and Arkansas under their belts in addition to four victories against SEC teams between 2021 and 2023, including one over Mississippi State in 2022. But the pitcher responsible for most of those wins, senior Olivia Lackie, did not get the start this time against the Bulldogs.
Instead, South Alabama went with sophomore Tori Miller, who had not started a game all year and came in with just 10 ⅔ innings pitched. On this night, it simply did not matter. Miller tied MSU’s batters in knots for five innings, holding the No. 17 Bulldogs to just one hit, before Lackie finished off the 2-0 Jaguars victory with two hitless frames.
“You can’t hit a changeup pitcher hitting everything in the air,” MSU head coach Samantha Ricketts said. “We didn’t make adjustments. Just a lot of things we talk about all the time that we just couldn’t get away from. Giving up an early lead, and as soon as that happened, you could just feel the pressure we were putting on ourselves. Credit to (Miller), she did a good job of mixing speed and getting underneath our bats.”
Catcher Ella Wesolowski found out about South Alabama’s plans while warming up starting pitcher Josey Marron in the bullpen and told the rest of the team that Miller would start and would mix speeds well. But although the Bulldogs (30-13) drew six walks and struck out just twice against Miller, they kept hitting weak pop flies for unproductive outs.
Meanwhile, the Jaguars (24-15-1) wasted no time taking the lead. Mackenzie Brasher led off with a single and came around to score on two wild pitches, racing home all the way from second base on the second one as Wesolowski was unable to locate the ball.
“I always like to have my pitchers’ backs,” Wesolowski said. “(Marron) has six to nine inches on that drop ball, so it can be a really hard pitch to catch. But that’s on me.”
Miller pitched around MSU’s best hitter, SEC Player of the Year candidate Madisyn Kennedy, walking her three times and opting to go after the rest of the Bulldogs’ lineup. Wesolowski’s leadoff double in the second inning turned out to be MSU’s only hit, with Miller escaping the inning on three fly ball outs. A two-out walk to Kennedy in the fifth put runners at the corners, but Miller got Jessie Blaine to ground out to shortstop to end the threat.
South Alabama doubled its lead in the fourth on a leadoff home run by Gabby Stagner, her 10th long ball of the season. The rest of the Jaguars have hit a total of 10 homers combined.
Aspen Wesley entered the game in the fifth and worked three scoreless innings in relief, but those two runs were more than enough for Miller and Lackie. With two outs and nobody on in the bottom of the seventh, Stagner dropped Nadia Barbary’s infield pop-up, bringing the tying run to the plate in the person of Kennedy. On a 2-2 count, Lackie fired a fastball on the inner half of the plate, and Kennedy never took the bat off her shoulder.
The Bulldogs have the weekend off for their SEC bye week and are back in action next Wednesday at Samford.
“Hopefully (we have) a renewed sense of focus at practice,” Ricketts said. “We need to keep the hitters sharp, the pitchers sharp, so probably a lot of scrimmages, live (at-bats), as game-like as we can possibly get so that we’re not down for six days. I’m excited to see how they attack it after today. One thing about this team, they do respond well and they’re probably just as upset as the coaches are with our performance out there today.”
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