It takes a special pitching performance to completely shut down Mississippi State’s offense, but the Bulldogs never solved LSU freshman Jayden Heavener on Wednesday, and their run in the Southeastern Conference Tournament ended almost as quickly as it began.
Heavener, one of the top recruits in the country for the class of 2024 and the Gatorade Player of the Year in Florida as a high school senior, was in command from start to finish. She allowed just one hit and two baserunners in seven innings as No. 8 seed fell 5-0 to the No. 9 seed Tigers in Athens, Georgia.
The loss effectively ended the Bulldogs’ chances to host an NCAA regional for the first time in program history.
“Big credit to Jayden Heavener. She’s a great pitcher,” head coach Samantha Ricketts said. “We did not do a great job of adjusting to her pitches, really all game long. Against a team like this, a pitcher like that, you have to be disciplined.”
MSU (37-17) went down in order in each of the first three innings against Heavener, who struck out the side in the first. Heavener is good at missing bats, averaging well over a strikeout per inning, but her command has been up and down all year with 72 walks, 24 hit batters and 14 wild pitches in 106 innings entering Wednesday.
In this start, though, she did not issue a single walk, and the Bulldogs’ only free pass came when Sacco was hit by a pitch leading off the fourth inning. By that point, MSU was already in a big hole after LSU (41-13) used small ball to put up four runs in the second.
“(Heavener) has a really good rise ball, really good movement,” said catcher Ella Wesolowski, who had her team’s only hit. “She just caught us all off guard and got us to swing out of our plans.”
Bulldogs ace Raelin Chaffin — pitching against her former team after she spent her first three college seasons in Baton Rouge — issued a hit-by-pitch and a walk to start that second inning, before a single loaded the bases with nobody out. Following a strikeout, Maddox McKee hit a low line drive back to the circle that Chaffin could not handle as the Tigers took the lead on the infield hit.
Chaffin then walked Avery Hodge, the ninth-place hitter in LSU’s lineup, and then with two outs, shortstop Kylee Edwards briefly bobbled a ground ball and was late with her throw to first. Two runs scored on that play, with McKee coming in all the way from second on a ball that never left the infield.
The Tigers added another run in the fourth on a pair of doubles from the bottom third of their batting order. Chaffin went 5 ⅔ innings, allowing five earned runs on seven hits with two walks and seven strikeouts. Delainey Everett gave up two hits in the seventh but kept LSU off the board.
“Really proud of Raelin. She’s just been through a lot, and for us to have her for one season, just so proud of her fight and everything she’s gone through personally,” Ricketts said. “She’s just such a competitor. She wants the ball every time. She’s upset when she doesn’t give us her best stuff, but we know that time and time again, we’re going to choose her and put her out there.”
MSU could not take advantage of the leadoff baserunner in the fourth as Nadia Barbary fouled out, Jessie Blaine took a called third strike and Morgan Stiles, on the 11th pitch of her at-bat, hit a harmless fly ball to center field.
Wesolowski broke up Heavener’s no-hit bid with a two-out single through the right side in the fifth and advanced to second on a passed ball, but was stranded there after a flyout by Riley Hull. That was the Bulldogs’ last baserunner of the day.
The NCAA Tournament bracket will be revealed Sunday evening, and MSU should be comfortably in the field as a regional 2-seed. The only likely hosting site within 400 miles of Starkville — the benchmark the NCAA uses to send teams out by bus rather than by plane — is Florida State, where the Bulldogs won the regional in 2022.
“Overall, (we were) just not really coming out ready to play loose, and that’s always the goal in the postseason and something we’re going to need to make sure we address moving forward,” Ricketts said. “That’s not what our expectation is out there.”
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