Mississippi State may be traveling nearly 1,900 miles from Starkville for the NCAA regionals in Palo Alto, California, but the Bulldogs’ head coach will be just a 30-minute drive from her hometown.
Samantha Ricketts grew up in San Jose and starred at powerhouse Archbishop Mitty High School before enjoying a decorated playing career at Oklahoma. The Bulldogs are spending time at Ricketts’ childhood home as they prepare to battle Cal State Fullerton in the opening round Friday.
MSU is the only team in the regional not based in California, but the Bulldogs do have four Californians on the roster. Freshman pitcher Delainey Everett is the only player from Northern California, and although her hometown of Oakdale is more than two hours from Stanford, she will surely still have plenty of friends and family in attendance.
“It’s exciting. I don’t know if I’ve really ever had that in my coaching career,” Ricketts said after the selection show last Sunday. “(Everett) teared up when she heard the news, just to be able to play in front of her family. Just a special moment. I know we’re looking forward to it. It’ll give us kind of a home field advantage, having some extra fans in the stands when we get out there this weekend.”
After arriving in the Bay Area on Wednesday, MSU played tourist for an afternoon and evening in San Francisco, visiting Pier 39 and attending a San Francisco Giants game with tickets courtesy of Will Clark, the former Bulldog baseball standout and later a five-time MLB All-Star with the Giants.
Starting Thursday, though, it’s all business. Now that final exams are done, MSU is solely focused on softball, and the Bulldogs will certainly have the pitching machines cranked up as they get ready to potentially face Stanford ace NiJaree Canady, college softball’s ERA leader and one of the hardest-throwing pitchers in the country.
“Obviously Stanford, they’re led in the (circle) by NiJa Canady, and just being ready for an elite pitcher like that, we’re excited for the challenge,” Ricketts said. “We’re going to go hang out at the Ricketts household and just make sure we’re enjoying the moment and the experience as we go through the week preparing.”
Bulldogs in the postseason, a brief history
MSU is making its 18th NCAA Tournament appearance, all of them since 2000. But the Bulldogs had never advanced past regionals until their most recent postseason run in 2022, when they came out of the losers’ bracket to win four elimination games at the Tallahassee (Florida) Regional and beat No. 2 national seed Florida State twice on Sunday to advance to their first super regional in program history.
Aspen Wesley threw a complete-game two-hit shutout in that first game against the Seminoles, and MSU rallied for three runs in the fifth inning for a 4-3 win in the championship game, taking the lead for good on Chloe Malau’ulu’s two-run single. Annie Willis earned the win with five scoreless innings in relief.
The Bulldogs reached the regional finals in Austin, Texas, in 2005, the first year after the NCAA Tournament adopted its current format, but MSU did not win more than one game in any of its next eight regional appearances. Before breaking through in 2022, the Bulldogs had appeared in three straight regional finals without forcing the “if-necessary” game, falling to Arizona in 2018, Washington in 2019 and Oklahoma State in 2021.
MSU has nine players on the current roster who were part of the 2022 team that upset Florida State before losing to Arizona in the super regionals, and the Bulldogs’ veterans are drawing on that experience heading into this weekend.
“A lot of people were counting us out going into Florida State, and we proved a lot of people wrong,” fifth-year senior outfielder Paige Cook said. “Just knowing that we can do that, especially with the team we have this year, we’re pretty stacked. We have a really good team. Everybody has the confidence. I do think we’re fully capable as long as we carry that confidence and trust ourselves and know all the work we’ve put in to get to this point.”
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