For eight weeks, Missouri was threatening to do the seemingly impossible by losing every game in Southeastern Conference play. But the Tigers have started to find a winning formula just in time to welcome Mississippi State to Columbia for the final series of the regular season.
Missouri (16-35, 3-24 SEC) is coming off its best weekend of the year by far, sweeping Texas A&M on the road. The Tigers scored six runs in the ninth inning for a 9-6 win in the series opener, then allowed just one run in each of the next two games, completing the sweep with a 10-1 victory on Sunday.
Better Bulldogs teams than this one have had trouble beating Missouri. The 2021 eventual national champions lost two of three at home to the Tigers in mid-May, preventing MSU from winning the SEC title. Missouri won another series against the Bulldogs the following year, and last season, the Tigers, who had by far the worst RPI in the SEC, salvaged the series finale in Starkville and perhaps stopped MSU from hosting an NCAA regional.
The RPI gap this year between Missouri and the rest of the SEC is even wider. The conference has the top five teams in the latest RPI rankings and seven of the top eight, and even South Carolina and Texas A&M are at 59 and 71, respectively. And then there are the Tigers, all the way down at No. 133.
That makes a series win for the Bulldogs all the more imperative. MSU has climbed up to No. 32 in the RPI and is in good shape to make the NCAA Tournament, but if the Bulldogs accrue a couple of bad losses at Taylor Stadium, they would need to make up for them with a deep run at next week’s SEC Tournament in Hoover, Alabama.
Jackson Lovich is far and away Missouri’s best hitter, slashing .357/.426/.626 with 11 home runs and 48 RBI in 47 games. Pierre Seals, Kaden Peer and Cayden Nicoletto have all been solid, but the lineup as a whole has just a .684 OPS in conference play. And prior to last weekend, the pitching had been absolutely disastrous.
The Tigers have a team ERA of 8.82, and in SEC play it is an even worse 10.76. Their overall ERA is 280th among 299 Division I teams. Missouri’s only consistently reliable starter is Will Libbert, who earned the win Sunday in College Station with five innings of one-run ball. The staff has allowed 87 home runs and has a .308 opponents’ batting average.
With all that said, the Tigers are showing signs of turning things around. They held Georgia’s powerful offense mostly in check over the last two games of the series in Athens, then took care of business against Texas A&M. Missouri could even leap in front of South Carolina to avoid finishing last in the regular-season standings.
MSU will need to jump out to big leads early and continue to rely on its top bullpen arms, especially after Tuesday’s midweek game against North Alabama was canceled. The Bulldogs have to get ace Pico Kohn back on track before the postseason and hope Evan Siary and Karson Ligon can remain in good form after their starts last weekend against Ole Miss.
“They have a very unique setup (at Missouri), and I feel like at times it can be one of the best home-field advantages in the league,” MSU interim head coach Justin Parker said. “They will have our full attention. We have incredible respect for everybody in this league. It’s so hard to get them.”
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