STARKVILLE — Mississippi State played like a team that had nothing to lose and a whole lot to gain. And the Bulldogs might have played their way back into the NCAA Tournament field because of it.
In its first Southeastern Conference series under interim head coach Justin Parker, MSU played clean, crisp defense most of the time, came up with timely hits and productive outs and got excellent performances out of the bullpen. It added up to a three-game sweep over Kentucky at Dudy Noble Field.
“When you’re coaching 18, 19, 20-year-old kids, for better or for worse, they’re very impressionable. They’re very impulsive,” Parker said. “There have been a lot of times this year where we haven’t played great, but as quick as you can turn it around, we’re able to flip it and have a really good week here.”
Bullpen back on track after back-to-back rough weekends
The Bulldogs’ top relievers shouldered a lot of the blame for series losses to Florida and Auburn that immediately preceded the firing of head coach Chris Lemonis. MSU (29-19, 10-14 SEC) squeezed every last drop out of Pico Kohn in his start to open Saturday’s doubleheader, and the ace exited after 5 ⅔ innings and 112 pitches. Ben Davis needed just 16 pitches in 1 ⅓ innings of relief, shutting the door on a 14-4, run-rule win.
After Evan Siary struggled in Saturday’s nightcap to the tune of five earned runs in 3 ⅓ innings, the bullpen held the Wildcats (25-20, 10-14) scoreless over the next 7 ⅔ frames. Stone Simmons worked out of a jam Siary created in the fourth, then handed the ball to freshman Ryan McPherson, who did not allow a hit in three shutout innings.
Nate Williams took over in the eighth, and he proved his issues from the past two weeks were behind him with 3 ⅓ innings of one-hit ball, striking out five and issuing just one walk. He helped carry the game into extra innings, where Luke Dotson stranded two inherited runners from Williams in the 11th and earned the win when Joe Powell hit a walk-off single in the bottom of the inning to give the Bulldogs a 6-5 victory.
“The bullpen has been up and down all year, but we know every time Coach Parker brings us in the game, he believes in us for that moment,” Dotson said. “We’ve worked hard for the moment that he gives us. Every time we go out there, we try to do the same thing. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but our training will pay off.”
Parker pulled Karson Ligon after three-plus innings Sunday, citing a lack of fastball command, but Davis was sharp in three innings of relief, and then Dane Burns pitched into and out of trouble in the seventh. Dotson took over from there, holding the Wildcats scoreless for the last two innings of a 6-1 win.
“We had a great bullpen all fall. We felt like it was the strength of our team,” Parker said. “We had a great bullpen the first three-quarters of the way we’ve played so far. You don’t just overnight lose your bullpen. There’s good arms in there, there’s good competitors, there’s really good stuff. It was just a matter of going back out there and believing in it and competing.”
Chance, Powell lead way on offense and defense
Outfielder Bryce Chance received well-deserved standing ovations twice coming off the field after the third out. In the fifth inning of the series opener, Chance ranged into the left-center gap and made a sliding catch that probably saved two runs and kept MSU in the lead. In the first inning Sunday, Chance robbed James McCoy of a two-run home run.
And that catch was not even the Bulldogs’ best of the weekend. Michael O’Brien replaced Chance in center field in the ninth Sunday, and the first batter of the inning, Devin Burkes, hit a deep fly ball that would have left the yard had O’Brien not leaped over the top of the wall to bring it back.
At the plate, Chance had three hits in the first game of the weekend including two RBI singles, helping MSU pull away with eight runs in the sixth. He hit a leadoff double in the 11th inning Saturday night, then scored the winning run on Powell’s single. And in four plate appearances in the finale, he walked, bunted for a single and drove in the Bulldogs’ final run with a sacrifice fly.
“It’s a base-hit bunt, it’s a stolen base, it’s taking away a hit, it’s throwing a guy out at second,” Parker said. “It’s working a walk. It’s driving in a run with two outs. He’s a guy who is poised right now and playing well, and he’s impacting the entire game.”
Powell, in addition to his game-winning hit in the middle game, threw out a base stealer Sunday and was 3-for-3 with a homer and two doubles in the first game of the weekend. He helped MSU extend the lead in the sixth Sunday with a two-run single while catching all 27 innings over a period of roughly 24 hours.
Hunter Hines, Sawyer Reeves and Gehrig Frei all homered in Saturday’s second game, and the offense as a whole has averaged 9.1 runs over its last eight conference games.
“It’s not a completely different club. There’s not a whole lot of different moves being made,” Parker said. “We’re fairly consistent as a (coaching) staff. It was just guys believing in themselves, getting a little bit of a wake-up call and responding to it.”
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