Ole Miss baseball evens season series, tops Miss. St.
PEARL — Ole Miss baseball evened the score Tuesday.
The Rebels took down in-state rival Mississippi State 5-2 at Trustmark Park on Tuesday, splitting the season series with the Bulldogs after Mississippi State won two of three games in Oxford over the weekend. Before Tuesday, Ole Miss (23-17, 6-12 SEC) hadn’t beaten the Bulldogs (24-18, 8-10) in their Governor’s Cup game since 2015.
“It feels great,” senior first baseman Tim Elko said. “They’ve kind of had our number the last couple of years but it feels good to play well tonight and get that trophy.”
Junior right-hander Drew Mcdaniel impressed for the Rebels, matching a season high with five innings pitched. He allowed two runs, both in the first inning, on two hits and five walks with four strikeouts.
Ole Miss’ offense helped Mcdaniel out with two big innings. The Rebels scored two runs on two hits in the first inning and the thundered ahead with three runs on four hits in the fifth. The middle of the order provided the pop. Senior first baseman Tim Elko drove in three runs and shortstop Jacob Gonzalez and left fielder Kevin Graham each had an RBI on two hits apiece.
The large dimensions of Trustmark Park, home of the Class AA Mississippi Braves, took a number of would-be home runs away from Mississippi State. The Bulldogs slugged eight home runs in the three previous games but flew out to the deep outfield six times Tuesday, including four times in the final four innings.
“Usually I’m a fly-ball pitcher so it was good knowing coming in. I didn’t know the wind would be helping that much, but whenever it did there were a couple of balls that I thought at Swayze maybe had a chance but tonight they didn’t really have a chance,” Mcdaniel said. “It was good knowing that I could just pitch and put the ball in the air and it would stay in.”
Mississippi State brought the tying run to the plate with two outs in the ninth. Kellum Clark drew a two-out walk and stole second, followed by an infield single from Jess Davis, bringing up pinch-hitter Von Seibert. Closer Brandon Johnson struck out Seibert to end the threat and the game.
The back end of Mississippi State’s bullpen shut down the Rebels in the late innings. Cam Tullar and Drew Talley only allowed one base runner with 10 strikeouts in 4 innings.
“I feel better (about the bullpen) after tonight,” Mississippi State coach Chris Lemonis said. “We weren’t throwing Pico (Kohn), K.C. (Hunt) or Jackson (Fristoe) tonight, so we were going full bullpen and those guys did a great job. It’s going to help us down the road.”
Ole Miss baseball returns to action on Friday to start for the first game of a three-game series against Arkansas in Fayetteville. Mississippi State visits Missouri for the first game of a threegame series on Friday.
Contact Nick Suss at 601-408-2674 or nsuss@gannett.com. Follow @nicksuss on Twitter.