Bulldogs win series over Rebels
All year long, Mississippi State has made mistakes and missed opportunities that have come back to haunt them and cost them wins.
On Saturday, that was looking like it would rear its ugly head once again. Leading 6-4 in the ninth inning with an out, Pico Kohn surrendered a two-run home run from Jacob Gonzalez to tie things up. The momentum and history this season had the Bulldogs trending towards a loss.
“Nothing here is easy,” MSU head baseball coach Chris Lemonis said. “Playing these guys is never easy. We've been challenging our guys about being tough and competing. They couldn't have done a better job tonight.
These guys are invested. We've had trials and tribulations, but they keep fighting through it.”
KC Hunt trotted out of the bullpen for the second-straight night and settled the team back in. His relief effort into extra innings and a big solo home run from Brad Cumbest helped the Bulldogs to a very important 7-6 win over the Ole Miss Rebels to take the series.
Hunt's relief appearance was the key for MSU (24-17, 8-10 SEC) as he followed up a 50-pitch performance on Friday night to close the game with 2.2 perfect innings. He struck out two batters.
“I felt good,” Hunt said. “I knew I wanted to go back out there after (Friday). I wanted to put it on the line for the boys. I just thought ‘keep us right here.' I knew that we were going to score and if we scored, we were going to win.”
The offense struggled against Ole Miss relief pitching, but Hunt's work meant that the Bulldogs needed just one big hit. After being shut down by the bullpen over the course of four-straight innings, Cumbest obliged.
Cumbest got a slider that he took out to left field for a solo home run to give the Bulldogs the lead back. It was a huge weekend for Cumbest, who finished with a 7-for-13 series and hit two home runs and two doubles. The win over the hated rival was all that mattered.
“Words can't describe what this means for this team,” Cumbest said. “The way we competed last weekend and carried it over to this weekend, it's something we need to carry over weekend to weekend. I grew up hating these guys. This is awesome. It's the story of every Mississippi kid's life.”
It still was unnecessarily uneasy for MSU, but it's what the team has grown accustomed to feeling. With Ole Miss teetering most of the game, the Bulldogs could never land the knockout blow.
MSU lived on the bases against starter Derek Diamond but had just one run to show for it in the first four innings. The Bulldogs finally broke through thanks to a three-run home run from Hunter Hines that sent Diamond packing.
The Ole Miss bullpen settled in at that point. Having tightened it up a bit on a home run from Justin Bench in the fifth inning, the Rebels saw it pushed back
out with a two-run homer from RJ Yeager, but Ole Miss' bullpen wouldn't give up much of anything after that.
That was until Brandon Johnson's pitch to Cumbest landed in the lawn chairs in left field. State needed just one run during the last five innings in which they struck out 11 times. MSU struck out 17 total times in the game but also put 17 players on the bases. Despite stranding 13, the Bulldogs found a way.
In the win, four different players had two hits. Yeager, Logan Tanner, Hines and Cumbest were the multi-hit batters. State had three home runs in the game and eight on the weekend.
The big story was MSU's pitching staff. The Bulldogs got three solid starts again during the weekend and also some good relief effort. On Saturday, the home run that Kohn surrendered was the only damage done as he, Jackson Fristoe and Hunt combined to pitch 5.2 innings, surrender three hits, two runs, one walk and strike out six.
The series win was a large one for an MSU team that was at a crossroads with the Rebels. Both teams have been at the bottom of the Southeastern Conference West and the loser was going to face the prospects of not making the postseason. The Bulldogs came out on top and won a series against Ole Miss for the sixth-straight time. The last three series in Oxford have seen MSU go 8-1.
The two teams were scheduled to meet again on Tuesday night in Pearl. That result will be included in Saturday's Daily Times Leader.
Mississippi State 10, Ole Miss 7
Friday was a must win for Mississippi State against Ole Miss and the Bulldogs had their backs against the wall midway through it.
After giving up threestraight home runs to start the bottom of the first and another in the second, Preston Johnson slowed the game down. That allowed State's bats to come alive and the Bulldogs made it happen getting the lead, building it and holding on tight late for the win to even the series.
“I think we just competed at a high level,” Lemonis said. “We weren't perfect. The game goes to Preston Johnson. A lot of kids tuck it and run at that point. They come out of the game and somebody else pitches. I spoke to him after the first and told him, ‘hey man, you're the old guy. Show them how it's done.' He settled in and got his slider going and competed.”
Much like Thursday night's game, home runs were king in this one. The Rebels scored all four of their runs on Thursday on home runs and the Bulldogs hit two solo shots for both of their runs as well. Ole Miss put on the show early.
On the first pitch of the game, Johnson gave up a home run to Justin Bench. On the second, he gave up a shot to Jacob Gonzalez. Two pitches later the third home run came from Tim Elko and it was 3-1 just like that as the Rebels followed up a solo shot from MSU's Luke Hancock in the first with back-to-back-to-back before Johnson could even get an out.
The fourth home run of the day from Ole Miss came to lead off the second inning with Peyton Chatagnier and it was quickly 4-1 in favor of the Rebels, but Johnson gave the Bulldogs a chance to make something happen and though the big hits weren't coming, they would.
After leaving eight runners on base in the first five innings, State's offense came alive. Cumbest and Jess Davis doubled in the sixth to score a run and RJ Yeager got an RBI single on a 1-2 count with two outs closing the lead to 4-3.
As Kohn entered in the bottom of the frame, he might have had the inning of the night for the Bulldogs. State needed a shutdown inning to keep the momentum and Kohn was facing first and second with no one out. He got a double play and a fly out to end the frame and let the momentum stay in State's dugout.
Four-straight got hard hits to start the inning and Hines and Kellum Clark had two-run home runs each to put a dent in the scoreboard and turn a deficit into a 7-4 lead. It was more of the same in the eighth inning as the first three batters reached and Cumbest doubled again to score a run. A Davis groundout and two-out double from Lane Forsythe extended the lead to 10-4.
“We just kept the same approach,” Hines said. “We were trying to put barrels on it and not try to do too much. We hit a lot of balls hard (Thursday) and they just made some plays on them. We came back out there and did the same thing.”
With a six-run lead, Lemonis decided to turn to one of MSU's best out of the bullpen in Hunt and the inning didn't go as planned. The Rebels had three runs on three hits against Hunt to trim into that lead at 10-7.
Hunt came back out to pitch in the ninth inning with that three-run advantage and it got hairy. A leadoff walk and a twoout hit brought the tying run to the plate. On a 3-2 pitch, Hunt got leadoff man Bench to chop out to third base and preserve the win for the Bulldogs.
State won the slugfest at the plate. The two teams combined for 32 hits and 12 extra base hits. MSU had four home runs, three doubles and 18 hits in the contest to keep the series win on the table. Cumbest had the big night with a 4-for-5 evening at the plate, two doubles and three runs scored.
Hancock and Tanner each had three hits and Tanner reached base five times with a HBP and a walk. Hines was 2-for-5 with two RBI on his home run and Forsythe had two hits and an RBI. Davis drove in a couple of runs.
On the mound, it wasn't always pretty but State did the work in the middle innings to give the team a lift. Johnson came back from giving up four homers and pitched five innings, scattering nine hits, four runs and three walks while striking out eight. He gave up five hits and no runs over the course of his last four innings.
Kohn (2-0) got the win with one hit, two walks and three strikeouts. It was one of his biggest moments of his young Bulldog career.
“I'm really just playing my game,” Kohn said of his performance. “It's just a game, it's just baseball. No game is different than the other for me. My first outing was the most nervous I've been, but after that, it's been up from there.”