Mississippi State banishes its ghosts with championship
OMAHA, Neb. — Will Bednar and Landon Sims combined on a onehitter, Mississippi State scored early and built on its lead, and the Bulldogs won their first national championship with a 90 victory over Vanderbilt in the deciding third game of the College World Series finals Wednesday night.
Bednar, working on three days’ rest, walked three of his first five batters before retiring 15 in a row. He turned the game over to the Bulldogs’ star closer to start the seventh, and Vandy broke up the nohitter when Carter Young singled into center field with one out in the eighth.
It was the first onehitter at the CWS since 2014, and it seemed as though the whole city of Starkville, Miss., was at TD Ameritrade Park to witness it.
When third baseman Kamren James threw to first for the final out, the Bulldogs’ dugout emptied and about 100 fans jumped out of the stands to celebrate as Josh Hatcher waved a national championship flag.
“You lose the first game of the series and you know how bad our community and school wants this trophy,” said Bulldogs head coach Chris Lemonis. “When you’re going to do something legendary, it’s going to be tough. The reason we are champions is because we have a tough, resilient group. It’s been built over time.”
Bednar (91), whose 15 strikeouts in his Omaha debut against Texas on June 20 were the most here in 25 years, fanned four against Vandy (4918) and was named the CWS Most Outstanding Player.
The national championship is the first in a team sport for Mississippi State (5018) and it came in its 12th CWS appearance.
Tanner and Clark homered in the fourrun seventh inning to put the game out of reach against a Vanderbilt offense that managed just seven hits and three runs over the last 25 innings of the finals.
“We didn’t play our best baseball toward the end,” Vanderbilt coach Tim Corbin said. “Getting through regionals was emotional, getting through the super regional was emotional, and this wasn’t easy here.”
Mississippi State knocked out
Kumar Rocker (144) in the fifth. The projected top10 draft pick left down 50 in his final appearance for Vanderbilt.
“He’s meant so much to our program, so much to college baseball, so much to the SEC,” Corbin said.
Vanderbilt made six errors in the second and third games of the finals and 13 in seven CWS games. The Bulldogs were errorfree in seven games.
Vanderbilt won the opener 82 after scoring seven runs in the first inning, but did little the rest of the series. Mississippi State won 132 in Game 2 and then, thanks to Bednar, was able to coast to its titleclinching win.
It was 36 years in the making, since the still talkedabout 1985 Bulldogs with future major league greats Will Clark and Rafael Palmeiro became one of the best teams to not win a CWS.
The ’85 team won two games in Omaha, then lost two in a row and was gone. The next four MSU teams to make the CWS won no more than one game. The 2013 Bulldogs got to the finals but were swept by UCLA, scoring one run in two games.
“All the former players own a part of this,” Lemonis said.