Mississippi State Proves It Can Win, Now It Must Prove 'If' That Can Be Sustained

(Mississippi State Athletics photo)

By Colton Watson

It’d been a brutal start to SEC play for Mississippi State.

Whether it’s close defeats, lost leads, or games that got out of hand quickly—not much good had happened for Bulldog baseball on a weekend for the better part of a month. The situation was dire heading into State’s home series against South Carolina last weekend.

On Friday, it looked like another verse of the same song for Mississippi State. An early lead disappearing, consecutive errors resulting in runs for the opposition, failure to produce with runners on base, and a 7-3 loss that left a sour but familiar taste in the mouths of Bulldog coaches, players, and fans.

“We just didn’t step up to the competition,” Mississippi State head baseball coach Chris Lemonis remarked after the loss on Friday.

A desperate State team took the field at high noon Saturday needing a win in a bad way. When the game’s first at bat resulted in Carolina’s Nathan Hall reaching on an error, the collective groan from the fanbase was audible. The shared dread was palpable. They had seen this movie before. When a good throw but a poor tag allowed the runner to reach second with a stolen base, everyone felt that South Carolina would be starting this second game of the series with an early lead.

But that’s not what happened.

State starter Evan Siary buckled down and recorded three outs before Hall could take another base. Mississippi State got back-to-back hits including a two-run deep shot from Noah Sullivan to get the scoring started in the bottom of the first inning. Four more runs followed in the third. When South Carolina mounted a rally to narrow the gap in the fifth, State tacked on in the bottom half.

Siary was more than adequate. Chase Hungate was sparkling out of the pen, throwing the final 4 2/3 innings without giving up a hit or a run. State got five home runs from four different players.

When the barbecue smoke cleared, it was a sound 11-4 victory for the Maroon and White to force a rubber game on Sunday.

Karson Ligon allowed seven earned runs and lasted just two outs, not innings, in his last start for Mississippi State at LSU. Alex Box was a house of horrors in the last game of their three-game series, where they fell victim to a sweep at the hands of the Tigers.

Many amongst the Mississippi State peanut gallery were ready to call it a career for Ligon. He wasn’t an SEC pitcher. He doesn’t have what it takes. When Ligon was announced again as the Sunday starter for Mississippi State last Thursday, the reception to the news was less than warm, for both the transfer from Miami and the coaching staff with already a track record for pitching refinement.

But Ligon turned the heat up on the mound Sunday afternoon. After allowing a hit on the first pitch of the game, he went on to retire the next nine in a row. Ligon faced two hitters above the minimum in his scoreless six innings, striking out eight, walking one, and allowing no more hits after that game-opening single. Certainly his best ever outing as a Bulldog, maybe in his entire college career.

Stone Simmons followed that up by retiring the last nine in a row without allowing a Gamecock to reach, although a base hit ended the game when LF Blake Jackson doubled in the top of the ninth but was tagged out after he over-slid second base. It may be the only time a team mustered only two hits on the very first and last pitches of a baseball game, and one of the few times a losing team recorded a hit to end the game.

State exploded earlier in the fourth inning to take a 5-0 lead, expanded it to 6-0 in the fifth inning, and coasted the rest of the way to a much-needed series victory.

Improving to 3-9 in SEC play, the Bulldogs are far from out of the woods yet. South Carolina was also 1-8 in SEC play heading into the weekend, yet still managed to take a game from State. A series win at home against a team you’re fighting against to stay out of last place doesn’t exactly fix your problems.

State still had multiple errors in two of the three games. Lemonis’s job security is still up in the air. The dissension amongst the fanbase may be paused for now, but it will return en force at the first sign of trouble against either UAB or Alabama this week. One SEC series win is not enough to claim that State has turned things around in what has been an underwhelming season thus far. And frankly, those who dismiss as foolish the idea of a mid-season change would still acknowledge the possibility of one at season's end could be contingent on the results from now to late May.

But on the other hand, an uncanny ability for errors and mistakes to come in bunches was miraculously remedied on Saturday and Sunday. Two errors in two separate innings, neither leading to runs, were all that plagued the Dawgs on Saturday. State played errorless baseball on Sunday.

Gatlin Sanders, who has yet to commit an error, is batting .373 and is a thorn in opposing pitchers' paws down near the bottom of Lemonis’s lineup. Lemonis said that he’s now the everyday starter at second base, a position that has left a lot to be desired so far defensively as multiple players rotated through various starts and mid-game substitutions.

Veteran catcher Joe Powell is putting some great swings on the ball and adds a little something defensively behind the plate compared to what State had been getting. State threw only six pitchers in the series, and its bullpen allowed only two earned runs in 11 2/3 innings pitched all weekend.

All three starters were at least solid, so perhaps that fluidity outside ace Pico Kohn is starting to gel. A few massive “if’s” lie in the path of these Diamond Dawgs’ progress: if Sanders and Powell can lock down some of the iffy positions on the infield, if this team can learn to let one mistake be just one mistake like they did Saturday, if this pitching staff can continue to shove…well, we’ll just have to wait and see if this team can pull themselves out of the hole they’ve dug early on in conference play. If anything, last weekend was a step in the right direction, but any corner to be proverbially turned is still down the street.

Mississippi State travels to the state of Alabama this week to play UAB in Birmingham on Tuesday April 8, followed by a three-game series in Tuscaloosa at the University of Alabama on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, April 11-13. If they play as well as they did on Saturday and Sunday, the path to recovery remains available.

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