Fresh off a sweep over Western division foe Texas A&M, the No. 10 Mississippi State Diamond Dogs return home to close out the second-half of the conference schedule against Auburn in a three-game series at Dudy Noble Field.
MSU (30-9, 8-7 SEC) is off to its best start since the 1999 season and is coming off back-to-back series wins.
The Dogs will rely on a league-leading offense highlighted by SEC Player of the Week Hunter Renfroe.
Renfroe leads the SEC in batting average (.429), home runs (13) and slugging percentage (.865).
“We’ve been hitting the ball well so far. Everybody has been contributing hits and I knew at a certain time we’ll all come through and start hitting the ball well,” Renfroe said. “This past weekend we were hitting the ball hard, finding holes and scoring a lot of runs. If we keep doing that we’ll win a lot of ball games.”
Along with hitting, the Bulldogs pitching rotation has delivered wins for MSU. Senior Kendall Graveman threw his third consecutive complete game in a 9-3 win last Saturday. Graveman said he thinks the hot streak is due to the team’s cohesiveness and all contributing at once.
“Once we got the offense, defense and pitching and kind of put it together, we’re a really good team and when one of those isn’t going so well, that’s when we struggled a little bit,” Graveman said. “I think right now all three aspects of the game are clicking. We’re playing well so I expect the same this weekend. We’re all settled in our roles now. We’ve really bonded together as a team the past couple weeks.”
Defensively, the Bulldogs turned six double plays in College Station, raising the team total to an SEC and NCAA-leading 52 on the season. MSU has won seven of its last eight, and return home in anticipation of a big Super Bulldog Weekend.
MSU head coach John Cohen said his team is ready to play in front of a big home crowd.
“Our kids are really excited about coming home. This is a special weekend,” Cohen said. “You want to consider all the events and the amount of people who come to the ball games and really the distance a lot of our Mississippi State people travel to come watch these ball games. It means a lot to our program, it means a lot to our players, and certainly we’d love to get off to a great start.”
Editor’s note: This article was published before the conclusion of the series opening game on Thursday.