Mississippi State baseball resumes Southeastern Conference play on Friday as its takes on the No. 3 team in the nation, the South Carolina Gamecocks. The Diamond Dawgs have opened their season strong with a 13-4 record and are coming off a 7-6 win against Samford on Wednesday where they overcame a 6-1 deficit.
MSU opened up SEC play with a 2-1 series win over the University of Florida in last weekend’s series.
“We’re just really excited to be coming back home for SEC play,” senior co-captain Jeffrey Rea said. “We’re just ready to find out what we can do here.”
Mississippi State also currently leads the SEC with their team batting average of .378.
“This is a team that is kind of old and kind of young,” Rea said. “We’re just trying to get it together, and I think the transition is going really well for us. I think we’re so much more upbeat this year.”
Junior catcher Edward Easley continues to lead the team offensively, being tabbed the SEC Player of the Week for the first time.
Easley, SEC’s top hitter with a .516 batting average going into Wednesday’s game, leads the Dawgs with six home runs, 34 hits and 25 RBIs.
“He’s a really tough kid and a great hitter,” head coach Ron Polk said. “It’s really important to keep him in our lineup.”
He also showed a dominating performance against the Florida Gators, hitting .600 and finishing the weekend with two home runs and seven RBIs.
Junior first baseman and relief pitcher Mitch Moreland continues to be the only Bulldog to have hit safely in all 17 games this season.
Moreland continues to be an asset to the pitching staff after pitching perfect ninth innings in the last two Mississippi State wins.
“Mitch has got the capability to get a strikeout or a pop-up,” Polk said. “We can’t use him every game, but we really need him when we’ve really got to win a game.”
South Carolina currently holds the third-place ranking in this week’s USA Today/ESPN coaches poll and sports a 19-4 record for the season. The Gamecocks currently lead the SEC in both fielding average and earned run average.
“South Carolina is a very good ball club,” Polk said. “They pounded their midweek opponents this week.”
Polk’s Bulldogs come off a SEC season-opening series win at the University of Florida, while South Carolina clinched their first SEC series over Louisiana State University.
“It’s going to be a war,” Polk said. “It was a war in Gainesville, a war here against Samford, and there will be a war next week against Kentucky. It’s just a war every weekend. We want to win the battles, but we want to win the war which is two out of three wins.