After losing the first game in the series last Friday, the MSU softball team came back to defeat University of Mississippi in two games Saturday to snatch the series win against the Rebels.MSU (26-17, 9-8) concludes its season series with Ole Miss (17-24, 8-9) with a 3-1 overall record against the Egg Bowl foes.
The Bulldogs lost Game One of the series, tapping out only three hits on the game and earning two runs, all in the first inning on a Katie Cooley single.
Senior pitcher Kelli Miller earned the first-game start against the Rebels and went three innings before being replaced by Sara Hickerson.
Miller allowed all three Ole Miss runs in the fourth inning. Hickerson went on to shut down the Rebels, but three runs were all they needed, as they defeated State’s silent bats by a score of 3-2.
“I thought we were a little tentative at the plate,” said MSU head coach Jay Miller. “We talked about becoming more aggressive after we only had like three hits on the whole game. We had some opportunities where we left the kids out on base, and we really weren’t aggressively swinging the bat. We tried to get more aggressive Saturday, actually making something happen rather than just waiting on something to happen.”
Easter came a day early for MSU Saturday as the Dawgs bounced back to win games Two and Three of the intrastate series by scores of 7-4 and 8-0, respectively.
Sophomore Kelsey Nurnberg took to the pitching circle in the second game and allowed three earned runs on six hits from the Rebels in her three innings of work.
Nurnberg was replaced in the fourth by Hickerson, who earned her fifth win of the season after allowing only one run on three hits in her four-inning outing.
MSU took advantage of poor Ole Miss pitching in the game, capitalizing on the 10 walks issued to the Bulldog batters.
In the series finale, a tag team of a 13-hit MSU offense and a dominant, complete game performance by Kelli Miller led to a 8-0 drumming of the Rebels.
Junior and senior outfielders Hayle Guess and Katie Cooley each went 3-for-4 on the contest, combining to account for five of MSU’s runs.
“Winning the Ole Miss series was huge,” said Coach Miller. “It puts us ahead of them in the conference race and moves us into fourth place overall in the SEC. It was a big series for us to win because it also gives us the tie-breaker over Ole Miss.”
Freshman catcher Chelsea Bramlett was voted the SEC Freshman of the Week for a second consecutive week.
Brarmlett leads the conference in hits, runs and stolen bases. She ranks second all-time in stolen bases for a season while at MSU.