The Mississippi State softball team fell to the Ole Miss Rebels 8-3 Wednesday night in the seventh annual M&F Bank Fastpitch Softball Classic in Madison.
The Bulldogs scored three times in the second inning, thanks to freshman Courtney Moore’s RBI double. Moore then scored on freshman outfielder Brittany Gates’ groundout.
The Rebels rallied to score twice in the fourth and fifth innings and added four more runs in the eighth.
The loss was part of common trend of the Bulldogs’ season. In fact, MSU head coach Jay Miller said one of the biggest shortcomings of this year’s team has been their inability to finish out a lead.
“We jumped out to a really good start, but we’ve had trouble holding leads all season,” Miller said. “We didn’t play well in all three phases of the game, and that makes it tough to win games.”
Freshman Lindsey Dunlap took the loss for the Bulldogs. Her record fell to 9-10.
Junior shortstop Lauren Grill led the Rebels three hits and three RBIs and a home run. Junior Becky Nye pitched the final five innings and picked up the win. Miller credited Nye for shutting the Bulldogs down when she came in after the three runs were scored.
“We never adjusted when they put Nye in the game,” Miller said.
The Bulldogs will travel to Gainesville, Fla., this weekend to take on the No. 1 Florida Gators in a three-game series. There will be a double header Saturday starting at noon CDT, and a single game Sunday also starting at noon.
The season has not gone as well as the Bulldogs had hoped, as they currently have a record of 17-17 (2-10 SEC). They did, however, take two of three games last weekend at No. 9 Tennessee. Sophomore Ali Bainbridge said her team is set to make a run.
“I think the team has learned a lot from the losses, and I think we’ve grown,” she said. “I think we can take the losses and learn from and keep going and hopefully get better and better.”
The Gators are currently 36-3 (15-1 SEC). They are coming off two wins at Auburn in double header Wednesday.
Miller said he knows the task of facing the nation’s top team will be very difficult.
“[Florida] has a lot of seniors, an all-American pitcher in Stacey Nelson. They’ve been awful tough on everybody this year,” Miller said. “So we’ve got our work cut out for us, but it’s also a tremendous opportunity. You go in and win a game against the No. 1 team in the nation. You go out, do that, compete well, and that’s the challenge, and our kids are looking forward to it.”
The Bulldogs are wrapping up a brutal stretch of the conference schedule which saw them face some of the nation’s best teams. This will be the second time the Bulldogs have faced a team ranked No. 1. They were swept by then-No. 1 Alabama and by No. 20 LSU in March before last weekend’s series with No. 9 Tenesssee.
“That’s the way the SEC is,” Miller said of the tough schedule. “If you’re going to compete in this league, you’re going to compete against the best in the country. We’re looking forward to that challenge and going down there to Florida and see how we can do against the Gators.”
Freshman pitcher Lindsey Dunlap said she isn’t daunted by the tough schedule.
“That’s the reason I wanted to play at Mississippi State. I knew I’d be playing the best in the country,” Dunlap said. “I wanted to play in the SEC. I knew that that’s what I’d be facing, teams like Florida and Alabama. That’s always been my dream.”