Mississippi State baseball took a big swing at the South Carolina Gamecocks with a 13-3 victory in seven innings on Friday night at Dudy Noble Field.
Although the Diamond Dawgs did not claim the series, their first SEC victory of the season came in dominant fashion. The team strung together 18 effortless hits, and nearly every player in the batting order crossed home plate at least once.
Sophomore third baseman Slate Alford stole the show, going a perfect 4-for-4 from the plate and firing two home runs out of the park. He drove in three runs and added two of his own in the contest. Following the game, Alford shared how he felt being able to give some momentum to his team completely with his first home run.
“It was great, any time you can lead off an inning with a homer, you know, it always helps and, you know, gets you on a roll for the whole inning, so it was awesome,” Alford said.
To say that Alford’s fifth-inning homer got the team on a roll would be an understatement. MSU scored three additional runs in the inning with the help of a few errors on the Gamecocks’ defense. The team added three more runs in the sixth inning that started with another leadoff home run by Alford.
Although Alford might have had the most home runs of the evening, rookie left fielder Dakota Jordan had arguably the loudest. Jordan continued his week of dominance with a soaring home run that traveled 487 feet and rocketed off of one of the windows at Dudy Noble Field’s Left Field Lofts. Much like his teammate Alford, Jordan had a perfect night at the plate, going 3-for-3 with 3 RBI and one run scored.
Jordan’s strength was put on full display in offseason practices, but it has become even more evident as he has settled into his role over the past few regular season games. Head coach Chris Lemonis said that he was impressed by his newcomer’s performance against some top SEC talent.
“I’ve never seen a ball hit that far,” Lemonis said. “I mean, off of a real dude in a big part of the game.”
One Diamond Dawg had to get the home run derby started for Mississippi State, and that is exactly what Hunter Hines did. Hines, a sophomore, rocketed a moonshot down the right-field line to score both him and teammate Colton Ledbetter in the third inning, putting his team ahead by a score of 3-1. He now leads his teammates with 11 homers on the season and shows no sign of stopping any time soon.
Mississippi State has been a well-balanced team on offense, with quite a few runs coming off of walks accumulated through good at-bats. Lemonis said that his squad had to take a different approach when facing a Gamecocks pitching staff that was not afraid to throw fast strikes into the zone.
“One thing about South Carolina is they jam it in the zone, they just don’t walk many guys, so you have to walk into that box and be ready to hit,” Lemonis said.
The Diamond Dawgs still have some work to do to catch up in SEC standings, but the bats are coming alive at the right time. The program as a whole boasts a combined batting average of .306 and has scored a total of 232 runs through 29 games played, 46 of which have been home runs.
Mississippi State will face off against a non-conference opponent on Tuesday when it hosts Grambling in a midweek contest. The Diamond Dawgs will then travel to Tuscaloosa to face the Alabama Crimson Tide ahead of the Easter holiday.