Taking home the Bulldog Classic Championship over the weekend, the Mississippi State softball team is out to the best start in program history.
The team sits currently at 9-0, with victories over solid teams such as South Florida and Southern Illinois.
MSU dominated the Bulldog Classic, a round-robin style tournament, sweeping four games. On Friday night, the Bulldogs mercy-ruled East Tennessee State 9-1 in six innings and then handed Southern Illinois its first loss of the season 2-0.
Saturday’s game was “iced” out with the fear of the freezing rain and ice putting the players’ health in jeopardy.
As a result, Southern Illinois withdrew from the tournament, packing up and heading home in hopes of avoiding icy roads as much as possible.
This forced the tournament games to be rescheduled for Sunday.
Sunday brought three games in the Classic, the first of which featured Tennessee State defeating East Tennessee State 1-0. The Lady Bulldogs then went on to defeat ETSU by the score of 6-0 and then TSU 7-1.
“We’ve got a little more experienced ball club this year,” MSU head coach Jay Miller said. “We only have one senior but a lot of juniors. Even our sophomores have been through the wars. We’re not as young as we have been in the past couple of years, and that experience is always helpful.”
MSU boasted seven players on the Bulldog Classic All-Tournament Team. Hayle Guess, Courtney Bures, Katie Cooley, Callye Williams and Sammie Jo Bailey led the Bulldogs offensively, while the dominant pitching duo of Ragan Blake and Stephanie Comeaux held opposing teams to only one run throughout the entire tournament.
Ragan Blake received the Tournament MVP award, notching two victories with a zero ERA over the weekend. Her individual performance in the ETSU game Sunday morning-pitching a career-high 12 strikeouts-is minute to a team victory because she doesn’t look at stats.
“Starting off undefeated is very important,” Blake said. “It starts us off on a good foot and gives us confidence going into the season.
The chemistry on the team is a lot better than last year. It just shows in the way we play and everything. We’ll work as hard as we can this year.”
Averaging six runs a game and allowing an average less than one, Miller can’t help but be pleased with his team’s performance. He does see a few things that need work, however, and he claims the weather didn’t help much.
“When you get this kind of weather,” Miller said, “it kind of turns into a survival contest out there. I thought we did a good job of competing at a high level and not letting the weather take us out of the ballgame. The girls did a great job.”