HATTIESBURG — Among his Southeastern Conference coaching brethren, Andy Cannizaro was not alone in using someone other than his best arm to start the NCAA Tournament.
It worked out for everyone else, as the conference went 7-1 in NCAA Tournament play Friday. The only outlier was Mississippi State.
Second-seeded Mississippi State opened the Hattiesburg Regional with a 6-3 loss to third-seeded South Alabama Friday night at Pete Taylor Park. In the tournament opener, top-seeded Southern Mississippi rallied from down five runs to beat No. 4 seed Illinois-Chicago 8-7.
Saturday’s play was rained out.
That means at 1 p.m. today, MSU (36-25) will face UIC (38-16) in an elimination game. South Alabama (40-19) and Southern Miss (49-14) will meet in the winners’ bracket at 6 p.m. Both games will be available on ESPN3.
Cannizaro elected to keep season-long ace Konnor Pilkington on the bench against South Alabama, starting Cole Gordon. The loss that resulted gave Cannizaro no reason to question the decision.
“Not at all. Not at all,” Cannizaro said. “Cole Gordon’s been pitching it extremely well over his last four or five outings, our team has extreme confidence in Cole.”
The numbers support Cannizaro. In Gordon’s last four outings, the two most recent being starts, he threw a combined 18 1/3 innings with a 2.95 earned run average, allowing 12 hits and walking four.
The last in that string of outings was the most impressive: a seven-inning, four-hit start against Florida in the SEC Tournament, in which the only run credited to him came after he exited the game.
The South Alabama loss lacked that luster — two innings with three runs and five walks allowed — but the same idea worked for others in the conference. LSU, Florida and Vanderbilt all won the opening games of their regionals without pitching their respective aces: Alex Lange, Alex Faedo and Kyle Wright.
There were select Jaguars that wanted to see Pilkington.
“At first, we kind of thought it was a slap in the face that they weren’t throwing their ace against us,” South Alabama center fielder Travis Swaggerty said, “but we had a game plan anyway. We knew he was going to throw a lot of fastballs, a lot of early fastballs.”
It worked from the first pitch, when South Alabama’s Dylan Hardy took a fastball over the left field wall. From there, Gordon’s command was lacking as he threw 31 balls compared to 27 strikes.
MSU was hoping to beat South Alabama to start Pilkington in a potential winner’s bracket game against host Southern Mississippi. Cannizaro said that didn’t factor into the starting pitching decision.
“There’s absolutely no saving of Konnor Pilkington for anybody. We felt like Cole Gordon matched up extremely well with those guys, we expected him to go out there and pitch really well,” Cannizaro said. “I can guarantee you sometime (Saturday) Cole is going to come up to me and say, ‘Coach, give me the ball again Sunday.’ Hopefully we can play long enough in this tournament to get him back on the mound in some capacity.”
After the loss, there was no question where MSU would turn for its next starting pitcher. With its season on the line against UIC, MSU planned to go to Pilkington.
Pilkington, like Gordon, is coming off of one of his most impressive outings of the season, an eight-inning shutout of Georgia with five hits allowed. Pilkington entered Saturday with a 3.13 ERA in 95 innings pitched and 98 strikeouts.
“Really confident he’s going to come out and throw strikes. His breaking ball and changeup have gotten better as the season’s progressed,” Cannizaro said. “We’re counting on him to put us on his back and continue playing in this tournament.
“The backs are against the proverbial wall, so to speak, and the season’s on the line. We have to play better (Saturday) than we did (Friday) and there’s two outstanding leaders of this team that are sitting up here right now (Ryan Gridley and Cody Brown) and I know we’ll come out, with these guys’ leadership, and put it all out on the line.”
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter, @Brett_Hudson
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