TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — This was not a day for second guesses. First of all, the Mississippi State baseball team was on the brink of elimination from the NCAA tournament and had no time for hesitation.
That’s why, with a one out in the eighth inning, freshman left fielder Rowdey Jordan saw the green light from third base coach Mike Brown and turned on the jets. He admits he caught a glimpse of Brown throwing up a stop sign after the fact, but Jordan wasn’t shifting.
“We talked about it after: He was waving me, so I put my head down. You made your decision, don’t second-guess yourself,” Jordan said.
Things going as well as they did Sunday can have that type of freeing effect on people.
Jordan’s show of aggression was far from the only one on a Sunday that saw MSU (34-26), itself just one loss away from elimination, knock Samford (37-26) out of the Tallahassee Regional with a 9-8 win in the afternoon and put Oklahoma (38-24) on equal footing with a 13-5 evening win. The Bulldogs and the Sooners go at it for the third time this weekend at noon today (ESPN2); the winner wins the Tallahassee Regional.
A game with such stakes couldn’t come at a better time.
MSU collected 29 hits Sunday and has hit nine home runs in four tournament games.
“We’re swinging it well all day,” Jordan said. “We put up a lot of runs, a lot of good swings.”
Such a game will come 24 hours after freshman first baseman Tanner Allen double three times — a day after 0-for-4 in a loss.
“That’s the difference between (Saturday) and (Sunday), I was able to get ahead in the count some,” Allen said. “I was just sitting on fastballs, it’s what I do all the time. On my second double, the guy threw me a 2-0 curveball that I took and the next pitch got a fastball.”
Allen didn’t slow down as the sun set on Dick Howser Stadium: he launched his fifth home run of the season against the Sooners, a three-run shot that was his only hit of the game. It was all MSU needed to do what center fielder Jake Mangum found to be most impressive: every Bulldog in the starting lineup tallied at least one hit.
Most of them had reasons to keep their bats tame. Allen’s 0-for-4 Saturday was only accentuated by the three strikeouts it contained; Jordan also went 0-for-4 on Saturday, and an 0-for-3 day from second baseman Hunter Stovall had him 1-for-7 in the regional entering Sunday; shortstop Luke Alexander’s seven hitless at-bats in the regional through Saturday has his season batting average within a point of .200 for the first time since March 4.
It just presented the team another opportunity for growth, which it’s rarely passed up.
“I think one of the trademarks of our group is we’ve done a really good job of not staying disappointed,” MSU interim head coach Gary Henderson said. “We’re not perfect, we’re not claiming to be that, but I think we’re way better at getting past a short-term disappointment and not getting stuck and staying there.”
Granted, recent history gives MSU little reason to stay down. The 20-10 loss that opened the regional — to the same Sooners MSU meets again today — is just a more traumatic version of what the Bulldogs faced last year, just to roll off four straight wins to win the regional.
That was also done by a team that is no more. Allen and Jordan, today’s 2- and 3-hole hitters, were not on that team, neither was starting third baseman Justin Foscue and catcher Dustin Skelton did not factor into last year’s regional.
“It’s a really new ball club for us,” Mangum said.
A new ball club with a similar feeling.
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter @Brett_Hudson
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