After finishing the nonconference slate 25-1, No. 5 Mississippi State will conclude Southeastern Conference play this weekend against South Carolina at Dudy Noble Field.
“South Carolina is one of those teams that’s really trying to get back to making it into the (NCAA) tournament,” senior Marshall Gilbert said. “They’re going to give us their best shot, everything they’ve got.”
The Gamecocks (27-25, 7-20 SEC) will turn to redshirt freshman pitcher Cam Tringali in game one, which begins at 6:30 p.m. this evening. Tringali is 2-3 with a 4.22 ERA in 59 2/3 innings pitched.
Junior Reid Morgan will pitch game two for South Carolina. Morgan leads the team with 80 2/3 innings pitched, boasting a 3.79 ERA in 13 starts.
Offensively, TJ Hopkins will lead the charge for the Gamecocks. He leads the team in hits, batting average and total bases. He also sits tied for second with 11 home runs and has started all 52 games this year.
MSU (43-10, 18-9 SEC) will use its usual weekend contingent of redshirt junior Ethan Small, freshman JT Ginn and senior Peyton Plumlee.
Small enters the weekend with 132 strikeouts on the year — the sixth-best mark in program history. He sits four strikeouts behind fifth-place Jeff Brantley’s 1985 total of 136.
Plumlee, Sunday’s scheduled starter, is coming off the longest outing for any MSU pitcher of the season. In last week’s 11-5 game three win over No. 15 Ole Miss in Oxford he tossed 7 2/3 innings, giving up four earned runs on seven hits.
Though there are just three games remaining in the regular season, the Bulldogs’ postseason remains partially unsettled.
The series sweep over Ole Miss likely secured MSU a national seed in the NCAA tournament. That said, SEC tournament seeding remains up for grabs.
MSU trails No. 4 Arkansas by one game in the SEC West standings. The Razorbacks also hold the tiebreaker after sweeping the Bulldogs in Fayetteville. They will take on No. 16 Texas A&M in College Station this weekend.
If the SEC tournament were to begin Friday, MSU would be the No. 3 seed.
“I think one of the things that we can do is go ahead and make a statement this weekend,” Gilbert said.
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DAWG NOTES:
Small and senior centerfielder Jake Mangum were named semifinalists for the Golden Spikes Award Wednesday afternoon.
Since the award began honoring semifinalists in 2007, just three other MSU players have been named to the list. Will Clark is the only Bulldog to ever win the award when he did so in 1985. Rafael Palmeiro was a finalist in 1984.
Finalists for the 2019 award will be announced May 29.
Mangum was also named to the SEC Community Service Team Wednesday morning after leading MSU in community service hours during the 2018-19 academic year. He was a part of Athletics Convocation and volunteered with Golden Triangle Outdoors, the Special Olympics, Batson Children’s Hospital and the Challenger League.
Ben Portnoy reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @bportnoy15.
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