Murray State holds off late rally, eliminates Ole Miss to advance to Super Regionals

Another regional host from the SEC met its demise in the NCAA Baseball Tournament on Monday. Ole Miss suffered a 12-11 loss at the hands of Murray State despite a late comeback effort and has been eliminated while the Racers advance to Super Regionals.

Ole Miss nearly came back from 12-3 down, getting started on its comeback in the bottom of the seventh inning to score five runs and cut the deficit to four. The Racers pitching staff fell apart in the inning, at one point giving up four straight walks to drive in a run and load the bases. Back-to-back singles from Luke Hill and Will Furniss drove in three runs after that.

The Rebels strung together another three runs in the eighth inning off of a home run from Brayden Randle and were just one run away from tying the game. Unfortunately, that was all they could muster and were down to their final three outs heading into the ninth inning. Ole Miss went three up, three down including two strikeouts as their season came to an end.

For Murray State, it marks the first Super Regionals appearance in program history. The Racers got there on the backs of a 19-hit effort in a game where they looked dominant at times, jumping out to a big lead. Nic Schutte got the win at pitcher with five strikeouts in 2.1 innings of work while Graham Kellam notched the save.

Murray State got the scoring started in the second inning with an RBI groundout from Dan Tauken. That was the first of what would be two runs in the inning, but the Racers were just getting started. Their bats stayed hot to drive home another three runs in the third inning and take a 5-0 advantage.

The Racers continued to pile on with four more runs in the fifth inning, including an RBI triple from Dustin Mercer. That gave them a commanding 9-3 advantage after they gave up a combined three runs in the third and fourth.

They would see that climb up to 12-3 after the top of the seventh, but were outscored 8-0 the rest of the way as they nearly gave up the lead. Instead, the defense came together for one final inning to quickly get the three outs it needed to advance.

Murray State moves on to play Duke in a best-of-three series as they’ll look to keep their Cinderella story alive. Ole Miss ends the year with a 43-21 record and will aim to get back to the tournament next season.