No. 22 Diamond Dawgs put series streak on the line against Ole Miss

In the year 2015, Chris Lemonis took over as a head coach for the first time in his career when he took over for Indiana University.

It was a solid year for Lemonis as he helped the team to an NCAA Tournament and finished the year 35-24, but it was a season to forget for Mississippi State baseball. John Cohen’s State team finished the year 24-30 and were 8-22 in league play as the Diamond Dawgs finished last in the SEC.

Among the series losses that year was a three-game sweep in Oxford by Ole Miss as the Bulldog were snakebit all weekend with three narrow defeats. Since that time, it’s been all Bulldogs.

State has owned the series with the Rebels since that season with the Bulldogs seven-straight series victory and an incredible 22-6 mark overall with a 8-1 record in Oxford and five Governor’s Cup wins.

All of those teams have had a different kind of makeup and there have been four different head coaches along the way, but the results have been about the same throughout this run.

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The last two teams led by Lemonis have had two of their nine SEC wins come against the Rebels. This year’s team seems to be finding a little bit of its stride after winning a hard-fought series against Georgia and Lemonis is hoping that carries over in Oxford this weekend.

“It’s huge. All the emotion that went through this and what you need in the league to get two out of three at home,” Lemonis said. “We felt good about it all weekend and obviously everything went upside down, but to get this one today gives you a lot of momentum going into next week. It’s rivalry week and it’s a big week for us.”

No. 22 State (21-12, 6-6 SEC) enters with some momentum, but can’t afford to let off the gas. The Diamond Dawgs are at .500 through the first four series and are close to already eclipsing the last two seasons work.

The Rebels on the other hand are in the same two-year spiral that MSU is trying to climb out of this season. Ole Miss (18-5, 3-9 SEC) have gone 10-35 in the last 15 SEC series with just one series win. Both teams won National Championships in the last three seasons but have had trouble getting off of the mat.

It looks like signs of life has come for State, however. At least to this point, MSU has shown the ability to fight back in games and have some mental toughness that has been lacking.

“I feel like we’re very close as a team and that’s one thing we’ve been missing out on the past couple of years,” sophomore Bryce Chance said. “The things that we can improve on baseball wise is playing cleaner. No game is ever perfect so just learning from past games is a big one.”

Ole Miss has lost nine of the last 10 games coming into Friday night’s matchup at 7 p.m. on the SEC Network. The Rebels have a big bat in Andrew Fischer with his 13 home runs and Ethan Lege has added a .351 batting average with eight more long balls, but the issues have been driving in runners and pitching and defense.

The staff ERA sits at 5.85 and the team has had to shuffle pitching around to try and find some comfortability.

State enters with Dakota Jordan hitting .372 at the plate with 14 home runs, nine doubles and 45 RBI with Connor Hujsak hitting .333 with nine doubles, six home runs, two triples and 30 RBI and David Mershon batting .333 with 37 hits, eight doubles, two home runs, two triples and 23 RBI.

The pitching staff has gone from an ERA over 7.00 last year to 4.15 under new pitching coach Justin Parker and the walks have dropped tremendously with State putting on 124 batters in 292.2 innings to this point.

Friday night will see Khal Stephen (4-2, 3.37 ERA) put his three-game streak of 6.0 or more innings and two or less earned runs to the test against Riley Maddox (2-3, 4.46 ERA). On Saturday in a 7:30 p.m. first pitch on ESPN2, Jurrangelo Cijntje (5-1, 3.45 ERA) will pitch against Liam Doyle (2-2, 7.01 ERA). Sunday closes out at 1:30 with Ole Miss’ Mason Nichols (3-0, 3.93 ERA) facing off against a pitcher to be determined.

It’s a series that never disappoints and one that the instate players always enjoy. That includes State’s Chance who will be making his debut in the series after redshirting his first year and being on the bench a season ago.

“I’m excited – I’ve been waiting three years for it,” Chance said. “That’s the big one and I think everybody in the locker room is excited, too. It’s something you look forward to when you come here.”