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Stout pitching opens the door for No. 18 Mississippi State's late-inning heroics in 3-1 win

3rupauk8_400x400by:Robbie Faulk•about 22 hours•

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Pico Kohn (Photo by Mississippi State Athletics)

In baseball, sometimes all it takes is just one big inning and it happened for Mississippi State on Friday afternoon.

After 18-straight innings without a run over the course of three games, the Diamond Dawgs trailed 1-0 in the 8th inning and had shown little on offense. A couple of free bases later, State put three runs on the board and stole a 3-1 victory to open the series with Missouri State.

After having just two hits and no runs through the first seven frames, the Bulldogs finally broke through in the eighth. State got a hit batter and a walk from the bottom of the order and then loaded the bases with one out.

Ace Reese came through with a ground ball to the right side to tie the game and then Noah Sullivan got the clutch hit. With two down and two men on base, Sullivan found the gap in right center field and gave State the 3-1 lead.

“Luckily, baseball is a long game. I got four at bats today, three really bad ones, but the last one that really mattered,” Sullivan said. “(Jake Gautreau) was saying that the guy throws a lot of sliders so I stayed back and got a good pitch to hit.”

Diamond Dawg pitching dominant again

Luke Dotson came in for the ninth inning and worked around a little trouble as he struck out a batter and walked two.

The story again was State starter Pico Kohn. The junior has stepped into his role as the Diamond Dawg ace and he’s passing the test to this point.

Following an 11-strikeout performance in 5.0 shutout innings in the first game of the year, Kohn threw 6.1 innings, gave up four hits, one run and no walks with 11 strikeouts on Friday. He’s now thrown 11.1 innings and walked no batters with 22 strikeouts through the first two starts.

It looked like Kohn’s dominant start was going to be for naught this time around as the Diamond Dawg offense was silent for most of the game. After getting shutout against Southern Miss on Tuesday night, the Bulldogs went the first seven without a run again on Friday with nine strikeouts.

“I thought he was great. Commands the fastball so well right now and really starting to feel that slider,” coach Chris Lemonis said. “When you pitch and play really good defense, you have a chance to win every single game.”

Freshman starter Michael Yusypchuk dominated the Diamond Dawg order as he pitched 7.0 innings, gave up two hits, just one walk and struck out eight himself, but things unraveled when he left the game with two hits, three walks and a hit batter from the bullpen.

Lukas Buckner had two of the team’s four hits for the second-straight game and he earned his first start of his freshman season.

“It felt really good to get the big (hit). Tip your hat to the pitcher – we didn’t know much about him as a young freshman coming in,” Lemonis said. “He throws those high vertical break ball that stays at the top of the zone. I don’t think we’ll see somebody with that much vertical break all year. It was kind of like an Ethan Small He was good early and we weren’t good. I’ll give him credit, but also we have to get better.”

The Diamond Dawgs (4-1) will look to take the series on Saturday at 2 p.m. as they throw Karson Ligon.

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