Mississippi State baseball falls to Vanderbilt 4-3 in SEC tournament

HOOVER, Ala. (WCBI) —Mississippi State baseball squared off with Vanderbilt in the winners bracket of the SEC tournament late Thursday night, into Friday morning. The Bulldogs lost 4-3 to the Commodores.

Mississippi State scratched across one run courtesy of an Amani Larry RBI single in the sixth. A rally in the ninth fell short, Connor Hujsak scored David Mershon on an RBI triple and Nate Chester plated Hujsak with a pinch hit single but Logan Kohler grounded out to end the game.

“We haven’t been super offensive here,” Mississippi State baseball coach Chris Lemonis said. “But we’ve been competing our tails off and we got some big hits there.”

Jurrangelo Cijntje was perfect through the his first two innings of work, striking out the first six batters he faced. Cijntje ran into trouble in the third allowing the first two runners to reach and score on a Davis Diaz single.

The Bulldogs put together a two-out rally in the seventh, loading the bases for cleanup hitter Dakota Jordan. He entered the box 0-3 in the game with two strikeouts, Ryan Ginther sat him down on four pitches.

Mississippi State falls to 2-1 in the SEC tournament. The Bulldogs are back in action Friday at 6:30 in an elimination game against Tennessee.

“We’re coming out to win tomorrow,” Lemonis said. “We feel if we win tomorrow it solidifies us even more. We feel like we should host already, we think our resume and 20-something wins in the hardest league in the country and finishing fifth gives you a chance to host. But we want to come out and play good tomorrow and show everybody we can beat Tennessee.”