Mississippi State scores 4 in 9th to win College World Series opener against Auburn
Tyler Horka
OMAHA, Neb. — Mississippi State players gathered in shallow left field 15 minutes before their College World Series game against Auburn on Sunday night.
The Bulldogs have a routine ritual of hyping themselves up for every game with a quick huddle in the outfield. This brief team meeting at TD Ameritrade Park took a little longer to start than usual.
Everyone had their eyes on the video screen in right field as it played highlights from MSU's Starkville Super Regional Game 2 victory over Stanford. The Dogs waited until they saw senior right fielder Elijah MacNamee blast his ninth-inning, three-run home run before they tightened their circle and said whatever it was that was supposed to get them fired up for their inaugural game of the 2019 CWS.
It didn't work — until the ninth inning.
Mississippi State didn't have a highlight reel worthy of being played in front of 22,671 from the first eight innings, but what happened when the Bulldogs batted around in bottom of the ninth might go down in College World Series lore for a long time.
The Bulldogs broke loose for four runs with their backs against the wall in the final frame of the game to beat Auburn, 5-4, in walk-off fashion.
Up next: Mississippi State will face off with No. 2 national seed Vanderbilt on Tuesday, at 6 p.m. on ESPN. The winner of that game will play the winner's bracket final on Friday, at 6 p.m., while the loser will face either Louisville or Auburn at 6 p.m. on Thursday, in an elimination game.
Senior third baseman Marshall Gilbert ripped a bases-loaded single up the middle that was too hot for Auburn's shortstop to handle, and the Bulldogs walked off with a win in a game they appeared destined to drop. They trailed for seven of the nine innings.
"I give our guys credit, we fought to the last out and just kept competing and it's something we've talked about all year," head coach Chris Lemonis said. "It's a little bit of a frustrating night because we had a couple opportunities to drive in some runs and we didn't, but at the very end, just the grit of our ball club played out and we were able to put some balls in play."
Gilbert said it was "incredible" that he even had the chance to come to the plate with an opportunity to drive in the winning run. Senior center-fielder Jake Mangum led the inning off while Mississippi State trailed by three. Eight batters later, Gilbert brought home a victory.
"It's kind of the point where you just can't count us out," Gilbert said. "There's never a point where somebody is not locked in or somebody has not bought into what we've got going on."
The Bulldog batters were chasing the game all night because MSU starter Ethan Small wasn't as effective as usual. The red-shirt junior and SEC Pitcher of the Year struck out the first five batters he faced, but he gave up a single to junior first baseman Rankin Woley to snap that streak.
Sophomore first baseman Edouard Julien stepped into the batter's box next. He smashed a 429-foot home run to right field, tying the longest homer ever recorded at TD Ameritrade. Julien added another RBI to his ledger in the fourth on a single after Small issued two walks in preceding at-bats.
Small only got through 5.0 innings and needed 102 pitches to do so. It was exactly one month to the day when Small last had an outing that short (May 16 versus South Carolina). Small finished with eight strikeouts, three hits allowed, three walks and the three earned runs.
"My stuff felt pretty good, but I will say i felt a little more gassed there," Small said. "I felt a little more tired than usual. What that is? I don't know. Maybe it's just because it's a long season... It turned into one of those nights where you just compete, go after them with everything you got and see how long you can go."
Small didn't get much help from the batters wearing black.
Three of the 11 runners State stranded on base were left standing in the fifth, when MacNamee had another chance to etch his name in the Mississippi State postseason record books. He stepped to the plate with the bases loaded but anticlimactically fouled out to the Auburn first baseman. A dramatic long ball would've given State a 4-3 lead at the time.
State eventually scored its first run of the game in the sixth on an RBI single from junior designated hitter Gunner Halter, and the Bulldogs loaded the bases two batters later when senior center fielder Jake Mangum was hit by a pitch.
Sophomore shortstop Jordan Westburg found himself in the same position as MacNamee did in the prior inning, and he went back to the dugout with a similar result. He lined out to right field to strand three more Bulldogs on the bags.
"We had been so short all night of missing that big hit," Mangum said. "We had runners on the pond all night. We just couldn't get that hit."
The only run Mississippi State allowed in relief came on a throwing error by second baseman Justin Foscue in the eighth inning. A Tiger scored from first on a single because Foscue's throw was too hot for Gilbert.
Mississippi State's batting order didn't do junior Riley Self and seniors Jared Liebelt and Cole Gordon -- who combined to pitch four innings without an earned run -- justice until the ninth. Before Mangum led the inning off with his double, he and MacNamee had a good feeling about what was about to happen.
"We're due, we're due," Mangum said. "Something's about to happen in our favor."
"I remember actually being in right field for defense and Cole was pitching (in the ninth), and after he got the second strikeout I was like, I have the weirdest feeling about this inning," MacNamee said. "So when Jake went up there and hit that double, I said, well, here we go."
Sophomore first baseman Tanner Allen walked two batters after Mangum. MacNamee drove in Mangum with a double of his own, and the rally was on. Allen scored on an RBI ground-out from Foscue, and all the sudden State only needed one run to tie.
It was gifted to MSU by the same player who would have been the hero had Auburn held on to win.
Julien, the hitter of the homer and the man who had another RBI on a single, committed a throwing error on what should have been a ground out from junior catcher Dustin Skelton. MacNamee tied the game on the play.
"I was overwhelmed," Skelton said. "'I was like, 'Wow. He really did that.' But a win is a win. Baseball is baseball."
Skelton secured that win when he touched home plate after Gilbert's single up the middle. It was Gilbert's only hit on the night. He went 1-for-5. But Mangum, who was nearly at a complete loss for words in the locker room after the game, couldn't have been happier.
"My roommate, Marshall Gilbert, came through and got it done for us," Mangum said.
Contact Tyler Horka at thorka@gannett.com. Follow @tbhorka on Twitter. To read more of Tyler's work, subscribe to the Clarion Ledger today!