HAILSTATEBEAT: Unlikely Bulldogs Begin Postseason In Tallahassee Regional

It's hot in Florida.

That's no revelation, but man, standing on the turf outside the dugout, wrapped in the humidity of inland Florida, the sun bearing down on neck and arms with no barrier save the occasional wisp of cloud - it's pretty hot. Some might say miserable.

But out on the field - around the base paths, behind home plate, on the mound and in the outfield - players and coaches alike are running, jumping and swinging around like a bunch of kids playing in an air-conditioned McDonald's Playplace. They're pumped to be out there in the middle of a hot day, pumped to be sweating out water faster than they can replenish it from the coolers in the dugout, and most of all, they're pumped to still be playing baseball.

Mississippi State's players had every reason to mail it in. They spent their whole preseason practicing indoors with their stadium under construction. Forget the fact that they only had somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 home games during the season as they traveled across the country for the non-conference schedule. MSU might be the only team in the country that had to go on the road for their own intra-squad scrimmages, driving two hours away from Starkville to finish their fall practices in Jackson, Mississippi.

Then the Bulldogs got swept on opening weekend, lost their head coach days later and started a two-week bus and plane trip through Texas with no clue what their future held as hard non-conference losses were followed by three-straight series losses to start SEC play.

Now, inconceivably, MSU is in Tallahassee as the No. 2 seed in Florida State's NCAA Regional as one of the hottest teams in the country.

Time after time, State's players could have given up, especially the seniors and draft-eligible juniors who may be gone by the end of the year anyway. It wouldn't have been fun to watch, but few could have blamed this team if they took the "interim" tag of their head coach seriously and just tried to get to the end of the year as quickly and painlessly as they could.

So what happened? How did a team that looked like it wouldn't even make the SEC Tournament turn it around to become the most dangerous two-seed in the NCAA Tournament? What changed? Why are they here in the hot Tallahassee sun, with all possibilities still in front of them, absolutely thrilled to be on the field?

"I mean, I could give you the stereotypical 'freshmen evolved and people bought in' line," junior outfielder Jake Mangum said. "But to be honest with you, we just kept going. Honestly, just kept going. In the fall, we had every excuse to say we weren't ready. Only three practices on a baseball field. We were inside every day. No one in the country does that. We were on the road all year. Only had, what, 20 home games? That's an all-time low for Mississippi State. We're a young team with an interim head coach.

"[Interim head coach Gary Henderson] has done an amazing job," Mangum continued "Our coaching staff never allowed us to give up. They stayed positive and they stayed on us the whole time and just never gave up. I think the most important thing is that every time we put on this uniform, we treat it with the utmost respect. Whether we're 2-7 in the SEC, or 15-15 going into the tournament. Whether we're 0-3 and our head coach is gone, we just never gave up."

Keeping it up ended up working out for MSU when it followed up the 2-7 SEC start with a 13-8 run that included three series wins over top-three teams. In the span of a few weeks, the Bulldogs went from bottom-of-the-conference afterthought to the last team any host school wanted to see coming to their Regional in June.

Junior infielder Hunter Stovall shared a similar sentiment to his outfield teammate. Cheesy or clichéd as it may sound, they're playing for pride, he said, for the game, for the name on the front of their jersey that represents one of the most storied baseball programs the country has known. It's not just that it's embarrassing to give up – it's embarrassing to give up in a Mississippi State uniform.

"We look at it, as a team, that we're here to carry on a legacy that was made previous to us even being here," Stovall said. "It's the game. We're not out here to just mess around and lose. We're out here to win. That's what we go about every single day. We try to instill in the minds of every player that hey, we're here to win. We're not here to mess around. It doesn't matter the circumstances – it's still the game of baseball."

The critical moment in the season came after that 2-7 start to SEC play that Mangum has often mentioned, that his teammates have often mentioned and that Henderson has often mentioned. The number of times those inside the dugout have brought up that stretch of bad baseball makes it clear how strong the stench of loss truly was. That wasn't good baseball. It wasn't winning baseball. As they well know, it wasn't Mississippi State baseball.

At a time when it seemed they would never escape the rut, the No. 3 team in the country came to town, bitter in-state rival Ole Miss. If MSU didn't pull it together then, they might never, and they knew it. When they took the field for game one, they were mad. Not at the name "Ole Miss" on the jerseys in the opposite dugout. Not just that, anyway.

MSU's players were mad at themselves. They were frustrated that the season seemed to be slipping away. And they didn't direct that ire at outside people or circumstances. They didn't take advantage of the many excuses available to them. They took on the failures as their personal responsibility to correct and the process had to start then.

Call it serendipity that the Rebels were on the receiving end of the fire.

"Sitting there at 2-7 with one of the top teams in the country coming in – who we don't like at all," Mangum began as a preface. "We jumped on them game one kind of out of frustration from the bad start [to the season]. Game two they came back and punched us in the mouth. Game three was just an all-out dog fight."

Ultimately, MSU took the series, the pride and all the confidence that came with it. It wasn't their first non-loss of the season, but it was the first thing that felt like a real win for the team, and it sparked plenty more as the season went along, including another series win against another No. 3 team and a sweep of No. 1 Florida to finish the regular season.

"We know we can beat anybody in the country," Mangum said, "and that weekend was the first weekend of that."

"It just gave us confidence," Stovall added. "It just let us know that we are good enough to win against teams that are supposed to be good. We can fight with the best of the best. We swept Florida. We're an unbelievable baseball team. The sky is the limit for us, we just have to go into every game with the right mindset, pitch by pitch, and control the things we can control and not worry about all the other outside stuff."

Coaches and players alike knew from the start of the year that they had a talented team, and the fact that they could beat anybody in the country was one they knew before the season even began, even if it didn't feel that way for a little while.

But now, MSU is playing like the team it always knew it could be, excuses be darned. While so many other teams around the country are sitting at home watching baseball on TV, the Bulldogs are still alive, starting Regional play with the confidence and belief that they can beat anybody they face. No one expected it back in the days of 2-7, but State's season is far from over.

"I'm really proud of this team," Mangum said in summation. "It's been a crazy, crazy, crazy year."

If the final act is anything like the rest of the show, an entertaining finish awaits.

Mississippi State University Athletics

HAILSTATEBEAT: Unlikely Bulldogs Begin Postseason In Tallahassee Regional

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