Guess Single Rallies No. 21 MSU To Bulldog Round-Robin Title

Sunday, February 17

Starkville

12:00 p.m.

Mississippi State

11-0

Southern Illinois

8-2

Team	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	Runs R	Hits H	Errors E
Southern Illinois	1	1	0	0	0	1	0	3	5	0
Mississippi State	0	0	0	0	2	0	2	4	10	3

Guess Single Rallies No. 21 MSU To Bulldog Round-Robin Title

February 17, 2008 | Softball

Box Score

By: hailstate.com

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STARKVILLE, Miss. ? A week removed from claiming a share of the Cathedral City Kickoff title, No. 21 Mississippi State added the Bulldog Round-Robin championship thanks to Hayle Guess' two-out single in the bottom of the seventh that lifted the Bulldogs to a 4-3 win over Southern Illinois Sunday afternoon at the MSU Softball Field.

State improves to 11-0 on the season, while the Salukis finished the weekend at 8-2 overall. Guess earned all-tournament honors after hitting .313 with a home run, four RBI and three runs scored. She also stole three bases over the five-game tournament.

Guess' heroics in the seventh were set-up by senior Courtney Bures, who earned Most Outstanding Player accolades after hitting .400 with a home run, four RBI and four runs scored. After back-to-back base hits from Chelsea Bramlett and Nakita Boyce, both runners stole third and second, respectively. Bramlett and Boyce, the top two hitters in the MState line-up, combined to go 6-for-8 at the plate and account for all four MSU runs in Sunday's finale.

Bures followed with a ground ball that allowed Bramlett to score, and following a Sammie Jo Bailey pop-out for the second out of the frame, Guess landed the game-winning hit just in front of Saluki right fielder Katie Wilson.

Kelsey Nurnberg moved to 6-0 on the year as she allowed three runs, one earned, on five hits with two strikeouts in the complete-game effort. Nikki Waters suffered the loss for SIU, allowing four runs on 10 hits while dropping to 3-1 on the campaign.

"This was a great weekend for our team," Bulldog head coach Jay Miller, who sits four wins shy of the 900-career win mark, said. "Hayle (Guess) made some outstanding plays in center field today, and she came up with a very big hit. I was very pleased with the way Kelsey (Nurnberg) threw the ball today, and our team really battled well. We had three come-from-behind wins this weekend, and the way we kept battling is a sign of a great team."

Waters stifled MSU through the first four innings while her offense scored a run each in the first and second innings for a 2-0 lead. State tied the game in the fifth as Bramlett led off with a single. Boyce scored her with a base hit, and after advancing to third on Sammie Jo Bailey's one-out single, she scored on Guess' ground-out to first.

The tie ball game did not last long, however, as SIU re-gained the lead on a Bulldog error in the sixth to set-up State's seventh-inning heroics.

Freshman pitcher Misty Flesher and Sammie Jo Bailey also earned all-tourament accolades along with Nikki Waters, Alicia Garza and Katie Schmidt from SIU; Erin Fisher and Allison Twarowski from Fordham; and Jamie Perkins from Wright State.

State hits the road for its next action, heading to Macon, Ga., for the Mercer Tournament Feb. 22-24. The Bulldogs open with Western Kentucky at 9 a.m. CST and Austin Peay at 3 p.m. on Friday.