Round Two: 'Dogs Travel To Oxford To Continue Series With Ole Miss
May 25, 2016 | Softball
STARKVILLE, Miss. - After dropping game one of its disjoined three-game set with Ole Miss on Thursday in Starkville, the Mississippi State softball team will pack up its show and head to Oxford Tuesday evening as the clubs continue their season series with a 6 p.m. match-up at the Ole Miss Softball Complex.
With Anthony Craven calling all the balls and strikes, WMSV 91.1 FM will broadcast the game live from Oxford. The game can also be followed in progress via a live statistics link at the official home for the Mississippi State athletic department, www.MStateAthletics.com. For those wishing to make the trek to Oxford, admission to the game is free. The squads will complete their season series on April 26 in Madison, Miss., in the third annual M&F Bank Fastpitch Classic at Liberty Park.
Since Ole Miss' 2-0 defeat of the Bulldogs on Thursday night, the squads have headed down different paths in the win-loss column. State (29-22, 9-13 SEC) finished off a series sweep of visiting Arkansas with a 2-1 triumph over the Lady ?€˜Backs Sunday afternoon. On the flip side, the Rebels (25-22, 5-14) dropped all three games of its weekend series at LSU, including a 4-2 loss to the Tigers in the series finale.
Hopefully, you get a sweep and that will give you a little bit more confidence going down the stretch, said Mississippi State head coach Jay Miller. We were able to move ahead of some people in the SEC standings and I think that is going to help us. But, obviously, it's what you do from here on out that is going to make the difference. We still have two more games with Ole Miss and series at South Carolina and Florida. That is going to determine where finish at for the conference tournament and, again, give us an opportunity for an NCAA bid.
The Maroon and White lead the overall series with its intra-state rivals by a 19-10 count, while the squads have split 14 games in Oxford right down the middle. In the 2003 series in Oxford, MSU took a 14-0 victory in the opener, but dropped games two and three on walk-off home runs, 6-5 and 10-8.
In Thursday's game, Ole Miss utilized a crucial Mississippi State error to plate a run in the first and rallied for an insurance score in the seventh behind a four-hit shutout from lefthander Mary Jane Callahan. Callahan also helped her own cause at the plate, scoring both runs on a 1-for-3 hitting line. The Muenster, Texas, native crossed the plate with the gamewinner after drawing a leadoff walk in the top half of the final frame.
