State Closes Out Homestand With 3-1 Win Over Samford
May 25, 2016 | Softball
* Official Statistics
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STARKVILLE, Miss. - Mississippi State scored single runs in three different innings to rally behind a dominant outing from righthander Ragan Blake and the Bulldogs closed out a lengthy homestand with its 12th consecutive win in Starkville on a 3-1 victory over Samford in the second half of a Wednesday afternoon doubleheader at the MSU Softball Field.
Hayle Guess turned in a 2-for-3 night at the plate, while Courtney Bures extended her hit streak out to six games with a RBI on a 1-for-3 hitting line to pace Mississippi State (15-0) who stretched their 2006 home record to a perfect 10-0. Shelley Stanley hit a solo homer on a 1-for-2 plate tally to pace Samford (5-12).
MSU righthander Ragan Blake (8-0) matched a career high with 12 strikeouts and scattered a pair of hits over her eighth complete game of the season in picking up the win for the Bulldogs. Samford starter Stephanie Royall (2-4) took the hard luck loss for the visitors, despite allowing just a lone earned run and striking out five in six innings from the circle.
"Ragan pitched a great game," said Mississippi State head coach Jay Miller. "She threw one bad pitch and they hit it out but she was in control the whole way. I thought we did a nice job of executing also. We got some runners on, we moved them over and we drove them in. We just kept chipping away and we had some opportunities to break that one open, we just didn't get the hits at the right time."
After taking down Samford 1-2-3 in the first, Blake allowed a leadoff homer to Stanley in the first that gave State just its second deficit of the season. The lead would last just one inning, however, as Lindsay Hunley drew a two-out walk in the third, the used consecutive singles from Guess and Nakita Boyce to tie the game back up.
The Bulldogs got their leadoff batter aboard on a Samford throwing error in the fifth and used its short game to move the runner to third before Hunley's perfectly laid suicide squeeze bunt gave the lead to the hosts. The Maroon and White led off the sixth with consecutive base hits, including a RBI double by Bures, to plate an insurance run.
Despite allowing Stanley's homer to lead off the second, Blake would retire 17 of the first 18 batters she faced, before giving up a charity single with two outs in the sixth.
Mississippi State will be back in action this weekend when the Bulldogs head to Waco, Texas, for the four-team Compass Bank Invitational on the campus of Baylor University. State will open its portion of tournament play on Friday with a 12:30 contest against 13th-ranked Washington (12-3), before taking on the host and 18th-ranked Bears (11-5) at 5:30 p.m. The Bulldogs will begin Saturday's tournament action with a first time matchup against undefeated Bowling Green (6-0) at 10 a.m.
