Hot Bats, Pilkington’s Performance Lift State Past UIC

Sunday, June 4

Hattiesburg, Miss.

10:00 AM

Mississippi State

37-25

Illinois - Chicago

39-17

Mississippi State

UIC

Elijah MacNamee - NCAA Tournament vs. UIC

Elijah MacNamee went 2-for-4 against UIC with two RBIs.

Hot Bats, Pilkington’s Performance Lift State Past UIC

June 04, 2017 | Baseball

Box Score Box Score (PDF)Box Score (PDF)

HATTIESBURG, Miss. – The Mississippi State baseball team was taken to the brink before advancing in the Hattiesburg Regional Sunday afternoon.

Behind a strong start from Konnor Pilkington, second-seeded MSU held on late for a 5-4 victory against fourth-seeded Illinois-Chicago at Pete Taylor Park.

MSU (37-25) will now advance to face the loser of the Southern Mississippi-South Alabama contest at 6 p.m. Sunday. That contest will be available on ESPN3.

"An outstanding win for our guys," head coach Andy Cannazaro said. "Our guys played a full nine innings. Konnor was great for the first seven innings. He really threw a lot of strikes. Riley (Self) battled hard to get the game completed."

Pilkington (8-5) allowed one hit over the first seven innings of work and had a stretch of 14 straight retired batters. Overall, Pilkington allowed four hits and four runs (all earned), with nine strikeouts and two walks.

The strikeout performance gives Pilkington 107 for the season. He is the 19^th Bulldog hurler to strike out 100 or more batters in a season.

Pilkington was pulled after three straight hits to the start the eighth inning. Spencer Price faced two batters before giving way to Self. Self was touched for a hit in the eighth inning and then allowed a hit and walked two in the ninth inning. A strikeout and groundout followed to nail down Self's seventh save of the season.

MSU scored first in the third inning. After UIC (39-17) battled back to tie, MSU scored three times in the fourth inning to take the lead for good.

In that at-bat, Hunter Vansau started things with a one-out double. Elijah MacNamee followed with an RBI-single. Josh Lovelady walked before Cole Gordon singled to bring home MacNamee. Brent Rooker followed with school-record 30^th double to plate Lovelady.

An RBI-double by MacNamee capped the scoring for the Maroon and White in the fifth inning.

MSU finished with 14 hits and stranded 10 base runners. Jake Mangum had three hits, while Rooker, Gridley, MacNamee and Cody Brown each had two hits.

State will return to Pete Taylor Park for another elimination game on Sunday evening to take on the loser of the Southern Miss/South Alabama game at 6 p.m. CT.

Every game of the Hattiesburg Regional will air live on ESPN3, which can be streamed through the WatchESPN app, ESPN app and WatchESPN.com. All of MSU's games in the will air live on the Mississippi State Baseball Radio Network. They will also be on TuneIn Radio and will be audio streamed live online at HailState.com/Plus.

Tickets for the Hattiesburg Regional are sold out, but some remaining tickets may be made available two hours prior to first pitch of each game at the Pete Taylor Park ticket office.

For more information on the Diamond Dawg program, follow the program on Twitter, like them on Facebook and join them on Instagram by searching for "HailStateBB." You can also find all-access coverage of the program on SnapChat by searching for "HailStateSnap."