'Dogs Head To SEC Tournament As No. 8 Seed
Maroon And White To Face SEC Regular Season Champs In First Round
STARKVILLE, Miss. -- Fresh off a 10-day break from competition, eighth-seeded Mississippi State (33-26) will head to Plant City, Fla., for the 2003 SEC Tournament and will take on regular season champion and top-seeded Georgia (54-10) in the nightcap of the first round at 8 p.m. EDT on Thursday in Plant City Stadium.
Mississippi State, which has not seen competition since an April 27 loss at Florida, practiced intensely this week in between academic finals. Georgia heads into Plant City on a high after taking a home series with SEC West champion Alabama this past weekend to clinch the league's regular season crown.
"I think the combination of, one, having the time off and, two, finishing with finals, helped us relax a little bit," said Mississippi State head coach Jay Miller. "School's over and finals are over and now we can just concentrate on playing ball. I think that is a big relief and the time off helped heal some bumps and bruises, as well as some injuries."
Georgia, which climbed to No. 7 in this week's ESPN.com/USA Softball Top 25 poll on Tuesday afternoon, took the bookends of a three-game set with the Maroons in Starkville on March 15-16. MSU and Georgia will square off for the 19th time in a series led by the Maroon and White, 13-5. The Starkville Bulldogs own a 2-1 series lead at the SEC Tournament, with Georgia ousting State from tournament contention last season on a 7-1 decision. Red and Black staff ace Michelle Green limited State's hot bats to a paltry .175 clip in two victories in the series earlier this season. Mississippi State got a shutout from its ace, Melissa Massey, in game two of the set and rode seven hits to a 2-0 blanking of Georgia.
The opening round game of the tournament will feature the conference's top two hitting ball clubs with MSU carrying a .310 clip into Plant City Stadium, while Georgia sports a .308 team average. Georgia and Mississippi State rank 1-2 in the league in extra-base hits as well.
"They have a good team," Miller said. "They hit the ball well throughout their order and they have great pitching. They are going to play solid fundamentals. They will take advantage of every mistake so, obviously, we want to try and minimize those. We've been able to score runs all year long and we want to try to continue that going into the tournament."
State can likely expect to see Green (37-7, 1.10 ERA) in the circle when the first pitch is thrown in Thursday evening's game. She currently leads the NCAA in victories and stands 10th in the country in strikeouts per seven innings.
"This is what you play for," Miller said. "There is three different seasons. You have the pre-conference season, the conference season and the postseason which is the SEC Tournament and, hopefully, the NCAA Tournament. The good thing is that we are healthy. We have Jennifer Waterman back and Jennifer Jessup back and I think that will give us a big boost going into the tournament."
A first round victory for the Maroon and White will pit them against the victor in the first round contest between fourth-seeded South Carolina and fifth-seeded Florida on Friday at 8 p.m. A loss by the Bulldogs will match them up with the loser of that game on Friday at 2 p.m. Fans can follow the live game action via a hyperlink at www.SECSports.com.