STARKVILLE, Miss. — The No. 10-seed Notre Dame baseball team couldn’t keep up with the Bulldogs bats Monday night at Dudy Noble Field and fell in the decisive game three 11-7.
Mississippi State (45-16) erupted for a six-run second inning and the Irish tried to chip away as the game went along. The deficit proved to be too steep to overcome and the season came to a close for the Irish (34-13) in the Super Regional round.
HOW IT HAPPENED
For the third time in the Super Regional, Notre Dame struck first in the opening inning. In his first pitch of the at-bat, Cole went the other way and it just cleared the wall in right center for a solo home run.
Mississippi State struck right back in the bottom half of the inning with an RBI single from Luke Hancock. After the first full inning of play, the game was level at 1-1.
The Bulldogs took their first lead of the game in the second after a big inning. They scored six runs in the frame with the big shot coming from a three-run blast off the bat of Logan Tanner. The Irish found themselves in a big hole early on, trailing 7-1 after the second inning.
The Irish got a run back with back-to-back hits to begin the third. David LaManna doubled into the gap in left center and Spencer Myers singled to right to score LaManna. The Bulldogs responded with a run in the bottom of the inning and kept their six-run lead at 8-2.
Mississippi State added two runs in the fourth and extended the lead to 10-2.
The Irish started to fight back in the top of the fifth, putting up their first crooked number of the evening. Cole singled to score Myers for the first run of the inning but the Irish weren’t done. Carter Putz doubled to left to score Cole and Jared Miller to trim the lead to 10-5.
The Bulldogs got a run back in the bottom of the inning and extended their lead back to six runs at 11-5.
The Irish kept chipping away in the seventh with their second home run of the night. Niko Kavadas unloaded on a fastball and hit it over the boxes in right field for a two-run blast. The home run trimmed the deficit to 11-7. That is the closest the Irish would get as the Bulldogs finished off the final two innings.
With the loss, the Irish season ends in the Super Regionals with a final record of 34-13.
—ND—