Ole Miss baseball drops rain-soaked series opener at LSU, 5-1
BATON ROUGE, La. – (Release) Ole Miss and LSU began the final baseball series of the regular season Thursday night in Baton Rouge, and the Tigers came out victorious 5-1.
Ole Miss is now 27-26 overall and 11-17 in Southeastern Conference play, while LSU improved to 34-20 and 11-17.
In a game interrupted by weather for an hour and 39 minutes in the sixth inning, Ole Miss played solid defense and pitched well but could not generate enough offense.
After Rebel starter Riley Maddox got through the bottom of the first inning with no scoring for LSU, the Tigers got a run in the second and another in the third. A Steven Milam RBI single in the second, and a Jared Jones RBI single in the third gave the homestanding Tigers a 2-0 lead.
After two more LSU runs in the fourth, Maddox departed the game. Brayden Jones entered and gave up an RBI single before getting two outs and ending the fourth with the Tigers up 5-0.
The Rebels got on the scoreboard with one out in the top of the fifth. Judd Utermark sent one out of Alex Box Stadium/Skip Bertman Field over the left center wall to cut the LSU lead to four runs. Treyson Hughes singled to right but was stranded at first as Tiger starter Gage Jump ended things there, and the game moved to the bottom of the fifth.
Ole Miss threatened in the top of the sixth. After two outs, Will Furniss got his second hit of the day, this time a double to right; he singled in the second inning. After Ethan Groff walked, Jump was able to get out of the sixth with a strikeout, and the score remained 5-1 LSU.
With two outs in the bottom of the sixth, the Rebels and Tigers paused for the lengthy weather delay at that point. Mason Morris came in to get the final out of the inning for Ole Miss.
Morris continued to pitch the remainder of the contest and allowed no runs or hits with three strikeouts and two walks. He was the third and final pitcher for Ole Miss, following Maddox and Jones.
In the top of the ninth, the Rebels again threatened to score with runners on first and third but could not get them home to extend the game.
Jump (5-1) got the win, while Maddox (3-7) got the loss. LSU had eight hits in the game to the Rebels’ six.
Friday’s second game of the series has been moved up to noon.
Evelyn Van Pelt
Evelyn has covered sports for over two decades, beginning her journalism career as a sports writer for a newspaper in Austin, Texas. She attended Texas A&M and majored in English. Evelyn's love for Ole Miss began when her daughter Katie attended the university on a volleyball scholarship. Evelyn created the Rebel Walk in 2013 and has served as publisher and managing editor since its inception.
