Miss. State forces CWS to decisive third game

The 2021 college baseball season is headed to its climax.

After dropping Game 1 of the College World Series Finals, Mississippi State bounced back emphatically on Tuesday night, routing Vanderbilt 13-2 to send the best-of-3 series to a decisive last game.

The Bulldogs jumped out to a 1-0 lead in Game 1 only to see Vanderbilt respond with a seven-run bottom of the first inning. On Tuesday, as the home team, Mississippi State exited the first with a 1-0 advantage against Commodores starter Christian Little, and after seeing Vanderbilt tie the game in the second, the Bulldogs took control.

Mississippi State chased Little with a four-run third highlighted by a two-run single from Scotty Dubrule and continued pulling away from there. The Bulldogs added a run in the fifth when MLB.com’s No. 137 Draft prospect Tanner Allen led off with a walk and scored four batters later on a fielder’s choice ball to short off the bat of Dubrule.

Allen factored into his team’s two-run fifth as well, singling with two outs and scoring the second run of the frame on an RBI base hit to left-center by Luke Hancock.

Already leading 8-1, the Bulldogs put the game out of reach with a five-run bottom of the seventh sparked by Allen reaching on a leadoff hit-by-pitch. By the end of the frame, 10 Mississippi State batters had gone to the plate with four reach as walks or hit batsmen. Shortstop Lane Forsythe dealt the biggest blow of the inning with a two-out, two-run single up the middle.

Every starter in Mississippi State’s lineup had at least one hit on the night, and Forsythe led the way with three. Dubrule’s four RBIs were a game high.

On the mound, the Bulldogs only needed to use two pitchers. Houston Harding allowed a run on two hits over four innings in his start, and Preston Johnson went the rest of the way, striking out seven and surrendering one run on two hits in five relief innings.

If Mississippi State is going to continue to ride the momentum and win in Game 3, it'll have to go through Kumar Rocker, who will be pitching on short rest, but has been lights out in elimination games in his collegiate career.

Rocker is a perfect 3-0 in three starts in elimination games -- with a 0.84 ERA and 41 strikeouts in 21 1/3 innings.