It’s been a weird week for Mississippi State.

The Bulldogs started it by beating Oregon on Sunday for their first sweep of a top 10 team in four years. That moved them into the top 15 in both the Baseball America and Collegiate Baseball polls.

Then, late Tuesday night, they fell into a crater.

The Bulldogs wasted a six-run lead in the eighth inning and lost 16-12 in 10 innings to Eastern Kentucky. On Wednesday, they barely hit the ball at all and fell 3-1 to Oral Roberts.

The two midweek losses at home brought the Bulldogs (12-5-1) back to reality, and their fall is about to get worse.

On Friday night they’ll open the Southeastern Conference schedule by going on the road to face No. 2 Vanderbilt (16-1).

“We hit the crap out of the ball (Tuesday) night and had great at-bats,” Mississippi State center fielder Jacob Robson told the Tupelo Daily Journal after the loss to Oral Roberts. “But sometimes it just doesn’t work and we go into a funk.”

The Bulldogs had avoided any sort of funk until this week. After losing two of their first three games, they won 11 of the next 13 with a tie against Oklahoma as one of the two non-wins. They’re hitting .317 as a team, but struck out 19 times in the two midweek losses.

Now they need to bounce back against a Vanderbilt pitching staff that ranks second in the SEC in strikeouts, and that is averaging 11 strikeouts per game.

“We did not take advantage of walks and HBP’s the way they did. We also struck out 12 times and I’m guessing eight of those were on bounced breaking balls,” Mississippi State coach John Cohen said after the loss to Oral Roberts.

On the flip side of the coin, Mississippi’s other SEC team is still rolling.

Ole Miss (17-1) has won 12 consecutive games heading into this weekend’s SEC series at Tennessee (11-5).

Ole Miss ranks 11th in the 14-team SEC in team batting average, but has done a good job of situational hitting to score runs and of jumping on top of teams.

The Rebels are hitting .285 overall, but .330 with runners in scoring position and .387 with the bases loaded.

They’ve outscored opponents 29-6 in the first inning and are 10-0 when scoring in their first at-bat.

“One of the things last year’s team didn’t do very well was we didn’t walk, and this team’s been able to do that,” coach Mike Bianco said after the Rebels beat UAB 5-1 on Wednesday. “Normally we’ll get the big hit and the timely hit. Seems like we’ve done that the past 17 games. You’re not always going to get it, but we’ve gotten it a lot. We just needed a few more to really break the game open, but that’s going to happen sometimes.”

Tennessee has won four of its last five games coming into this weekend’s series.

It will open SEC play at home for the first time since 2009. The Volunteers suffered a big blow Wednesday night, however, when leading hitter Jeff Moberg tore his ACL on a play at second base while trying

Moberg was hitting .415 with nine doubles and 28 runs scored in 16 games. He is out for the rest of the season.

Elsewhere in the SEC on the conference’s opening weekend, Kentucky will take on Georgia; Missouri goes to Florida; Texas A&M is at Auburn; Arkansas heads east to South Carolina; and Alabama plays at LSU.