COLUMBIA, Mo. — Mississippi State was two outs away from putting a miserable start to the Southeastern Conference season behind it and climbing out of its hole. The Missouri Tigers kicked the Bulldogs right back into it.

Missouri, with the help of two errors, scored twice in the bottom of the ninth inning to tie the game and then beat Mississippi State 5-4 in the 11th on a sacrifice fly by Mark Vierling.

Missouri (19-6, 3-3 SEC) took two out of three in the weekend series as Mississippi State (13-12, 1-5) sunk to last place in the SEC Western Division standings.

“You have to earn it, especially on the road,” Mississippi State coach Gary Henderson said. “Every at-bat counts. Every defensive play counts. We had a couple of plays we didn’t make in the ninth inning and it hurt us.”

Mississippi State outhit Missouri 16-9, and took a 4-2 lead with a three-run burst in the seventh inning. Jake Mangum plated two runs with a double, and then scored on a single by Luke Alexander.
Hunter Stovall had an RBI single in the sixth inning to bring in MSU’s first run.

MSU starter Jacob Billingsley failed to record an out in the first inning. He hit one batter, walked three and threw a wild pitch in a brief 21-pitch outing.

Cole Gordon relieved him and got out of the jam with minimal damage, then pitched through the sixth inning without allowing another run. Gordon allowed two hits and two walks, and struck out four.

“We have to look at the positives,” Henderson said. “We had 16 hits with some really great at-bats in the late stages of the game. The bullpen allowed one earned run in basically 11 innings of work. Cole Gordon was exceptional. We really pitched well throughout the series in some difficult circumstances.”

Jared Liebelt and J.P France were also strong out of the bullpen, with 2 1/3 innings each, but the Bulldogs’ defense let the game get away.

In the bottom of the ninth inning, Zach Hanna reached base on a one-out single and got to second when the Bulldogs botched the throw on a fielder’s choice. He then scored on a single by Trey Harris to cut it to 3-2.

A walk and another bobbled grounder by third baseman Jordan Westburg brought in the tying run before France could get out of the inning.

The Bulldogs left two runners on base in the 10th inning and one in the 11th. In the bottom of the 11th, Harris singled with one out and went to third on a hit by Kameron Misner. Vierling followed with a deep fly ball to left field to bring in Harris with the winning run.

“It feels really good. We’re going to look back at this as a turning point. If we don’t win this game, it’s a huge up-field battle in SEC play. We knew that. We came into this game and knew that this was a must-win for us,” Missouri coach Steve Bieser said.