April 28, 2017
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STARKVILLE, Miss. ÃÆ'Æ'¢ÃƒÆ'¢'¬" Jonah Todd extended his hitting streak to 11 games, but No. 5 Auburn baseball fell 5-2 to No. 8 Mississippi State Friday at Dudy Noble Field.
"I thought Keegan [Thompson] went to another gear a couple of times," Auburn head coach Butch Thompson said. "I won't take away anything Konnor Pilkington did. There's a reason why, outside of their first weekend, they've won every Friday night. We knew something had to give tonight.
"We just kept battling. It was just one of those nights. No excuses, I thought we did play hard. I thought we were engaged the entire ball game and battled, but just came up short."
Keegan Thompson (5-2) completed 6.2 innings for his longest SEC outing of the season. He allowed five runs on six hits. The right-hander struck out five with no walks.
Pilkington struck out four and allowed two runs in seven innings. He improved to 5-3 on the season.
MSU (30-14, 14-5 SEC) took a 1-0 lead in the first inning with Jake Mangum coming in to score on a balk by Keegan Thompson.
After Auburn tied the game on a sac fly by Josh Anthony in the top of the fourth, but the Bulldogs answered with two runs in the bottom half to re-take the lead at 3-1.
The Tigers (30-14, 12-7 SEC) got a run back in the fifth thanks to a pair of errors as Todd scored to make it 3-2. Todd finished with two hits for his 19th multi-hit game of the season.
Mississippi State extended its lead to 4-2 in the sixth on a RBI double by Cody Brown. The Bulldogs added a run in the seventh on a RBI single by Ryan Gridley.
Gridley had three hits and scored twice for the Bulldogs.
Auburn and MSU wrap the series Saturday with a doubleheader scheduled for 2 pm and 7 pm CT.