OXFORD, Miss. – No. 2 Auburn scored 10 unanswered runs in the sixth through ninth innings to defeat No. 22 Ole Miss 13-8 in the series finale Saturday afternoon at Swayze Field.
With the win, Auburn secures the No. 6 seed in next week’s SEC Tournament and will play the winner of No. 11 Mississippi State and No. 14 Texas A&M in the late game Wednesday at the Hoover Met.
Trailing 5-3 with runners on the corners and nobody out in the bottom of the fifth inning, Auburn went to Ryan Hetzler in relief, and the sophomore right hander went the rest of the way to secure the win.
“That was the game,” head coach Butch Thompson said of the situation in the fifth. “That’s our best finisher, our best reliever that we had left for the weekend, and we went ahead and dumped him in the game. I said I’ll worry about the ninth in the ninth. I didn’t know he was going to throw five innings for us, but he did an amazing job.”
Hetzler (2-0) allowed a pair of inherited runners and one more to score in the Rebels’ four-run fifth inning, but he kept the home team at bay in the final four frames as he registered a season-high 5.0 innings pitched.
“There’s absolutely nothing left in the tank. That was everything I had,” Hetzler said. “It means a lot, just having a lot of trust behind me. I kept asking for one more, one more. I just wanted to keep going out there to help my team out. It’s our seniors’ last game, last regular season game, so I wanted to do it for them, not just for me. I really just tried to leave everything out on the field and help our team.”
Trailing 8-3 in the top of the sixth inning, the Tigers scored five runs in the frame to tie the game before taking the lead with two runs in their next at-bat and ultimately adding three insurance runs in the ninth. All nine players in the lineup recorded at least one hit while six drove in a run. The five-run comeback tied the series finale vs. Vanderbilt for the largest of the season.
“They did the same thing yesterday,” Thompson added of the offense. “They were resilient as could be. I’m just thankful. This was a big win for the program. With everything that’s going on in college baseball and the shaping going into the SEC Tournament, the postseason. We had done a good job the last three weekends and won every series. We needed to get one today, and the guys responded in a big way.”
Cooper McMurray drove in a two-out run to extend the five-run sixth inning, and Lucas Steele tied the game on the next pitch with a two-run double over the head of the left fielder. Chris Rembert then gave Auburn the lead for good with a RBI double down the left field line in the seventh.
“It was a big ballgame. Each team wanted to win as bad as they could, and I’m proud of the guys for how we responded,” McMurray said. “Thursday and Friday didn’t go as well as we planned, but we showed a lot of fight last night in the later innings. It kind of just continued today. They punched us. We punched back. Just being able to land that last punch, and Hetzler coming in and finishing the ballgame was huge.”
Ole Miss (37-18, 16-14 SEC) wasted no time getting on the scoreboard with a leadoff home run from Mitchell Sanford in the bottom of the first.
After Christian Chatterton struck out the side in the second, Auburn (38-17, 17-13 SEC) threatened to even the score with the bases loaded and one out on a pair of walks and a single. However, a flyout to right resulted in an inning-ending double play as the runner was ruled out at the plate.
Following the leadoff home run and hit batter, Chatterton retired nine straight Rebels from the end of the first through the third inning.
Ike Irish started the top of the fourth inning with a solo homer to center field to tie the game, 1-1. The long ball was Irish’s 16th of the season, 12 of which have come on the road in league play, and his third of the weekend. Three straight Tigers reached with two outs in the inning, and Bristol Carter came through with a two-run single off the glove of a diving third baseman to give Auburn its first lead of the weekend.
Ole Miss got the runs right back on a walk, single and three-run home run on a two-strike pitch in the bottom of the inning.
Eric Guevara started the fifth inning with a double to left center and advanced to third on a one-out single from McMurray, but back-to-back popups ended the inning.
Leading 4-3, Ole Miss added the aforementioned four runs in the bottom of the fifth, but that’s the last time the Rebels would score in the contest.
Guevara chopped a two-run single over the head of the third baseman to start Auburn’s scoring in the sixth and ignite the offensive comeback. After Rembert drove in the go-ahead run on his double in the seventh, Carter drew a balk with the bases loaded to extend the lead to 10-8.
The score remained as such until the ninth, when Rembert doubled for the second time in as many at-bats and Guevara was hit by a pitch before Irish walked to load the bases. McMurray drew a bases-loaded hit-by-pitch and another run scored on a double play. Irish then capped off the scoring in the contest with a run on a wild pitch.