AUBURN — No. 4 Auburn baseball struck out 14 Ole Miss batters but stranded 10 of its own, and the Rebels used a pair of two-run blasts to take the first game of the Auburn Super Regional 6-4 on Friday night at Plainsman Park.
In front of a record-breaking crowd of 10,627 fans, it was a night full of missed opportunities for the Tigers. In the second and third innings, Auburn loaded the bases with one and no outs, respectively, but came away with just one run combined in the frames.
The Tigers had three chances to score a run from third with less than two outs, but capitalized just once, despite putting their leadoff man aboard in six of nine plate appearances.
Auburn was 2-for-9 with runners in scoring position.
Auburn pitchers Andreas Alvarez and LJ Cormier fanned 14 Rebels, who entered the night with a whopping 636 strikeouts on the season. However, Ole Miss scored four of its runs with two outs and in two-strike counts – proving pivotal, considering the Rebels only recorded one more hit than Auburn (10-9).
“I think the difference in the ball game tonight, because the hits were pretty close, I thought it was the two-out hits,” said Auburn head coach Butch Thompson.
Facing a 6-3 deficit heading into the bottom half of the ninth, Mason McCraine blasted his eighth homer of the season, Auburn’s only one of the night, over the wall in right to give the home team some life.
The Tigers put one more aboard with one out, but left him stranded after a pair of lineouts to right field put them in a must-win situation for Game 2 on Saturday.
“I think it's been the same thing the whole season,” McCraine said. “We're a really close team. I think this only brings us closer. I think we'll come together as a group again, closer and find a way.”
Ole Miss capitalized on a free pass with a pair of outs in the second frame when Brayden Randle singled through the right side to score Hayden Federico from second – he was hit by a pitch – giving the Rebels a swift 1-0 lead.
Auburn threatened in the bottom half of the inning, loading the bases with one out, but Cade Belyeu grounded into an inning-ending double play.
In a familiar situation in the third, Auburn loaded the bases with no outs and evened the score, but grounded into a second consecutive inning-ending double play. Bristol Carter, who returned to the lineup after not playing in last weekend’s NCAA Regional, yanked a single to the left-center gap, and McCraine went the opposite way a batter later. Eric Guavara was hit by a pitch, and Chase Fralick’s sacrifice fly to left field scored Carter.
Ole Miss answered in the top half of the fourth after Austin Fawley ripped a two-strike, two-out double down the line in left before Brayden Randle’s second RBI single, also with two strikes, of the night, scored him.
The first of a pair of timely hits for Ole Miss came in the fifth, when it posted the first multi-run frame of the game. A one-out single led to Judd Utermark’s two-run blast over the War Eagle wall in left, giving it a 4-1 lead.
Alvarez struck out the first two in the sixth inning before a two-out, full-count walk – which the Auburn crowd strongly disagreed with – ended his night at 107 pitches. Ole Miss’s Randle quickly greeted Cormier with a two-run blast on the first pitch of the at-bat off the batter’s eye in center field, giving the Rebels a four-run cushion.
The Tigers answered in the home half of the inning after Carter swiped second base, his 31st stolen base of the year, and McCraine traded places with him two pitches later with an easy standup double down the line in left, cutting Auburn’s deficit in half.
Cormier tossed three scoreless innings after the sixth, but Auburn’s lone run down the stretch came on the aforementioned McCraine homer.
Game 2 of the Super Regional will air on ESPN on Saturday at 4 p.m.
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