Toward the end of an interview after Murray State won its first Missouri Valley Conference Baseball Championship title, outfielder Jonathan Hogart uttered a phrase that probably was considered rather innocent.
“Let’s go mess up a regional.”
Monday night, the Racers did exactly that. Completing a run that is now grabbing national headlines, Murray State earned its first-ever visit to the NCAA Super Regionals, beating Oxford Regional host Mississippi, 12-11, in the winner-take-all second game of the championship series. The win came one night after the Rebels drilled the Racers, 19-8, on Murray State’s first attempt to win the series in front of one of the loudest and most loyal fan bases in all of college baseball at Swayze Field.
The win continues the winningest season in Racer baseball history — 42-14 — while the Rebels head home after a 43-21 campaign.
“I wasn’t surprised and (his players) weren’t surprised,” said Murray State Head Coach Dan Skirka during a postgame interview on The SEC Network, seconds after being nailed by an ice water deluge courtesy of his players. “We were seeing everybody around the hotel and getting texts and they were all asking, ‘How are the guys? How are the guys?’ They were good and, (Sunday night), that kind of loss might have been better than one in a tight game.
“Yeah, we took it on the chin (Sunday) night but we knew we had to bounce back and knew (Ole Miss had to do it again for nine innings and (his players) were confident. They were really confident in each other and that’s the best part.
“They put in so much work and they just trust in each other and they have fun and they compete like crazy. That’s the part I’m most proud of. They just kept grinding out at-bats, making plays and our pitchers? Yeah, they’re hanging. Everybody this time of year, they’re just hanging and they’re just warriors … so happy for them.”
The Racers had to be warriors to survive the crucible in which they found themselves in the final three innings on Monday night. Heading to the bottom of the seventh, the Racers were in complete command, up 12-3 and having outhit the dangerous Rebels a stunning 19-3.
However, starting with a five-run bottom of the seventh, the late innings belonged to the Rebels as they outhit Murray State, 7-0, with two bases-loaded walks, a two-run single from Luke Hill and an RBI single from Will Furniss highlighting that uprising.
In the eighth inning, it was the Rebels’ signature scoring weapon — the home run, of which they hit three on Monday, giving them an imposing 19 for the weekend — putting them squarely on the Racers’ tail as No. 9 hitter Brayden Randle’s three-run shot to right field lit the Swayze candle by cutting the lead to what became the final score.
However, even though he was touched for the Randle tater and the two RBI singles in the seventh, Racer right-handed relief pitcher Graham Kelham was not going to allow Ole Miss to take this title away from his team. With two runners on base and the Rebels a hit from tying the game, Kelham delivered the two biggest strikeouts of this historic season, fanning both Furniss and Judd Utermark (whose two-run homer in the fourth had cut the Racers’ edge to 5-3) to keep the Racers in the lead.
In the ninth, Kelham, who went 2 2/3 innings to earn his seventh save, struck out home run threats Issac Humphrey and Campbell Smithwick before getting Hayden Frederico to fly out to Hogart in center, igniting a wild celebration for the entire Racer team.
“You can’t explain the feeling. It’s unlike anything ever … definitely the biggest game of my career, that’s for sure, and probably for the majority of the guys here. It’s awesome …first time in program history and, hopefully, more to come,” said Hogart, who probably now has two of the most memorable quotes of this postseason run.
Along with the “mess up the regional comment,” he was also the one that proclaimed the Racers were playing with “house money” Sunday night, minutes after their first loss of the weekend in three outings.
Mistone agreed with the second of those sentiments after being one of two Racers to collect four hits Monday.
“All weekend, we were playing with house money (a common term for a team with nothing to lose) and that’s a scary thing when you’re playing someone with house money,” said Mistone, who ended his weekend 9-for-19 at the dish (.474) out of the five spot in the batting order. “I just stuck to the process. This whole lineup — one through nine — is just fun to be part of and I just wanted to do my part to help the team keep winning.”
Still, the Racers helped allow the Rebels to begin cutting the lead.
“I thought we were going to keep scoring. Obviously, we didn’t in the eighth and ninth,” said Skirka of a Racer offense that was superb for most of the night. “Graham Kelham … just the slowest heart beat in America (got the save against this same Ole Miss team in Friday’s 9-6 win in the opening round, then stopped Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season champion Georgia Tech Saturday night in the late going of a 13-11 Racer win). We’re just confident in him so it was ride or die there at the end of the game.
“That was just unbelievable.”
That was the perfect way to describe this game through the middle of the seventh as the Racers dominated the team that finished second to top national seed Vanderbilt in the previous weekend’s SEC Tournament in Hoover, Alabama.
Like Sunday, the Racers took an early lead on the tournament’s 10th national seed as Dan Tauken’s RBI groundout opened the scoring in the top of the second. That was soon followed by an RBI single from Conner Cunningham.
That lead expanded to 5-0 in the third on RBI singles from Dom Decker and Will Vierling and an RBI double from Mistone. After two Rebels home runs sliced the lead to two runs by the bottom of the fourth, the Racers went on a big scoring binge in the fifth.
It started when Tauken reached base on an error to score an unearned run. Hogart’s two-run single and Dustin Mercer’s two-run triple then left the Racers up, 9-3.
Mistone’s RBI single pushed the lead to seven runs in the sixth and an RBI double from Carson Garner and Mistone reaching base on an error put the Racers in command of a 12-3 lead.
Mistone and Vierling were both 4-for-5 with Mistone collecting two RBIs and scoring three runs and Vierling getting an RBI and run apiece. Garner and Decker both had three hits with Decker scoring three times and Garner twice.
No discussion of this game would be complete , though, without the pitching efforts of Racer starters Issac Silva and Nic Schutte. Silva, who struggled Saturday against Tech, was solid Monday, going four innings and allowing three runs and only two hits with four Ks. Schutte went 2 1/3 innings and allowed three runs, while striking out five Rebels and allowing them two hits.
Those were huge as they helped the Racers’ sapped pitching staff to not be overextended.
“That’s just guts,” Skirka said. “Silva did it last weekend (bouncing back from a tough outing against Belmont in The Valley opener in Normal, Illinois to hold dangerous Missouri State in check in the championship round). Schutte didn’t have to do that last weekend but that just speaks to the makeup of the team … the toughness. Silva wanted the ball again (Sunday) after he pitched Saturday (and reached the fifth inning against Tech) and Schutte, with 120 pitches on Friday (in reaching the seventh).
“It basically wasn’t a doubt (that both were going to be used Monday). It was who was going to start and who was going to come in next.”
“They pitched their number one and number two guys and their number one and number two guys pitched like their number one and number two guys,” said Ole Miss Head Coach Mike Bianco, who was the Rebels’ skipper in 2022 when they made an amazing run to the College World Series title in Omaha.
Three pitchers who were part of that run were on the mound for Ole Miss Monday night — Friday’s starter, Riley Maddox, Mason Nichols and redshirt junior Hunter Elliott, whose performance in the title game against Oklahoma as a freshman is still remembered today. Elliott pitched a perfect ninth inning Monday night after firing more than 100 pitches in Saturday’s win over Western Kentucky.
“Everybody wanted the ball,” Bianco said of his pitching staff. He then gave credit to the Racers.
“They’re just tough. That’s a very good offense on the other side. They hit the ball and they hit it all weekend. Even (Sunday night, when the Racers lost despite 13 hits), they were just terrific.
“You can try to dissect it all you want, but they beat us. It’s hard to swallow right now but you’ve got to tip your cap.”
Before Monday, the closest Murray State had come to a regional title was in 1979 at Starkville, Mississippi, home of Ole Miss’ forever SEC arch rival, Mississippi State. The Racers beat Tulane and New Orleans and were in the championship series with host Miss State, also a longtime powerhouse from the SEC and 2021 CWS champ. The Bulldogs proved too much, winning the first game by an 8-6 score, then hammering the Racers by an 18-8 score in the winner-take-all game.
Murray State has now given The Valley a Super Regional team the past three years (Indiana State and Evansville). The Racers will face ACC powerhouse Duke in a series that will begin this weekend in Durham, North Carolina.