Mississippi State Opens NCAA Regional With Extra-Inning Walk-Off Win

Nadia Barbary homered for career hit No. 200, then helped Mississippi State walk off Saint Mary’s in its NCAA Regional opener.

Mississippi State Infielder Gabby Schaeffer (#7) during the game between Saint Mary’s and Mississippi State at Jane Sanders Stadium in Eugene, OR. | Mississippi State Athletics

Mississippi State didn’t make it easy on anyone trying to stay awake back home, but the Bulldogs made the late night worth it.

They opened the Eugene Regional with a 3-2 walk‑off win in eight innings, the kind of grind-it-out postseason game that can settle a team in a hurry.

It didn’t start smoothly. Saint Mary’s jumped on Mississippi State  for two runs in the first, and for a while it looked like the Bulldogs might spend the whole night chasing.

But Peja Goold locked in, Alyssa Faircloth backed her up, and the lineup slowly chipped away until the game flipped.

"I think it was a full team win. Peja [Goold] held it down, and then Alyssa came in and did what she always does,” Mississippi State’s Nadia Barbary said. “She actually came into the game, and she said, 'I'm going right, right at them, so be ready for defense and to kill the ball.' Her mindset with that is amazing to me. And then offensively, we were just sticking to the plan, getting off our best swings, and eventually they'll fall."

Of course it was Barbary who got it moving. Career hit No. 200 left the yard in the fourth, cutting the deficit in half. An inning later, a routine ground ball turned into the tying run when it slipped through the shortstop’s legs and let Kinley Keller score all the way from first.

It wasn’t pretty, but in the postseason you take whatever breaks show up.

From there, it turned into a pitching duel. Goold struck out nine and didn’t allow a hit over her final four innings. Faircloth came in late, punched out two, and worked around a two‑on, two‑out jam in the eighth to keep the door open.

That set the stage for Barbary again. She singled to right in the bottom of the eighth, the ball skipped past the outfielder, and pinch runner Gabby Schaeffer never slowed down.

She scored from first, the Bulldogs poured out of the dugout, and Mississippi State walked off its regional opener for the first time since 2004.

It also happened to be win No. 39, matching the program’s high under Samantha Ricketts. One more gets them to 40 for just the third time ever and puts them in complete control of the weekend.

"I'm just really proud of our fight and staying in it after getting down early there," Ricketts said. "I thought the energy in our dugout and the focus were very much like, 'Hey, we've got your back, Peja [Goold].' She just really settled in, and I thought she went right at the hitters. I love that she kept us in the game and gave us a chance to scratch and claw to find a way to get back on the board. I think, overall, just a team effort. Nadia, obviously, with a couple of big hits for us there, but finding ways to make some big plays, get runners on base, so that we could continue to fight. I knew that we were going to find a way to come through there at the end, if we continued to just throw up some zeros."

Mississippi State will be back on the field Saturday at 4 p.m. in the winner’s bracket game against the Oregon‑Idaho State winner.

The Bulldogs didn’t play their cleanest game Friday night, but they won it, and that’s the only thing that matters in May.