Mississippi State Stuns Oregon Behind Historic No-Hitter

Mississippi State’s had a lot of good innings from inside the circle this season, but nothing matches what just happened.

Alyssa Faircloth walked into a regional game against a national seed and delivered a no-hitter that felt calm, steady and inevitable by the time the seventh inning rolled around.

One walk kept it from perfection, but nothing Oregon put in the air or on the ground ever looked dangerous. The closest the Ducks came was on a fly ball for the final out of the game.

"I knew [Kinley] Keller had it,” Faircloth said after the game. “You know, if it was in the yard, she was going to get it, so, I mean, it was just trust in her, trust in my defense, those kinds of things. There really wasn't any thought. I was just happy that she got it.”

It was the kind of postseason performance that freezes a bracket for a moment and makes everyone look up. More importantly, it put the Bulldogs one win away from a spot in the NCAA Super Regionals.

The Bulldogs didn’t waste it one of Faircloth’s best games of the season, either.

Gretta Grassel set the tone with her first career homer on the seventh pitch of the game, Morgan Stiles reached four times, and Mississippi State kept stacking pressure.

By the fourth inning, the only real question was whether Faircloth would finish what she started. She did, and Mississippi State walked off the field with a 4-0 win, its first 40-win season since 2008 and a 2-0 regional start for the first time since 2000.

This wasn’t just a clean win. It was a program moment.

A no-hitter on the road against a ranked team, a staff that just broke the school strikeout record, and a lineup that keeps finding early swings that matter.

"I'm just really proud of the way our team played today," Mississippi State coach Samantha Ricketts said. "I love the way it showed up. I think, from the beginning of the game, [Morgan] Stiles, Gretta [Grassel] setting the table for us, and then just getting Alyssa [Faircloth] some runs early and letting her do what she does best. It's never easy to throw a postseason no-hitter, especially against a quality team like Oregon. love the effort, the confidence that she went out there with – the defense behind her – and just knowing that they all had each other's backs. They were really just playing together, trying to keep it loose and have some fun, because we know that's when we're going to really be confident and go out there and play our best softball."

Mississippi State heads into Sunday with two chances to reach a Super Regional, and after a night like this, it feels like the Bulldogs are carrying more than just momentum.

They’re carrying belief.

Add us as a preferred source on Google