Brady Bramlett jogs off the mound against Georgia. Photo Credit: Joshua McCoy the outing it needed to have a chance, and beyond a fifth inning that was unkind to him, he kept the Ole Miss (43-17) lineup off balance with a fastball in the low 90’s and a sharp change up that had the Rebels guessing for most of the night.
Ole Miss knew coming into Friday night’s game that Pac 12 champion Utah was not your typical four seed. It got everything it wanted and more from the Utes, with the last dose coming on a pair of two-out hits in the 10th inning that helped Utah record a 6-5 upset win over the Rebels.
“I tip my hats to the Utah batters,” Brady Bramlett said. “They’re not your average four seed. They’re a great ball club and they compete every at bat.’
Bramlett struggled in the five innings he put in, despite allowing just two runs on three hits, the Utes made him work, and spiked his pitch count to 100 when he exited the game.
“The mindset going in was just to compete and give our team the best chance to win, and at the end of the day, Utah hitters strung together those timely hits,” Bramlett said.
On the other side of things, Jayson Rose gave Utah (25-27) the outing it needed to have a chance, and beyond a fifth inning that was unkind to him, he kept Ole Miss (43-17) lineup off balance with a fastball in the low 90’s and a sharp change up that had the Rebels guessing for most of the night.
“He kept us off balance for the majority of the game,” Errol Robinson said. “He did his job as a pitcher. He was a pain in our behind on the mound, and it took us a little bit to put things together, and that’s how the game kind of went. They got the big hit and we’d get runners on and couldn’t string them together.”
Rose’s offense is backed him as well.
It began when a Josh Rose chopper scooted through the right side for a two-out RBI base hit that gave the Utes an early 1-0 advantage. Rose was far from finished as he went 2-5 with 3 RBIs on the night.
Kyle Watson is a guy has come on as of late in the outfield for Ole Miss, and he continued to that trend when he took a 3-1 fastball deep to center field for a solo home run in the third that evened the score at one.
A game that featured four lead changes turned again in the both halves of the fifth inning. Initially, Utah took a 2-1 lead on an A.J Young sacrifice fly that made good on an Austin Jackson leadoff double the escaped the reach of a stumbling J.B. Woodman.
Ole Miss attempted to grab control of the game in the bottom half of the inning when it plated four runs on a couple of hits and three walks. Rose walked in a run before Will Golsan singled into shallow center field that gave the Rebels the control they were looking for and a 4-2 lead. A Tate Blackman fielder’s choice a batter later bumped it to to a three-run lead at 5-2.
If Ole Miss got all it wanted from Utah, it particularly got a full helping of Jayson and Josh Rose. Josh’s RBI double to the wall in right-center field was the centerpiece in a three-run answer for the Utes in the top half of the sixth off of Brady Feigl, who relieved Bramlett after five innings.
“With a 5-2 lead, we’re usually pretty good, but we just couldn’t get off of the field in the sixth,” Mike Bianco said. “We still felt pretty good with (Wyatt) Short and (Will) Stokes left, but we just couldn’t get the big hit at the end.”
It seemed like every time Jayson Rose struggled, he followed it up with a shut down inning, and after his troubles in the fifth, he recorded a scoreless 6th in his final inning of the game.
“The sixth inning was the most important,” Utah coach Bill Kinneburg. “He was right at the cusp of 98 pitches at that point, had a poor inning in the fifth for him, and for him to bounce back and get three quick outs for us was probably the best inning he threw for us all night as far as location and using three pitches for strikes.”
Stokes restored balance on the mound after Feigl’s sporatic outing, and put up a scoreless two innings before handing it over to Short, who took a tie game into the 10th inning, in which a Hunter Simmons double broke the tie, and plated a Kellen Marruffo single that was the first of the two-out hits that sealed Ole Miss’ fate.
“We’re never down. I mean we get down three runs in front of 12,000, and people are like ‘It’s over,’” Simmons said. “No, not with us. We’re right back on the ropes. We’re going until the ninth. That’s been the recipe all year.”
With the win, Utah advanced into the winner’s bracket and will face Boston College at 5 p.m. tomorrow. Ole Miss faces an elimination game against Tulane at 1 p.m.
