It may have taken 126-years, but Mississippi State University finally has its first national championship in a team sport.
For an athletic department that’s been participating in college athletics since 1895, it’s hard to fathom that the Mississippi State baseball team was the one to accomplish what all others before them could not.
MISSISSIPPI STATE IS YOUR #CollegeWorldSeries 𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐈𝐎𝐍! 🏆
The Bulldogs defeat the Commodores in a 9-0 blowout game to win the school's first ever National Title in ANY sport. #HailState pic.twitter.com/dwPVp7Nr29
— Sporting News (@sportingnews) July 1, 2021
“Thunder and Lightning” — Will Clark and Rafael Palmeiro — couldn’t make it happen. Dak Prescott wasn’t the one to get it done. It was the 2021 baseball team, battling through the trials and tribulations of Covid-19, to find a way to bring a national championship back to Starkville, Mississippi.
They took down Notre Dame in the Super Regionals, won a winner-take-all game against Texas to advance to the CWS final, and — after losing the first game against Vanderbilt — won back-to-back games to beat the heavily favored Commodores.
“When you’re going to do something legendary for the first time, it was going to have to be tough,” head coach Chris Lemonis said. “The reason we are champions is we just have a really tough, resilient group. It’s been built over time. It’s the accumulation of the last three years.”
On Wednesday night in Omaha, the celebration started early.
Mississippi State jumped on Vanderbilt star pitcher Kumar Rocker from the start, scoring three runs in the first two innings. A four-run seventh inning got the party started, capped off by a three-run homer run by Kellum Clark, and Vanderbilt never was able to get anything going on the base paths.
“I couldn’t be more happy for a team, a town, a fan base, the whole state of Mississippi, except Oxford, of course,” SEC player of the year Tanner Allen said. “Those guys are always on my back. So I had to take a shot at them.”
“This team overcame everything, man. From getting swept at home in front of 10,000 versus Arkansas to Missouri coming in and taking a series from us and then getting embarrassed at the SEC tournament. We just kept playing and playing. You blink an eye, we’re national champions.”
Bulldogs pitcher Will Bednar was brilliant on three days rest, retiring 15 in a row at one point. Bednar went six complete innings, striking out four without giving up a hit. Vanderbilt ended Mississippi State’s no-hitter bid in the eighth inning, but it was the only hit Vanderbilt would muster on the evening. It was the first one-hitter at the College World Series since 2014.
A no-hitter would have been nice, but it ultimately didn’t matter.
In their 12th CWS appearance, the Bulldogs finally were able to claim Omaha as their own. Only two schools have had more CWS appearances without a title — Florida State and Clemson.
Let the OmaDawgs reign! #CWS pic.twitter.com/fcPbHLmKI6
— NCAA Baseball (@NCAACWS) July 1, 2021
If you’re a fan of college sports, this was the result you wanted.
More than 20,000 Bulldog fans made the trip to Omaha to witness history on Wednesday, including Prescott and Palmeiro. Mississippi State is everything we love about collegiate athletics — passion, dedication, and “root, root for the home team.” After 126 years, all the waiting finally paid off. Mississippi State has its Natty.
Hail State.
Joe Morgan is the Sports Reporter for The Daily Wire. Most recently, Morgan covered the Clippers, Lakers, and the NBA for Sporting News. Send your sports questions to [email protected].
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.