The University of Mississippi Athletics
Baseball Finishes Season on High-Note
6/21/1999 | Baseball
May 10, 1998
OXFORD, Miss. -- Ole Miss did what it needed to do Sunday defeating No. 2 LSU 10-8 but Arkansas defeated Mississippi State 8-3 in Starkville to earn the final wild card spot to the SEC Tournament and bringing an end to the Rebels' season.
The victory gave Ole Miss a 2-1 win in the weekend series against LSU and the Rebels finish the season with their best record since 1995 at 30-23 and 13-15 in the SEC. LSU will head into next week's SEC Tournament as the No. 2 seed with a 41-15 overall mark and at 21-9 in the conference.
"This was our play-off game today," said Ole Miss head coach Pat Harrison. "I'm very proud of our players and I'm especially proud of the effort we gave these past few weeks."
Ole Miss jumped out to a big early lead, taking advantage of two LSU errors for five unearned runs during a six-run first inning.
LSU rallied to within 7-3 behind Cedrick Harris' two-run home run in the second and Eddy Furniss' RBI double in the third.
Chad Mead and Robert Shelton then led-off the bottom of the fourth with back-to-back home runs to put the Rebels up 9-3.
The Tigers rallied again with four runs in the fifth and loaded the bases in the sixth. However, relief pitcher Dan McShea got Furniss to ground into an inning ending double play to preserve a 10-7 Ole Miss lead.
Furniss led-off the ninth with a solo shot off McShea to make it 10-8. Freshman Justin Huisman then came in for McShea and set the Tigers down 1-2-3 to record his third save of the year.
McShea pitched three innings of relief, allowing one earned run on five hits while striking out four.
Doug Thompson suffered the loss for LSU, lasting just three innings and allowing nine runs -- four earned -- on 10 hits.
Josh Dalton went 4-for-5 for LSU despite the loss as the Tigers out-hit the Rebels 13-12.
Brad Henderson, Michael Rosamond, Matt Ceriani, and Shelton collected two hits each.
Shortstop Jason Huisman finished his career No. 2 on the Rebels' career hit list with 249 and third in career home runs, with 31, and in career RBIs with 155.
