Mississippi State University announced on April 6 that its ninth-ranked baseball team will face the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) at Dudy Noble Field on Tuesday night. The game is scheduled for a 6 p.m. start and will be broadcast on SEC Network+.
The matchup comes as Mississippi State looks to return to winning form after a challenging Southeastern Conference series against Georgia. The Bulldogs have performed strongly at home this season, posting an 18-3 record in Starkville and holding a 23-game non-conference winning streak at Dudy Noble Field dating back to last year.
Junior right-handed pitcher Chris Billingsley Jr., from Brent, Alabama, is set to make his third start of the season for Mississippi State. Billingsley has recorded one win with a 4.09 earned run average over ten appearances and has struck out nine batters in eleven innings. He started the previous two midweek games, both wins against then eleventh-ranked Southern Miss and Grambling.
UAB will start sophomore right-hander Justin Hicks, who enters the game with two wins, one loss, and a 5.49 earned run average. Hicks has tallied eighteen strikeouts while issuing five walks this season.
Mississippi State’s offense continues to perform well with a .328 team batting average, fifty-two home runs, and a .434 on-base percentage. Graduate outfielder Bryce Chance leads the Southeastern Conference with a .412 batting average and has achieved eleven multi-hit games this season. All-American third baseman Ace Reese contributes nine home runs and forty runs batted in (RBIs), while Gehrig Frei and Ryder Woodson add depth throughout the lineup.
On the pitching side, Mississippi State holds a team earned run average of 3.41 with three hundred sixty-nine strikeouts over two hundred seventy-two innings pitched, limiting opponents to a .214 batting average.
UAB enters the contest with twenty-two wins and ten losses overall, hitting .291 as a team with fifty home runs but carrying an overall pitching staff earned run average of 6.36.
Historically, Mississippi State leads the all-time series against UAB thirty-nine games to ten and has won six consecutive meetings between the teams.
