After a successful outing last night against the Delta Devils, the Red Wolves looked to notch its second win in just as many days in their rematch against Mississippi Valley State.

Mississippi Valley State started off stronger than yesterday, with Willie Johnson scoring after a lead-off single and being moved to third base and home by a sacrifice bunt and sacrifice fly, respectively.

Arkansas State would promptly respond at the bottom of the first inning after Ben Klutts notched an RBI triple, bringing home Liam Hicks who drew a lead-off walk. Jaylon Deshazier would do Klutts one better however, hitting a two-run homer with two outs to give the Red Wolves a 3-1 lead. Colten Nix would continue the early onslaught, batting in Sky-Lar Culver with an RBI double.

Karsen Reid led off the second inning with a double, followed by another double from Liam Hicks which brought Reid home and the Red Wolves a 5-1 lead.

Jesse Kutzke had a dicey third inning after allowing a single, hitting a batter with a pitch and walking the next hitter all in succession to load the bases and draw out pitching coach Rowdy Hardy to make a change at the mound and bring in Tristan Camp who would make the save for the inning.

Camp experienced troubles of his own in the fourth inning, allowing the bases to be filled up with Delta Devils while recording zero outs in the process. However he escaped trouble while allowing no runs to score after a double play and a strikeout with a full count on the board.

A-State got back to scoring ways in the bottom of the fourth, after Karsen Reid was batted in after a defensive error, followed by a sacrifice grounder to bring in another to elevate the Red Wolves’ lead to 7-1. Jaylan Deshazier continued his fantastic game by batting in two more runs with a double, raising the A-State lead over Valley State to eight runs. By the time the damage was over, the Red Wolves led 10-1.

The Red Wolves immediately returned to the offensive in the fifth inning after Liam Hicks was batted in off of a sacrifice fly from Drew Tipton after netting himself a lead-off triple. Deshazier continued his masterclass of a game by scoring his fifth RBI of the game with a single.

Scoring continued in the sixth inning for the Red Wolves, as Eli Davis batted Liam Hicks home with a two-out single to keep piling it onto the Delta Devils. Jake Harst stepped up to pinch hit with the bases and loaded and would be hit by a pitch, resulting in an easy RBI and the A-State lead growing even more to 14-1. Will Huber would then be walked for an RBI of his own.

Mississippi Valley State would finally get back on the board in the eighth inning after Brazelton hit a two-out RBI single to bring Jaylyn Bullock home to start the highly improbable comeback as they still trailed Arkansas State 16-2.

The Red Wolves would score six more runs in the bottom of the eighth to wrap up the contest with a 22-2 scoreline.

With the win, Arkansas State improves to 4-4 on the season and the Delta Devils are still yet to win a game.

Jaylon Deshazier was the definite player of the game for the Red Wolves, going 6-6 at the plate with a home-run and 6 RBI on the night. He was just a triple away from a cycle but didn’t even realize it until the game was over.

“I wasn’t even thinking about it honestly,” Deshazier said. “One of my teammates brought it up but I wasn’t just trying to get it. I was just trying to make good base hits and it kind of just worked out.”

It was a rigid cold night at Tomlinson Stadium with temperatures reaching 36 degrees, but Deshazier was not fazed by the conditions.

“Playing here at the Tom, it’s cold most days,” Deshazier said. “It’s just a mental thing. You just have to trust the process and do what you’re supposed to do.”

Bouncing back to .500 with back-to-back wins gives the Red Wolves some much needed momentum heading into this weekend’s road contest, which is against a very solid Dallas Baptist team.

“This is a big confidence booster going into Dallas Baptist,” Deshazier said. “After this past weekend, it left a bad taste in our mouths so we knew we had to come out and win these two games to get our confidence back.”

With Dallas Baptist coming up in just a couple of days, head coach Tommy Raffo previews how good they are and why it’s so important the Red Wolves pay them a visit.

“It’s a top-20, great quality team on the road,” Raffo said. “It’s going to help us get ready for the Sun Belt. We needed to do this. We need to take this team out of town and they need to see the type of pitching they’re going to see. It’ll probably be the best pitching we will see, they’ll be in the middle 90s. It’ll be a great challenge for us.”

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