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ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY

Arizona State baseball falls in 14th inning to Ole Miss in Lincoln Regional

In a game that lasted more than 4.5 hours, Arizona State baseball simply ran out of gas. Now, the Sun Devils will face elimination on Saturday.

Watch: State of the Sun Devils: Previewing Arizona State's offense ahead of the college football season | 22 mins

First pitch for Arizona State and Ole Miss happened 36 minutes late at 6:36 p.m., and the game ended 14 innings, four hours and 42 minutes later, at 1:18 a.m. local time in Lincoln, Nebraska. The Rebels simply outlasted the Sun Devils with a 7-6 victory on Friday night.

The game started fast with three runs in the opening frame.

ASU punched two runs across to grab the early lead, and Ole Miss’ Judd Utermark responded with a solo shot in the bottom of the inning.

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Nu’u Contrades launched his first of two home runs in the third inning to give ASU a 3-1 lead.

But the Rebels made their mark in the bottom of that inning with four runs to take their first lead of the game and added another run in the fourth to lead 6-3.

However, after that, Cole Carlon settled in and threw 2.2 shutout innings to allow the Sun Devils to creep back into the game.

Dean Toigo got one back for ASU with a solo home run in the fifth, and Contrades connected on his second of the night, a two-run shot) in the seventh to tie the game.

Then, the two bullpens put together six innings of shutout baseball into the 14th inning.

Ole Miss loaded the bases in the eighth and had a runner thrown out at home in the 12th, and ASU got a runner to third in the 11th, but nobody crossed the plate until the 14th.

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Jaden Alba, who’d given the Sun Devils four shutout innings in relief, walked the first two batters in the 14th inning, and Ole Miss’ Hayden Federico hit an infield single — a hit Contrades kept in the infield to save the game in the moment — to load the bases for Brayden Randle.

Randle lined the first pitch he saw through the infield, sending Ole Miss through to face Nebraska Saturday evening and forcing ASU to face elimination against South Dakota State on Saturday.

While Contrades was the Sun Devils’ best player Friday night, all three of his hits came in his first four at-bats. He struck out in his final three at-bats and one was with the go-ahead runner on third base.

Landon Hairston, who leads ASU in virtually every offensive category, was hitless with three walks in seven plate appearances. Competitive pitches were few and far between in an effort to avoid the potential Golden Spikes Award winner.

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The Sun Devils will have to flush Friday’s draining game fast to try to avoid elimination on Saturday. First pitch is set for noon MST on ESPN+.

Douglas Santo ArizonaSports.com editor

Douglas Santo is a digital editor for ArizonaSports and KTAR.com. Santo spent time covering Arizona State football, basketball and other sports throughout college and graduated Arizona State University in 2025. He has written for Sun Devil Daily and… Read more

Comments

2 Comments

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Steve C 2 months ago

As a season ticket holder, sure seems like they have lost a lot more games this year, exactly like this, than they have won.

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Scott D 2 months ago

Ugh . . . That's brutal . . . Now it's time for a quick turn around, and take care of business.