Mizzou gets swept by No. 6 Auburn, despite strong pitching performances

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

The Mizzou baseball team couldn't come away with a win on SEC opening weekend, as No. 6 Auburn swept the CoMo Tigers with a pair of wins in Saturday's doubleheader.

Head coach Kerrick Jackson and his squad had a couple of highly competitive games at the start of the series, losing to Auburn 2-0 on Friday night and 4-3 in 10 innings in game one on Saturday. However, game three got away from his squad, as MU dropped the finale 9-2.

"Tough weekend for us, obviously," Jackson said. "[We] didn't necessarily play as good a baseball as we needed to, as we have in the past, and so hopefully that's something we can learn from. There's a couple opportunities there where we had chances to take games and we just didn't take advantage...We were competitive at times. As I just told them, we have to just play better baseball and when you don't play good baseball and you're in this league, that's what will happen. You'll come up against a team that is going to play good baseball and so we just have to put ourselves in a position where we shouldn't change how we go about our business because of somebody different in the other dugout. It shouldn't matter who was over there. If we just played the way that we've been playing, we'd have been in a good situation."

You can watch the full postgame press conference with Jackson in the video player below.

All three of Mizzou's losses came as the team's starting pitching had tremendous outings.

In Friday's loss, starter Javyn Pimental was dominant in a pitchers' duel. He threw 6.0 scoreless innings, giving up just three hits and punching out five Auburn batters.

The pitching staff kept that energy going in Saturday's double-header, as well. In game one, Josh McDevitt was wheeling and dealing for the Tigers, setting the tone in the first inning, as he got out of the frame with just seven pitches including one strikeout. All-in-all, the junior pitched for 6.1 innings and allowed just two runs on three hits, while fanning 10 batters.

As a result of McDevitt's lights out performance on the hill, the Tigers had a real chance for an upset in an extra innings thriller. Down 3-1 in the eighth inning, Mizzou did manage to tie it up courtesy of back-to-back RBIs off the bats of Camdenton alum Kam Durnin and Jase Woita.

However, there wasn't enough juice left in the bats to finish off the No. 6 team in the land, as Auburn's Chase Fralick drove in the game winning run in the 10th.

In game two, starter Brady Kehlenbrink gave MU another chance to walk away with a win, although the series had already been clinched for Auburn. The sophomore dazzled through six innings, as he struck out five batters and allowed just one run. However, he did exit in the seventh with his team in a bases loaded jam.

That jam was one that the Tigers couldn't find their way out of. Mizzou went into that inning knotted up at one with Auburn and exited it down 8-1. The Alabama-based Tigers tacked on one more run for good measure in the eighth, on their way to a routing at Taylor Stadium.

In the game two loss, Mizzou mustered just six hits, as Kaden Peer and Blaize Ward drove in the only two runs of the nightcap.

"Yeah, I mean, they're doing everything they need to do and to put us in position to win. Us, as an offensive group, we're not capitalizing right now, but we know we can. We've proven that we can and it just didn't come together this weekend, but it will," Peer said.

You can watch the full postgame press conference with Peer in the video player below.

Despite getting swept on SEC opening weekend, Mizzou baseball can take solace in the fact that things are going far better than they were at the start of league play just one season ago.

In the 2025 conference opener, Coach Jackson and company got swept by LSU by a combined 11 runs in three games. Although the result of the 2026 opener was still as sweep, MU had some much more competitive games on its hands.

"The one thing, knock on wood, is we're more healthy than we were last year when we started SEC play. The fact that we are healthy and we do have depth and when you're seeing some of these pitching performances, you're seeing what we're doing from an offensive and defensive perspective at times. They're young kids and if we need to make changes and move somebody else in and out of there, we have the ability to do that this year. So yeah, we're going to be fine as it goes along and our guys just have to understand we got work to do. We're still growing and developing and more importantly, maturing as a ballclub," Jackson said.

Up next - Mizzou has a rivalry clash on its hands on Tuesday. The Tigers will meet the Kansas Jayhawks at Hoglund Park at 6 p.m. for some midweek action.