When the game went into extra innings tied at four, freshman right fielder Jimmy Pickens tripled to left-center field, and two straight singles later, the bases were loaded with no outs again.

This time, junior third baseman Torsten Boss delivered the third base hit of the inning, bringing home Pickens and giving the Spartans (26-13 overall, 7-5 Big Ten) a 5-4 walk-off win against Minnesota (23-19, 7-5).

“I’ve never seen anything really like it,” head coach Jake Boss Jr. said about his team’s bases-loaded struggles. “But at the end of the day, we won the ball game and got a big hit when we needed it.”

Torsten Boss already had stepped to the plate in the bottom of the eighth, facing the exact situation. On that occasion, he fouled out to third base, which led to junior center fielder Jordan Keur flying out to center field and Pickens getting gunned down at home to end the inning.

“I just wanted the opportunity (to make up for that), and I’m glad I got it,” he said. “I knew I was going to get a fastball, I knew he was going to come after me. I saw the first pitch was a strike, so I hit it.”

Seven innings into Sunday’s game, it didn’t appear MSU would need extra innings for the fifth time this season to beat the Golden Gophers, as the Spartans held a 4-2 lead with sophomore right-hander David Garner on the mound.

Garner looked to be in line for the win, with one of his runs being unearned and the other coming when Minnesota’s Andy Henkemeyer’s ground ball bounced off of first base, away from any Spartan infielders.

“That’s just baseball,” Garner said. “I’m sure they got unlucky sometimes, and we were lucky with some of our base hits. I just try to not let it faze me and (to) keep doing what I was doing.”

Making his second Big Ten start of the year, Garner recovered and cruised until the eighth inning, when he surrendered a single and hit a batter. Junior Tony Wieber came on in relief and gave up a two-RBI base hit to the second batter he faced.

Wieber had no problems in the top of the ninth and 10th innings though, giving MSU a chance for redemption.

Torsten Boss, who went 3-for-5 on the day, came through with his second walk-off in two days, as he walked with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 11th Saturday to give the Spartans a 3-2 win in the first game of a doubleheader.

MSU lost 4-2 in game two, but Sunday’s win tied the Spartans with the Golden Gophers in the conference standings behind Purdue, who is 12-3 in conference matchups.

Jake Boss said taking the series Sunday was good for his players’ confidence. Most importantly, though, he said it keeps MSU in the hunt for the Big Ten title and could be a factor as the conference race winds down.

“That’s a big one,” Boss said. “Obviously, it gives us the tie breaker. And Minnesota is going to beat a lot of people. … When it gets down to the end of the year, having that tie breaker with them is going to be big.”