HOOVER, Ala. (AP) — Once again, LSU played well into the wee hours of the morning. This time, however, things went a lot smoother.

Jared Poche’ pitched 6 2/3 strong innings and Michael Papierski drove in three runs as LSU snapped Mississippi State’s 12-game winning streak by beating the Bulldogs 6-2 in the Southeastern Conference Tournament in a game that ended early Friday.

LSUadvanced to Saturday’s semifinals. The Tigers (42-17) face the winner of Friday’s elimination game between Mississippi State (41-15-1) and Florida (45-12).

Mississippi State and Florida play at 6:30 p.m. Friday.

Mississippi State, the No. 1 seed in the tournament, had its long winning streak snapped. Ace pitcher Dakota Hudson allowed four runs, two earned, on nine hits in five innings. He left with the Bulldogs trailing 4-0.

“I think some things didn’t go our way offensively and some things went their way against Dakota,” Mississippi State center fielder Jacob Robson said. “They had a lot of infield hits, balls off the end of the bat, or they got jams that ended up being hits. They capitalized on that and our errors. We’re going to look to minimize that and move forward tomorrow with confidence.”

LSU’s three SEC Tournament games have lasted a total of 12 hours and 1 minute. It beat Florida in a 14-inning, five-hour marathon on Wednesday, then played another game that went past midnight against Mississippi State.

LSU also won for the 14th time in 15 games. Eight of those have been decided by one run or in extra innings, including each of its first two games in the SEC Tournament.

“It felt good not to have to come back from behind. That’s what we tried to do today,” said LSU outfielder Beau Jordan, who was 2-for-2 with a run scored. “Before the game, Poche’ was like ‘Hey man, can y’all score some runs early?’ We came out and started swinging it. The first inning he put us down pretty fast, but after that, we started battling, seeing better pitches and hitting them.”

Jordan’s twin brother Bryce also had two hits and scored two runs. Antoine Duplantis added three hits for the Tigers.

Poche’ (7-4) held Mississippi State scoreless for the first six innings as LSU built a 4-0 lead. Mississippi State scored twice in the seventh, but Papierski hit a two-run single in the bottom half of the inning.

Parker Bugg provided 2 1/3 innings of shutout relief for his fourth save.

“I thought tonight was really a very solid performance by our team in every facet,” LSU coach Paul Mainieri said. “Jared Poche’ was as good as he’s been all year. You could tell even in the first inning that he was commanding his fastball and his breaking ball. He had life on his fastball. I thought Poche’ was outstanding, and of course, Parker Bugg did a tremendous job. It was just a solid game all around, maybe one of our better games we’ve played all year.”

SEC TOURNAMENT

Thursday

Texas A&M 4, South Carolina 1

Florida 5, Alabama 4

Ole Miss 12, Vanderbilt 9

LSU 6, Mississippi State 2

Friday

3 p.m. SEC Network – Texas A&M vs. Vanderbilt

6:30 p.m. SEC Network – Florida vs. Miss. State (Radio: 105.5 FM)

Saturday

3 p.m. SEC Network – Ole Miss vs. Texas A&M or Vanderbilt (Radio: 1490 AM)

6:30 p.m. SEC Network – LSU vs. Florida or Mississippi State

Sunday

2 p.m. ESPN2 – Championship game