The last time we talked, all three major Mississippi schools were still alive in the NCAA baseball playoffs. Well, things changed. Mississippi State, Ole Miss and Southern Miss all bowed out in the Regional round to end their seasons.
Perhaps the most disappointing result in the Magnolia State came in Oxford, which was emblematic of the mighty SEC’s disappointing weekend. Nine out of the 13 SEC teams in the 64-team field were eliminated in the Regional round, including Ole Miss and Mississippi State. But we’ll start with Ole Miss, who enjoyed playing at its own venue.
Last week, I predicted that Georgia Tech would win the Oxford Regional in a “Win one for the Gipper” type way with its head coach retiring, but the Yellow Jackets won their first contest and lost two in a row to face elimination. Ole Miss, who dropped its opening game to No. 4 seed Murray State of the Missouri Valley Conference, defeated Western Kentucky and Georgia Tech to crawl its way out of the loser’s bracket, ultimately taking down Murray State Sunday to force a winner-take-all matchup Monday.
In the Regional final, Murray State raced out to a 12-3 lead, but the Rebels wouldn’t stay down, eventually cutting the deficit to 12-11. But Ole Miss couldn’t muster any runs in the ninth inning, falling by one run as the Racers dogpiled on Swayze Field. It was a disappointing result for Ole Miss, but, like I mentioned last week, this is a spot that the Rebels were fortunate to be in after a couple rough seasons following their 2022 championship run. This is a season Mike Bianco and co. can build off of in hopes of reaching the pinnacle of the sport once again.
The other disappointing result of the weekend was Southern Miss failing to escape the Hattiesburg Regional, losing to Miami Monday night 5-4 to end the year. After dropping the opening game of the Regional to Columbia of the Ivy League, the Golden Eagles eliminated Alabama Saturday, Columbia Sunday and blew out Miami Sunday night to force a win-or-go-home Monday affair with the Hurricanes. But on that fateful night, the Golden Eagles couldn’t get the bats going until a Carson Paetow two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth, but it was too little, too late in the 5-4 loss.
Miami entered the Regional as a No. 3 seed, having gone through a disappointing season that brought about much ridicule from its own fanbase. But it’s moving on to a Super Regional and Southern Miss, who impressed the Pine Belt with an 18-game winning streak that carried into the Sun Belt Championship game, is staying home. What makes the loss most disappointing is that Vanderbilt, the nation’s No. 1 overall seed and Southern Miss’ regional pairing, failed to win the Nashville Regional, meaning the Golden Eagles had an opportunity to host a Super Regional with a Monday night win.
Before stunning Vanderbilt prior to the Regional final and knocking off Wright State in the final, Louisville had lost all five series the Cardinals played on the road. Five series, five losses. You would have liked to have thought USM would have a better-than-good chance in the hypothetical Hattiesburg Super Regional. But the Golden Eagles were defeated, and Louisville now gets to host a Super Regional as a team that was far better at home.
The loss brings many questions to the Southern Miss program. On one hand, you have a team that has won 40-or-more games in nine straight seasons and is always a fixture in the postseason. But on the other hand, the Golden Eagles have been to only one College World Series – 2009 – and, aside from 2024 when USM lost to eventual national champion Tenneseee, have had their season end in brutal fashion in three out of the last four years. USM hosted Super Regionals in 2022 and 2023, and yet this season was perhaps its best chance to return to Omaha. A program-record 105 home runs, a typical strong pitching staff and two players of the year – Nick Monistere with the Sun Belt honor and pitcher JB Middleton, a potential first-round draft pick, earning the Ferriss Award – weren’t enough this year.
It makes you wonder if Southern Miss can ever return to Omaha. No matter how many successful regular seasons they have and no matter how many conference titles they earn, will the Golden Eagles forever be bridesmaids?
On a positive note, Mississippi State lost to Florida State in the Tallahassee Regional final Sunday evening.
Kidding, of course. The real positive news coming out of Mississippi came maybe an hour after Sunday’s game went final, but fans anticipated what was to come via flight tracking. Mississippi State announced it was hiring Virginia’s Brian O’Connor to be the Bulldogs’ next head baseball coach, an absolute home run hire. In his 21 full seasons leading the Cavaliers, O’Connor enjoyed 21 winning seasons, five ACC Coach of the Year awards, seven trips to his hometown of Omaha, Neb. and a College World Series championship in 2015.
O’Connor will reportedly be among the highest paid coaches in the SEC, and for good reason. Mississippi State is one of the premier programs in all of college baseball, and I, for one, am glad to see them act like it. A storied school despite having only one national title, Mississippi State will be back on the rise and competing in a deep SEC – though, maybe it’s not as strong as we previously thought after seeing this weekend’s results. Still, it was hard to have a bad weekend if you’re a Mississippi State fan no matter what happened in Tallahassee, Fla.
And that’s a wrap on college baseball for the Magnolia State. As for who will win it all, who knows? I always tend to root for the underdog, so here’s to Murray State and UTSA this week.
