HATTIESBURG, Miss. – Southern Miss senior Slade Wilks (Columbia, Miss.) earned second-team preseason All-America honors as a designated hitter by the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association Tuesday.
A 2024 team captain, Wilks earned second-team ABCA/Rawlings All-Region honors last season on the strength of playing in 65 games with 63 starts, all coming at designated hitter. Wilks batted .289 with 20 home runs and 58 RBI, while adding 12 doubles, two triples and scored 50 times, while walking 30 times.
Wilks finished third in home runs in the Sun Belt, along with being tied for fourth in total bases (148), 10th in RBI and 14th in slugging percentage (.594). He tied a school record with eight RBI against James Madison (4/16), that included his only two-homer game of the year.
A Sun Belt Hitter of the Week once last season, Wilks collected six round-trippers over an eight-game span from March 24-April 6. His longest hitting streak of the year was 10 games, in which he batted .381 (16-42) with four doubles, six home runs and 16 RBI, while scoring eight runs.
Some of his other highlights from the year included homering in every game of the Troy series, helping the Golden Eagles start a long winning streak in final game at Coastal Carolina (April 23) with a two-hit game that included a home run and four RBI, driving in a pair of runs with a home run against Louisiana (5/28) in Sun Belt Championship game and collecting a hit in all three Super Regional contests against Tennessee.
During the season, he enjoyed 23 multi-hit games (19 two-hit games and four three-hit) and led the squad in multi-RBI performances with 16 (eight 2 RBI games, five 3 RBI games, one 4 RBI games, one 5 RBI game and one 8 RBI game).
Wilks also earned College Sports Communicators Academic All-America third team honors, becoming the first baseball Golden Eagle to be honored with this award since Nick Sandlin in 2018.
