By Stan Caldwell
stanmansportsfan.com
I’ve got to be honest here, I did not believe, at least not initially.
Sunday morning, as my wife and I were driving to pick up our grandkids for church, I updated her on Southern Miss baseball, and I was pessimistic.
“I won’t be shocked if Kennesaw State boatraces them,” I said. “And if they win that one, they’ve got to beat LSU tonight. Then, if they win that one, they’ve got to beat LSU again on Monday. I don’t think that’s happening.”
I mean, what else could the discerning observer think? The Golden Eagles had, less than 12 hours earlier, coughed up a four-run lead to LSU in the bottom of the ninth inning, and had lost 7-6 in the 10th.
And it was galling. The Tigers had boasted in the run-up to the Hattiesburg Regional that they were coming to take over Pete Taylor Park, them and their fans, and the players at least had delivered.
All LSU had to do was win one game on Sunday and head back to Baton Rouge to prepare for the Super Regional, and the only people who didn’t think the Tigers would get it done were the men in black and gold and their faithful supporters, supporters with more faith than me.
What happened, of course, is already history at Southern Miss, a part of the lore that will live on long after the players and coaches have moved on. And the sweetest part of all was that it came at the expense of the mighty Tigers.
The Golden Eagles looked LSU right in the eyes and simply played better baseball than the Tigers over the last two days of the regional. They were the better team; they did deserve the national seeding and they proved it on the field.
And they did it the hard way in three classic games that were indescribable.
USM got past Kennesaw State 4-3 in a 10-inning nail-biter in which the Golden Eagles needed a run in the bottom of the ninth just to send the game to extra-innings.
Coming in the middle of the afternoon on what was possibly the hottest day of the year so far, it would have seemed to suggest that Southern Miss would be fatigued, physically and mentally, heading to the night game.
Instead, it was the Golden Eagles who seemed to have more energy, overcoming a 4-2 deficit to defeat the Tigers 8-4 and force the winner-take-all game on Monday.
In another barnburner, USM scored the winning run in the top of the ninth and brushed aside the Tigers in order in the bottom of the inning to secure the 8-7 win and the second Super Regional berth in program history.
And as the gods of baseball are sometimes known to do, they arranged it so that USM will host next weekend’s Super Regional against … wait for it … the Ole Miss Rebels.
If the ESPN guys thought there was drama at The Pete this weekend with LSU playing, wait until the Rebels come to town.
In the end, it came down – as it often does – to pitching, and Southern Miss has more of it than just about any team in the country.
The Tigers rocked the Golden Eagles staff on plenty of occasions in the three games between the two teams, but when USM needed them to make big pitches and get big outs in clutch situations, they came through.
In fact, I was just as optimistic on Monday about USM’s chances as I was gloomy the day before.
I do my auto repairs at Eagle Tire on Hardy Street, and I was in for some brake work. While there, I chatted with the owner, James Warren, and his son Matt, who works as manager.
I’ve been friends with the Warrens since I wrote a feature some 20 years ago about Matt as a senior at Petal, who was pretty much unhittable that season. He went on to pitch for the Golden Eagles, so he knows his stuff.
We tried to figure out who would start for USM; my choice was Ben Ethridge, his was Tanner Hall, who did in fact get the ball to start Monday’s game. I said there were a couple of reasons why I felt good about the Eagles’ chances.
For one, I said, the back end of the bullpen – Dalton Rogers and Landon Harper – were fresh, as neither one pitched in either game on Sunday.
The second was LSU’s mental state. The Tigers absolutely assumed that they’d be going home Sunday night. Instead, it was one more night in a strange town in a strange bed to play a game they never expected to play.
Plus, I didn’t think LSU had much pitching left. It turned out, the Tigers did have a couple of decent arms left, but not enough.
It wasn’t always pretty. LSU came in with a tremendous offensive team, with a lineup littered with big bats.
The Tigers got some big hits, and it looked like they had momentum when they tied it 7-7 with a leadoff solo home run in the bottom of the eighth, then got a runner on after two were out.
It was starting to look like déjà vu all over again, as that completed a Tiger rally after the Golden Eagles had taken a 7-4 lead in the top of the seventh.
And why, you may ask, was LSU batting in the bottom of these innings? Coin flip. That’s it. USM’s reward for being the regional’s top seed was to be guaranteed the home designation for the first game, then it was a 50-50 crap shoot. The NCAA at its finest.
But Tyler Stuart rendered the point moot. The big right-hander, the x-factor in the USM bullpen, came in to get the last out in the eighth, and the Golden Eagles went right to work in the top of the ninth.
Christopher Sargent – Southern Miss’ best player all weekend – led off the inning with a single, then Slade Wilks singled to rightfield, with Sargent moving to third, and he scored the go-ahead run on a sacrifice fly off the bat of Danny Lynch.
In his 10th-inning stint against Kennesaw State, Stuart got into some trouble by trying to nibble at the corners, walking two batters, although one was intentional. But he got out of it by striking out the side and USM quickly put a run on the board to finally eliminate the pesky Owls.
On Monday, however, Stuart attacked right from the start in the ninth. Lynch, at third, made a great stop of a hard-hit grounder, then another groundout and a strikeout sent the Golden Eagles into a celebration to remember. In all, Stuart needed just seven pitches to nail down the win.
What all this tells me is that Southern Miss will come to the Super Regional battle tested. There were some very good regionals this weekend, but I will argue that the Hattiesburg Regional, top to bottom, was the toughest of the 16 regionals.
Army, the fourth seed, probably wins Friday’s opener against USM seven, maybe eight times out of 10. They held the Golden Eagles to just two runs – only one earned – on seven hits, but never could figure out Hall, who pitched a four-hit shutout with nine strikeouts.
Kennesaw State, the 3-seed, had LSU on the ropes in the Friday night game, leading 11-4 going to the bottom of the eighth, when the Tigers erupted for 10 runs to win 14-11.
The Owls also scored nine runs in the elimination game on Saturday and needed them all in a 9-8 win over the Cadets.
And, of course, we had LSU, one of the real blue bloods in college baseball, with six College World Series titles, as the No. 2 seed, a seeding at which the Tigers, or at least their fans, took some offense. Apparently, they believed they should have been hosting.
Perhaps the reason they weren’t a regional host is coming to Hattiesburg next week, and Ole Miss will be more than happy to be here.
The Rebels were the preseason No. 1 team in the nation is some polls, and top five in most others, and started the season 13-1.
But sometime in March, about the time Southeastern Conference play started, Ole Miss went south in a big way. The Rebels were swept by top-ranked Tennessee, then later lost four straight conference series.
After a 3-1 loss on May 1 at Arkansas, Ole Miss was 24-19 and 7-14 in the SEC, and most of the college baseball bracketologists (yes, they exist) had the Rebels not making the 64-team field for the NCAA Tournament.
But somehow, in the nick of time, head coach Mike Bianco righted the ship and the Rebels got hot again, highlighted by sweeping LSU at Baton Rouge on May 14-15.
The Rebels lost to Vanderbilt 3-1 in their only game in the SEC Tournament, but their 11-2 regular-season finish was just enough to get them into the tournament as a No. 3 seed in the Coral Gables Regional, hosted by No. 6 national seed Miami.
And all the so-called, “last team in the field,” did was blow through the regional in three games, laying waste to Arizona 22-6 in the clinching game on Monday after the regional was pushed back a day by weather on Friday.
Hattiesburg is familiar territory for Ole Miss. Bianco recruits the area heavily and the Rebels have been frequent visitors to Pete Taylor Park, most recently on May 11, a game won by Ole Miss 4-1. The Golden Eagles won an earlier meeting at Trustmark Park in Pearl 10-7.
The Rebels (35-22) are playing well, and they will bring their usual strong support when they take the field on Saturday for the first game of the Super Regional.
But Southern Miss, now 47-17 overall, is right where it’s supposed to be. USM was nationally-ranked in the preseason and have stayed in the rankings all season, reaching as high as No. 4 in some polls.
And let’s just say this right here: Scott Berry has done some fine coaching jobs over his 13 seasons as the head coach at Southern Miss, but none better than the one he did in this regional. He completely cemented his legacy forevermore with the rally job he did with his team between Saturday night and Monday afternoon.
The Golden Eagles will be favored in the Super Regional, but expect a strong challenge from Ole Miss. The Rebels have only been to the College World Series once under Bianco, in 2014, and they would love nothing more than to upset their in-state rivals for another trip to Omaha.
So, everyone needs to take a few days here to recharge, then get ready for another intense weekend of high-quality college baseball.
Isn’t this fun?
Stan Caldwell is a veteran sportswriter with more than 35 years in the Hattiesburg area.
Photos courtesy of Jesse Johnson
Stan, thanks for the article. Well written, insightful, with a sure and positive prose.