Miss. State, Ole Miss, Southern Miss may make history

OXFORD - Mississippi stands two weeks away from making baseball history.

Mississippi State, Ole Miss and Southern Miss all appear set to host a regional in the same year for the first time since the NCAA went to the current playoff format in 1999. There’s no room to question how good college baseball in the state is entering the regular season’s final weekend.

“I don’t look at RPIs and things of that nature during the season," MSU coach John Cohen said, "but I think it’s hard not to notice the fact that you have three Division I schools in a very small state at least in terms of population as compared to the states that surround us.

“It’s proved to be remarkable that three Division I programs in our state are among the top 16. That’s pretty incredible. I think it’s a testament to the amount of players that come out of our state, the high school coaching in our state, the emphasis on summer baseball in our state.”

D1Baseball’s Mark Etheridge ranks the Bulldogs fifth among the six teams he believes would have a national seed locked up if the season ended today. He added the Rebels are one of four teams competing for the final two national seeds, and the Golden Eagles should host a regional.

About the only question for the three teams is what happens over the next two weeks.

The Bulldogs will likely earn a national seed because of a starting rotation led by ace Dakota Hudson and filled out by quality arms in Austin Sexton and Konnor Pilkington and an offense that ranks second in the SEC in batting average at .312 and fourth in runs scored at 354.

They’re also playing host to Arkansas, which has lost eight consecutive Southeastern Conference games, before likely heading into the SEC Tournament with a first-round bye.

The No. 6 Rebels face a much tougher opponent this week, Texas A&M, but two or three victories and a decent performance in the SEC Tournament could be enough to catapult them into the conversation for being worthy of a national seed.

Or the Rebels and Bulldogs could face consequences because of how good their conference is. Florida and Texas A&M are the top two teams in the national rankings, respectively, while Mississippi State is No. 4 and Ole Miss is No. 6.

“While in a traditional year Ole Miss may have the resume to be a slam dunk type of national seed — a top-5 RPI assuming they finish strong this week, they’ll be near the top of the SEC standings — we don’t really know how the committee will gauge going four-, five-deep in a conference in your top eight nationally,” Etheridge said.

“Three conference teams have made the top eight several times, but we’ve never had four. In this case, we could be talking about five candidates (including LSU) in the top eight in the SEC.”

Southern Miss has never hosted a regional as a No. 1 seed but did so as a No. 2 seed in 2003. The Golden Eagles need to keep winning to hold off No. 17 Florida Atlantic and No. 21 Rice but have Conference USA’s top batting average (.305) and fifth-best ERA (4.20).

“We control our own destiny,” USM first baseman Tim Lynch said. “That’s what everybody wants. If we go out and play our game, we’ll get the outcome we want. We just need to keep our blinders on, keep playing good baseball and stay focused on our goals.”

If the No. 19 Golden Eagles host a regional, they may be paired with a nationally-seeded Mississippi State. The winner of that super regional would advance to the College World Series.

Etheridge calls the Golden Eagles one of the feel good stories of the season. It’s a fitting description for the success all three Mississippi teams are having in baseball, three seasons that are proving all of the preseason polls and predictions incorrect.

“You wouldn’t have predicted (all three hosting before the season began),” Etheridge said. “You probably wouldn’t have predicted two of the three.”

The Clarion-Ledger's Michael Bonner and the Hattiesburg American's Jason Munz contributed to this story.

Contact Daniel Paulling at dpaulling@jackson.gannett.com. Follow @DanielPaulling on Twitter and Daniel Paulling on Facebook.