The week begins with the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship and ends with the Masters. In between, we will have the opening of the Major League Baseball season. We sports fans have lots to look forward to for sure.
The biggest golf tournament of the year, the Masters will be missing three-time champion Phil Mickelson this week because of the 51-year-old’s negative comments about the PGA Tour and his accusations that the Tour had “obnoxious greed and acting like a dictatorship.” By the way, Mickelson, has earned over $95 million on the Tour and another $700 million outside of golf over his career. Five-time Masters winner Tiger Woods has hopes of playing in this year’s Masters. Woods has not played on the tour in 14 months because he is recovering from a leg injury from a car crash.
Southern Mississippi football coach Will Hall wrapped up his second spring scrimmage, and he was very pleased in Saturday’s annual Black and Gold scrimmage. Hall saw much improvement and has praise for red-shirt freshman quarterback Ty Keyes. The Golden Eagles will open their season on Sept. 3 by hosting Hugh Freeze and Liberty University. It also was made official this week that Southern Mississippi will play in the Sun Belt Conference beginning this fall after an agreement was made between the school and Conference-USA. MSU will host their Maroon & White contest on April 16, and Ole Miss will follow with the Grove Bowl on April 23.
Ole Miss (19-8, 4-5) won two of three road games at Kentucky this weekend and will host Alabama this weekend. Mississippi State (17-12, 4-5) lost two of three at Arkansas and will host LSU this weekend. Southern Mississippi baseball set a couple of attendance records this past weekend against Louisiana Tech. The Golden Eagles set an all-time series record with 16,313 fans and a one-day record with 5,706 fans at Saturday’s game. The Eagles (19-8, 7-2) won two of the three games from Tech and will travel to Charlotte this weekend. USM and Ole Miss will meet at Trustmark in Pearl this Tuesday night.
Mississippi College downed William Carey in a mid-week contest last week, 11-6. This week the Choctaws (12-21, 6-11) head to Delta State (19-9, 12-5) on Saturday for a three-game Gulf South Conference series, which includes a doubleheader. William Carey will travel to MGM Park on Wednesday of this week to take on the Biloxi Shuckers in an exhibition contest. The Crusaders (22-12, 9-6) will host Faulkner University this weekend. The Shuckers will open their season on Friday in Pensacola while the Mississippi Braves will open in Pearl on Friday against Montgomery. The Shuckers will also host the Braves in a series beginning on April 12 at MGM Park.
Chicago White Sox ace reliever Garrett Crochet might need Tommy John Surgery and miss the entire 2022 season. The Ocean Springs native, who played at Tennessee, was a first round selection of the White Sox in 2020.
A number of former players of the Jackson Mets held a special reunion at the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame this past Saturday. The Mets were the Double AA team of the New York Mets from 1975-1990 and produced many major leaguers over the years. Former players Darryl Strawberry, Randy Myers, Calvin Schiraldi and Biloxi’s Barry Lyons were in attendance, along with more than a dozen others.
Meridian native Joni Taylor was named the head women’s basketball coach at Texas A&M. The former 1997 Mississippi Gatorade Player of the Year has been the head coach at Georgia. She led the Lady Bulldogs to four NCAA tournaments and an SEC championship.
Jackson State’s women’s basketball team picked up a couple of honors as center Ameshya Williams-Holliday was named the National Player of the Year in the Historical Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). Head coach Tomekia Reed was named the National Coach of the Year for the second time.
Dale has been writing sports in Mississippi since 1973. Listen to Dale’s Brouhaha Sports Show with Dale and Marshall Wood each Tuesday at 6 p.m. on WABO FM 105.5 in the Waynesboro area. To listen to the broadcast on your computer or smart phone anywhere in the world, go to Google Chrome; go to wabo105.com and click listen live. You may also go to The Brouhaha on YouTube and listen to any archived shows.
