May 19 Sideline View
The SEC baseball tournament will be played this week in Hoover, Alabama. Ole Miss is the seventh seed while Mississippi State is the 11th seed. State will play 14th seed Texas A&M on Tuesday night. The winner will meet No. 6 Auburn on Wednesday night. Ole Miss will have a first-round bye and will play on Wednesday against the winner of No. 10 Florida and No. 15 South Carolina.
Mississippi State's first ten games of the SEC schedule were a miserable 1-9. However, the Bulldogs finished their conference schedule red hot by winning eight of nine games. MSU (34-20, 15-15) swept Missouri over the weekend.
Bulldog slugger Hunter Hines blasted his 68th home run to set a new MSU record. The old record was 67 held by Rafael Palmeiro.
Ole Miss (37-18, 16-14) won two of three games from Auburn over the weekend. It is the Rebels' fifth SEC series win and first winning season since 2022.
Southern Miss swept Troy over the weekend. The wins extended the Golden Eagles' winning streak to 15 games. The Golden Eagles' 41 wins marked the ninth straight year that the team has had at least 40 wins, which ranks as the current top streak in D-1baseball. USM (41-13) will travel to Montgomery for the Sun Belt Conference Tournament this week. The second seed Golden Eagles drew a first-round bye and will play on Wednesday at 12:30 p.m. Coastal Carolina is the top seed.
Jackson State is the sixth seed in the SWAC baseball tournament this week in Birmingham. JSU (29-19, 16-12) will play No. 3 seed Alabama State on Wednesday afternoon.
Belhaven (34-13), winners of the Webster Regionals, will travel Friday to the NCAA Super Regionals in Granville, Ohio, to take on Denison in a best of three series. Mississippi College (35-23) made a nice run in the Tampa Regionals but fell in the championship game to top-ranked Tampa, 9-8, in ten innings. All regular season conference champs in Delta State (33-20), Millsaps (29-19) and William Carey (38-14) all fell last week in their post season tournaments.
Softball
Ole Miss won the Tucson Regional by defeating Grand Canyon and then winning two of three from host Arizona. The Lady Rebels (40-18) advance to the Super Regionals to face Arkansas (43-12) in a best of three series in Fayetteville. Ole Miss won two of three in SEC play from the fourth ranked Lady Razorbacks back in March.
The Mississippi State Bulldogs lost to Texas Tech in the championship game and finished the season with a 39-18 record. State defeated Washington twice in the tourney.
Jackson State (29-25) fell to Alabama and Belmont in the Tuscaloosa Regionals.
JUCO
Pearl River (50-18) won two of three games from East Central (42-14) to win the Region 23 baseball title. The Wildcats will now head to Enid, Oklahoma, for the JUCO World Series that begins May 24.
Jones College Lady Bobcats will be the No. 3 seed in the Division II JUCO softball World Series this week in Oxford, Alabama. No. 5 seed Co-Lin and No.9 seed Northwest received at-large bids.
Matias Ruiz of Jones College became the first junior college tennis player from Mississippi to win a national championship. The Buenos Aires native won the No. 1 singles title.
MHSAA
The MHSAA crowned seven state softball champions this past week in Hattiesburg: Stringer (1A), East Union (2A), Enterprise (3A), Itawamba AHS (4A), East Central (5A), George County (6A) and NW Rankin (7A).
This week seven baseball champions will be crowned in Pearl: West Union/Taylorsville (1A), East Union/Clarkdale (2A), Mooreville/Seminary (3A), West Lauderdale/Purvis (4A), Lafayette/South Jones (5A), Saltillo/George County (6A) and Madison Central/Brandon (7A).
MAIS
PCS of Hattiesburg, Magnolia Heights and Tr-County all won state baseball championships last week.
Finally!
Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson have been reinstated by Major League Baseball, making them eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Dale has been writing sports in Mississippi since 1973. Listen to Dale and Marshall Wood on the Brouhaha Sports Show Tuesdays at 6 p.m. on WABO FM 105.5 in the Waynesboro area. This week’s special guest will be the Mississippi Coast Sportswriter Hunter Dawkins. To listen to the broadcast on your computer or smart phone anywhere in the world, go to Google Chrome. You may also go to The Brouhaha on YouTube and listen to archived shows.
