For fans of college baseball, this year was mighty good inside this state.
Mississippi State (44-18-1), Ole Miss (43-19) and Southern Mississippi (41-20) combined for 128 victories. That is the second-most for the state’s “Big 3” in the same season. In 2005, the trio won 131 games. It is the only other time all three won 40 or more in the same season.
Mississippi State played in a regional and super regional at home in the same season for the first time in program history.
After winning the Starkville Regional, the Bulldogs fell in two games in the Starkville Super Regional to Arizona.
On the way to nailing down the school’s first-ever national seed (No. 6), MSU won the Southeastern Conference regular-season championship for the first time since 1989.
The Bulldogs became the first program in SEC history to go from last place in the conference standings to sole possession of first place the following season.
Coach John Cohen earned coach of the year honors inside the league, while Jake Mangum became the first in program history to win freshman of the year honors.
MSU won nine of its 10 conference series, including road wins at Florida, LSU and Vanderbilt.
In Oxford, Ole Miss battled to the next-to-last day of the SEC tournament with a national seed within its grasp.
After a 3-6 start in conference play, Ole Miss won five of its final seven conference series. Sweeps of Arkansas, Kentucky and Auburn allowed the squad to be in position to win the SEC Western Division title entering the final weekend of the season.
Thanks to a school-record 20-2 start to the season, Ole Miss quickly grabbed a Top 10 ranking and held it virtually the remainder of the season. The same could be said of the Ratings Percentage Index, where Ole Miss remained in the Top 10 and that allowed for the outside shot a national seed, in a year in which the highly-regarded league snagged four of those coveted spots for the first time.
Ole Miss won three straight games to begin the SEC tournament but came up short when Texas A&M rallied for a 12-8 win in the semifinal round. It was the first time all year Ole Miss has lost a game in which it led after seven innings of play.
For the seventh time under Mike Bianco, Ole Miss earned the right to play a regional at home. Playing before the usual capacity crowds, Ole Miss dropped heartbreaking one-run decisions to Pac-12 regular season champion Utah and Tulane.
In Hattiesburg, Scott Berry’s Southern Mississippi squad celebrated its first conference tournament championship since 2010 when it beat Rice 3-2 in a dramatic Conference USA championship game played at Pete Taylor Park.
While MSU went from 24 wins in 2015 to 44 wins in 2016, the Golden Eagles enjoyed a smaller bump going from 35 wins to 41 wins. Southern Miss had been on the NCAA regional bubble in each of the last two seasons but finally pushed through for its first regional berth since 2011. In the Tallahassee Regional, Southern Miss beat South Alabama before falling to Florida State and South Alabama to end the season.
Southern Miss spent a large stretch of the season ranked in the Top 20 and also cracked the RPI Top 20 in the second half of the season. The Golden Eagles were in line to host a regional for the second time in program history before a devastating sweep by Florida International in the final weekend of the regular season. The loss knocked the Golden Eagles to third in the final C-USA regular-season standings.
While winning 20 conference games for the fourth time, the Golden Eagles won eight of 10 conference series, including series wins over highly-regarded Florida Atlantic, Louisiana Tech and Rice. Southern Miss started strong by winning 11 straight conference games after falling to Marshall in the first conference game of the season.
It was the first time since 2007 all three teams played in a regional in the same season. The Bulldogs played in a super regional for the sixth time in program history, with a second-ever super regional at home.
MSU won 40 or more games for the 19th time. For Southern Miss, it was a ninth time. Ole Miss reached the mark for a seventh time.
The “Big 3” combined for 20 picks in the Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft earlier this month. The Bulldogs led the way with a school-record 11 selections.
As always, the fans turned out in record numbers. MSU was second in the nation with 302, 558 fans for 38 dates (7,962 average). Ole Miss was fourth with 291,714 fans for 41 games (8,580 average). Southern Miss was 23rd with 85,106 fans for 28 games (3,040 average).
MSU had the two super regional attendance figures with 12,913 and 13,452 attending the losses to Arizona. MSU and Ole Miss combined for five regional crowds better than 9,000 and two better than 10,000. The Conference USA championship game drew 3,593.
Meanwhile, Delta State won 42 games and played in the NCAA Division II South Regional. Jones Junior College won 54 games and the National Junior College Athletic Association Division II World Series for the first time.
Indeed, the year was just that good.
Scott Walters is a sports reporter for the Commercial Dispatch. He may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @dispatchscott.
Scott was sports editor for The Dispatch.
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