Southern Miss to host Mississippi State in Hattiesburg Regional

The field is set for the Hattiesburg Regional and it should be a good one.

Southern Miss, which is the No. 1 seed, will play host to No. 2 Mississippi State (36-24), No. 3 South Alabama (39-19) and No. 4 Illinois Chicago.

The Hattiesburg Regional will be matched up with the Baton Rouge Regional, which features No. 1 LSU, No. 2 Southeastern Louisiana, No. 3 Rice and No. 4 Texas Southern.

Competition in the Hattiesburg Regional will begin at 1 p.m. on Friday with USM playing Illinois-Chicago at Pete Taylor Park. MSU and South Alabama will follow at 6 p.m. on Friday.

Ole Miss left out of the 64-team field.

The Golden Eagles have set a new program mark for regular season wins with a record of 48-14.

While USM reached its goal of hosting a regional, it came up shy of being one of the eight national seeds.

USM is hosting its first NCAA regional since 2003 and is a No. 1 seed for the first time. Baylor was the No. 1 seed in the 2003 Hattiesburg Regional.

This story was originally published May 29, 2017 at 11:27 AM with the headline "Southern Miss to host Mississippi State in Hattiesburg Regional."