Southern Miss baseball is on fire. Can they replicate a rivalry series in the Sun Belt?
There are few college baseball teams hotter than Southern Miss right now.
The Golden Eagles have won seven of their last eight games and find themselves inside several top 25 rankings for the first time this season.
Southern Miss has won all three conference series’ so far, the most recent being against rivals Louisiana Tech. That series saw three of the 10 largest crowds in Pete Taylor Park history, including the largest ever when 5,706 fans filled the stadium for Saturday’s game.
It was an energetic weekend for the final time Louisiana Tech would play a conference series in Hattiesburg.
Southern Miss is playing out its final days as a Conference USA member and is set to join the Sun Belt this summer. That doesn’t quite mean the diamond battles between the Bulldogs and Golden Eagles are done, though.
“I think one of the things we’re going to miss the most is that rivalry with Louisiana Tech,” USM athletic director Jeremy McClain told the Sun Herald. “My plan is to try and play them often in non-conference whenever we get the opportunity and I think their coaches want to do that, too.”
The Sun Belt presents a chance for USM baseball to compete in another multi-bid league that is shaping out to be even more competitive than C-USA.
What the Sun Belt doesn’t have is a true rival for USM. The roots are there, however, in teams like South Alabama and Louisiana.
The Jaguars have given the Golden Eagles fits for several years and the two play regularly, including three games this year alone. Louisiana has long had a solid baseball program and the travel distance gives USM fans another potential rival.
“I think we got some really good opportunities to replicate some of those rivalries,” McClain said. “Especially when you think about Louisiana-Lafayette, South Alabama. Our fans can drive to them, their fans can drive to us. They have great programs, great history and traditions.
“I think we got some really good opportunities with people that our close to us to replicate that ... I think those opportunities are there. That’s not even to mention the Troy’s, the Georgia Southern’s and whoever else may kind of fall from a baseball perspective into that category. I think there’s plenty of opportunities in baseball, maybe more opportunities. My hope is we have more than one series a year that people can get excited about.”
Head coach Scott Berry isn’t much concerned about finding a new rival and believes the stands will be just as full for a schedule that will feature a more regional flavor than what C-USA could provide.
“We’ll move to the Sun Belt next year and certainly that will draw some really big crowds,” Berry said. “Some rival crowds that can make the trips we haven’t seen in Conference USA. Ruston is not far away so certainly they have some people that can travel but a lot of teams in our league, just like next week we’ll go to Charlotte and I’m not sure we’ll have a whole lot of people go to Charlotte nor would they have them here if we were playing them here.”
In the meantime, USM is locked in another run to the postseason where it hopes to play host to a regional for the first time since 2017.
The Golden Eagles are ranked as high as No. 18 in the polls and just took down the No. 9 team in the country in Ole Miss. Southern Miss is facing Conference USA’s eighth-place team this weekend at Charlotte.
This story was originally published April 7, 2022 at 11:43 AM.
