Southern Miss and LSU may find themselves in a baseball showdown. Who comes out on top?
A swarm of gold is expected to flood Pete Taylor Park this weekend.
Southern Miss and LSU headline a Hattiesburg regional that sold out days before the first pitch will be tossed. The SEC stalwart and Conference USA regular season champion represent two very different forces of the game.
The Tigers thrive off the long ball and the Golden Eagles excel at taking away just that.
Both have to get through automatic qualifiers Kennesaw State and Army on Friday in order to set up a must-watch Saturday showdown.
This is the third time Southern Miss has hosted a regional and the Golden Eagles are hoping to make it the second time they move on to the super regionals.
Here’s everything you need to know about the double-elimination Hattiesburg bracket:
Fridays are for runs
The first day of regional bracket play is often littered with lopsided scores. The top 16 teams in the country square off with the 16 teams who were placed at the bottom of the field.
For Southern Miss, that means an afternoon date with Patriot League champions Army, a team that is not here to play the role of pushover.
The Black Knights enter with an 11-14 road record and an offense that, at first glance, appears to play into the hands of the USM pitching staff. A closer look at the numbers show a lineup that is eerily familiar, though.
Army has hit just 31 home runs in 54 games and ranks 258th nationally in that category. Southern Miss has allowed only 32 deep balls all year, good for 14th-best in the country. That doesn’t mean the Black Knights will struggle, however.
The team’s batting average sits just north of .300 and the lineup is one of the best in baseball at avoiding strikeouts. They’ve picked up 97 doubles and have one of the better individual hitters in the regional in Sam Ruta.
If Army’s batting profile rings any bells, it’s because the Golden Eagles had fits with a strikingly similar team in UTSA. The Roadrunners poked holes in the outfield turf against USM in the Conference USA tournament en route to 18 runs in two games to eliminate the Eagles.
Contrary to last week’s run-ins with UTSA, the full USM staff will be fresh and now has the experience of playing against a high-contact opponent in a postseason game.
First Team All-American Tanner Hall is top 10 nationally in strikeout-to-walk ratio, strikeouts, walks-per-nine innings and will likely get the call against the Black Knights.
LSU’s day-one adversary, KSU out of the ASUN Conference, has the better of chance of being on the wrong end of a one-sided scoreboard.
Kennesaw State has the least-productive offense and the worst pitching staff in the four-team bracket. The Owls allow a region-high 6.34 runs per game while LSU leads the group in runs scored by a wide margin with 8.56.
Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP), a stat that takes defense out of the ERA equation and only looks at home runs allowed, strikeouts and walks, does not paint a kind picture for KSU.
The team’s top two starters, John Bezdicek and Jack Myers, have solid ERAs at 3.75 and 4.01 respectively. Their FIPs, however, are at 6.24 and 5.33. The large gap between the numbers mean one thing: home runs and lots of them.
Kennesaw State has given up a region-worst 75 big flies this season, a great sign for an LSU team that has launched 107 over the wall.
Which gold will prevail?
While not guaranteed, it seems inevitable for USM and LSU to collide at some point this weekend. In a meeting of polar opposites, who has the advantage?
The strength of the Golden Eagles is in its pitching staff. The Tigers will likely run into Hunter Riggins or Hurston Waldrep first. Riggins is USM’s best pitch-to-contact hitter and his 2.75 ERA is second-best among starters in this regional, only behind Hall’s 2.69.
Waldrep is USM’s flamethrower. He’s a sophomore whose command can wane at times, but has ran up an astronomical 13.4 strikeouts per nine innings and has the third best ERA in the bracket at 2.99.
It also has a strong bullpen anchored by Landon Harper, Dalton Rogers and Garrett Ramsey.
At the plate, LSU is very much a Three True Outcome team, a style of offense that closely replicates what is seen today on the Major League Baseball stage.
The Tigers hit more home runs, strikeout more often and draw more walks than anybody in the regional. Outfielder Dylan Crews is the poster boy for that particular offense with his bracket-leading 21 home runs. He also carries a high strikeout rate of 22.4 percent and a high walk rate of 16.8 percent.
Against a Golden Eagle team that fills the strike zone in a park friendly to home runs, LSU may not have much trouble sending a few balls into trees. It will also swing through its fair share of strike three calls, though.
The true question will be whether or not USM can create consistent offense and keep up with the inevitable runs created by LSU’s powerful lineup.
Southern Miss has a deep lineup that sprays the yard with a mix of singles, double and home runs. Reece Ewing, Will McGillis, Carson Paetow and Slade Wilks lead the way with OPS numbers above .900. Christopher Sargent’s 20 home runs lead the team and Dustin Dickerson has a lineup-high 23 doubles.
Where the team has struggled has been in the RISP category: scoring runners who are standing in scoring position. Against the Tigers, USM cannot afford to leave runs on the field.
Regional schedule
Friday, June 3
- Southern Miss vs Army, 1 p.m.
- LSU vs Kennesaw State, 6 p.m.
Saturday
- Losers of day one play at noon.
- Winners of day one play at 6 p.m.
Sunday
- Winner of game 3 vs loser of game 4, 1 p.m.
- Winner of game 4 vs winner of game 5, 6 p.m.
Monday
- If necessary, game 7 will be played at 3 p.m.
All games will be broadcast on ESPN+.
This story was originally published June 2, 2022 at 2:10 PM.
