Red-hot Southern Miss is streaking into the postseason. Where will Eagles land?
Whatever bubble talks there were about the Southern Miss baseball team one month ago are long gone by now.
The Golden Eagles have won 12 in a row and are heading into the final regular season weekend with three consecutive sweeps to their name.
A down year for the Sun Belt Conference has made RPI gains difficult, but the league is still projected to send multiple teams to regional brackets in the NCAA Tournament. Its top three teams have solved the RPI riddle by rolling off victories.
Coastal Carolina is 41-11 and leading the conference with a 23-4 league record while boasting its own impressive 11-game win streak. Troy is the only team in the country without a single series loss and is projected to make the tournament field for the second time in three years.
Southern Miss is sandwiched in between the two in the SBC standings and will have to defend that spot from the Trojans, who host the Eagles this weekend.
Bolstered by a potential first-round pick in ace JB Middleton and a lineup on pace to shatter the school’s single season home run record, USM has climbed postseason projections and may find itself in familiar territories by the end of the month.
Where will the Eagles land?
Southern Miss and Troy pose an interesting puzzle for the selection committee to solve. The pair are projected as No. 2 or No. 3 seeds, depending on the projection, and are within driving distance of each other with several potential hosts in the area.
In 2023, the committee split the two within Alabama, sending USM to Auburn and Troy to Tuscaloosa. Both locations are likely hosting again in 2025, but Tallahassee and Athens are in play for the conference rivals this go around.
According to On3’s latest projections, the Golden Eagles could be Florida State’s two-seed in a bracket paired with the Clemson regional. Southern Miss last played postseason baseball in Tallahassee in 2016, the first of eight consecutive regional trips for the program.
That projection has Coastal Carolina hosting as the 12th national seed thanks to a strong non-conference RPI and Troy as a two seed in the nationally top-seeded Texas bracket.
D1 Baseball has USM taking a shorter trip and heading to Tuscaloosa for the first time since 2006. Alabama is projected to be the 14th national seed and is paired with overall No. 3 seed Arkansas.
Southern Miss would be joining the regional with Arizona State and Missouri State. The same projection is higher on the Chanticleers, pegging Coastal as a 10th seed nationally. But it’s lower on Troy, slotting the Trojans in Auburn as a three seed.
To make the committee’s job a little tougher, neither Ole Miss or Mississippi State are on track to host this season, giving the selection team three schools from the same state who will command middle seeds in a regional.
On3 sends both to the Carolinas, with Mississippi State at North Carolina and Ole Miss at Clemson. D1 Baseball places the Rebels in Chapel Hill and the Bulldogs a bit closer to home in Tallahassee.
Only time will tell how the regions take shape, but a packed state will likely mean a longer than usual road trip for somebody.
