Southern Miss hosting baseball regional; Ole Miss heading to Miami – Daily Leader

The field is set for the 2022 NCAA Division I Baseball Tournament and both the University of Southern Miss and the University of Mississippi will be representing the Magnolia State when play begins later this week.

Southern Miss has earned the right to host a regional and will be the No. 1 seed in the four-team field at Pete Taylor Park.

It’s the third time in school history for the Eagles (43-16) to host a regional and they’ll get tourney play started on Friday at 1 p.m. with a matchup against the No. 4 seeded Army Black Knights (31-23).

The LSU Tigers (38-20) are the second seeded team in the regional and play No. 3 seeded Kennesaw State (35-26) at 6 p.m. on Friday.

The Eagles previously hosted in 2003 and 2017 but did not advance to a super-regional in either of those instances. The 2003 team lost its opening round game to Southern University of Baton Rouge and fought out of the loser’s bracket before being eliminated by Baylor.

The 2017 USM team won two games to begin regional action before losing two straight games to Mississippi State University.

Fans of Southern Miss didn’t expect their team to host and earn a top seed after the Eagles went 2-2 in the Conference USA Tournament last week in Hattiesburg.

Ole Miss began Selection Sunday on the NCAA bubble and was the last at-large team to receive a spot in the 2022 field.

A late season sweep of LSU in Baton Rouge bolstered the Ole Miss resume, but the Rebels only played one game in Hoover, Alabama at the SEC Tournament and that resulted in a 3-1 loss to Vanderbilt.

The Rebels are the No. 3 seed in the Coral Gables Regional hosted by the University of Miami.

No. 2 seeded Arizona (37-23) will take on Ole Miss (32-22) at 6 p.m. on Friday in the opener for both teams. The No. 1 seeded home team, Miami (39-18), faces No. 4 seeded Canisius (29-23) at 1 p.m. in the first game of the day.

The University of Tennessee (53-7) comes in as the No. 1 overall seed in tournament play after they won the SEC regular season and tournament titles. Seeds two through eight in order are Stanford (41-14), Oregon State (44-15), Virginia Tech (41-12), Texas A&M (37-18), Miami (39-18), Oklahoma State (39-20) and East Carolina (42-18).

The national nine through 16 seeds are Texas (42-19), North Carolina (38-19), Southern Miss, Louisville (38-18-1), Florida (39-22), Auburn (37-19), Maryland (45-12) and Georgia Southern (40-18).

The SEC and ACC are tied for most teams in the tournament field with nine each.