Diamond Dawgs enter preseason top 20 in D1Baseball Rankings
It might feel like just yesterday since Mississippi State’s college baseball season came to an end in Charlottesville, Va., but the Diamond Dawgs first pitch of 2025 is just a month away.
With preparations underway for game one, DI Baseball is already getting set for the season with its top 25. That list of teams was released on Monday with the Diamond Dawgs’ resurgence last year bringing them back into good graces at No. 18.
Following the school’s first ever national championship in a team sport back in 2021, Chris Lemonis’ team fell on hard times in 2022 and 2023 with two seasons of just nine SEC wins and a losing record overall in 2022. Lemonis hired pitching coach Justin Parker last season and it fixed the Diamond Dawgs’ pitching problems as they had two of the top starters in the league in Khal Stephen and Jurrangelo Cijtnje help lead the team to a 40-23 record and a 17-13 mark in the SEC.
The Diamond Dawgs just missed out on a host spot for the Regional round, but the team made it to the Region championship against Virginia before falling to the eventual College World Series team. State followed that up by having 11 players drafted, the most in 20 rounds in school history.
This year’s team has even more preseason promise than last but there will be much to prove in the coming months with key players like Cijtnje, Stephen, Dakota Jordan, Connor Hujsak and David Mershon now playing professionally.
“It’s a good group. It’s a fun group. It doesn’t mean that we’ve been perfect in our work and I haven’t chewed their ass a little bit, but it’s the mentality of coming here, having a good time and getting along,” Lemonis said after the fall concluded.
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“It still takes a while for that. Sometimes your closest teams have to fight through adversity. When I got here in 2019, that team had been through a lot. You’ve got to go through some things with each other too.”
Also appearing in the top 25 was six of State’s opponents this year and four of them will be showcased at Dudy Noble this spring. MSU hosts No. 3 LSU, No. 10 Florida and No. 19 Texas this season with the Longhorns debuting new head coach Jim Schlossnagle fresh off of his runners up finish in the national title with Texas A&M.
The Diamond Dawgs also draw No. 17 Oklahoma State and No. 21 Arizona at the Astros Foundation Classic in Houston, Texas (March 1 and 2) and No. 25 Troy at home (February 25).
The season opener will be a three-game set on the weekend of February 14 as the Diamond Dawgs host Manhattan.
