Southern Miss to host Tennessee in Hattiesburg for Super Regional series
Tennessee will keep the bags packed as the NCAA Baseball committee announced Tuesday morning that Southern Miss has won the bid to host this weekend’s Super Regional series in Hattiesburg, Miss.
NCAA Baseball’s twitter account made the announcement at 10 o’clock eastern time.
Tennessee and Southern Miss will get going at Pete Taylor Park on Saturday at 3 pm ET.
Prior to postseason play, both teams put in a bid to the NCAA to host a regional and super regional before Selection Monday last week. Though neither one of the two programs was granted a host site for regional play, they each won their respective regionals as 2-seeds – thus putting it in the hands of the committee to decide which venue would be granted the supers.
According to NCAA baseball rules, the selection committee “shall review the hosting proposals according to the site selection criteria (e.g., quality and availability of the facility, revenue potential and other available accommodations) to determine the host. If only one of the teams has submitted a proposal, that team shall host if the proposal is acceptable.”
During regional play, NCAA Media representative Jeff Williams told Knox News the bids would be based on merit and take into account factors such as venues and hotels.
Both teams won their regional as 2-seeds
Tennessee made a clean sweep of the Clemson Regional this past weekend as the 2-seed, knocking off Charlotte twice with the latter being for the tournament title. The middle game of Tennessee’s regional victory came in a 14-inning thriller over the fourth-overall seed and host team, Clemson. Second baseman Christian Moore was named regional MVP after going 7-for-10 at the plate with four home runs, eight runs driven in and six runs scored.
Four Vols earned their way onto the All-Regional team. The players included Moore at second base, third baseman Zane Denton, designated hitter Griffin Merritt and starting pitcher Andrew Lindsey.
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Southern Miss (45-18) was the 2-seed in the Auburn Regional and after dropping its first game to 3-seed Samford, the Golden Eagles ran the table and knocked off Penn twice to claim the regional championship. Auburn Regional MVP Dustin Dickerson homered for the sixth time this postseason during Monday’s 11-7 win over the Quakers.
The Vols finished the regular season in fourth place in the SEC East standings, going one-and-done in Hoover, Ala. for the conference tournament. It capped the regular season winning 15 of its last 19 games and 11 of the final 15 league contests. Jared Dickey was named All-SEC Second Team as an outfielder, hitting well over .300 on the season.
The Golden Eagles claimed the Sun Belt Tournament Championship in its inaugural season in the league, knocking off Louisiana 6-2 last week. Southern Miss has now won 23 of their last 26 games entering supers with Collegiate Baseball First-Team pitcher Tanner Hall leading the way. The hurler was joined by catcher Rodrigo Montenegro, second baseman Nick Monistere, third baseman Danny Lynch, shortstop Dustin Dickerson and outfielder Carson Paetow on the Auburn All-Regional team.
Tennessee is Super Regional bound for the third-straight year and fifth time in program history. The Vols have won three supers, advancing to the College World Series as recently as 2021. Southern Miss is making it back-to-back trips to the second round of postseason play and for the third time ever.
