Southern Miss remains goal-oriented ahead of Hattiesburg Super Regional

In less than 48 hours, the Southern Miss baseball team will be taking the diamond in the Hattiesburg Super Regional for the second straight season.

NCAA championship banners starting to line the fences at Pete Taylor Park ahead of Saturday’s game one against Tennessee.

The winner of this best two-out-of-three series will advance to the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska. If USM is able to do so, it will mark the first time since 2009.

Prior to last season, the Golden Eagles had never hosted a Super Regional. Even though last year’s series against Ole Miss didn’t go according to plan, that has the Black and Gold even more dialed in on the big picture, leading up to first pitch. Southern Miss Pitcher Justin Storm said, “This is kind of where we expect to be. At the beginning of the season, our goals were very simple. We set out to win the regular season conference, win the conference tournament, win a regional, Super Regional, win it in Omaha. And when you do check off those boxes, when that’s a goal from the beginning of the season, that’s what you work for, it’s almost like, okay, we did it, but now let’s move on. We’ve still got other goals to achieve, and I think that’s kind of the mood of the team. We are pumped to be here in a Super Regional, being one of the final 16 teams in the country still playing baseball is incredible, but obviously there’s more goals to attain, and you don’t want to lose sight of that.”

First pitch for game one between USM and the Volunteers is set for 2 p.m. Saturday.