Southern Miss baseball two wins away from College World Series

Much like the four-team playoff is to college football and the Final Four is to college basketball, the world series is to college baseball.

But whereas most championships move around year over year, the College World Series can be summed up in one word.

Omaha is the goal for Southern Miss, also the goal for Tennessee, but only one gets to punch its ticket to eastern Nebraska.

USM got to this point last year, but was unable to seal the deal with a pair of Super Regional losses to eventual national champion Ole Miss.

Now hosting a Hattiesburg Super Regional for the second year in a row and the second time in program history, the Golden Eagles have earned every bit of this moment.

After starting their first year in the Sun Belt 22-15, the Golden Eagles caught fire, having since ripped off 23 wins in their last 26 games including the Sun Belt Tournament title and the Auburn Regional crown.

Also, during that span, the announcement of Head Coach Scott Berry’s end-of-season retirement which means its now or never. Dustin Dickerson said, “Obviously our goal when we had our first team meeting was to make it to Omaha, win the whole thing, and then a couple weeks ago when he announced that, it obviously just boosted that a little more, and yeah, I know a lot of the guys think the same way. We all are pushing for him.”

Coach Berry said, “You’re always trying to check boxes, and obviously the biggest box is to win a national championship, and in 2009 that was a very, very special memory that we all have that experienced it. There are eight teams – this year there’s 305 Division I teams, and when it’s all said and done there’s eight left standing, and that’s pretty special. If you can navigate your way through that – cause that’s not easy to do. In these regionals, we’ve seen power teams get knocked off. It’s the time of year where anything can happen. I mean it’s a magical time of year.”

USM’s only other College World Series appearance coming in 2009.