Super Southern Miss on brink of history

Pete Taylor Park is home to many things. For the last two years, it’s been home to a Hattiesburg Super Regional, but never has it been home to a Hattiesburg Super Regional dogpile and that’s what the Golden Eagles are out to change this weekend.

Dustin Dickerson said, “Just soak it in, man. I told somebody last night, I said, this program has been to three Super Regionals in its history, and two have been in the past two years, so it doesn’t come around a lot, so you soak it in and give it your all because you never know when your last Super Regional could be.”

The Golden Eagles making sure last year’s Super Regional wasn’t their last by virtue of winning four straight games out of the Auburn Regional loser’s bracket, earning themselves some bonus Berry Ball at the Pete. Danny Lynch said, “Yeah, it’s awesome. I mean obviously I thought we had played our last game here, especially when we didn’t host a regional, but we were able to host a super and that’ll be awesome to come back and play one more weekend here.”

A pleasant surprise after being snubbed in the round of 64, but this time Hattiesburg is home for the first-ever meeting between USM, who is 26-5 at home, and Clemson Regional champion Tennessee, who is 5-12 on the road.

All eyes now shift to Saturday’s game one pitching match-up between two top flight MLB Draft prospects Tanner Hall and Chase Dollander. “Just another game. He’s just another guy. I think we’ve got a guy that’s projected to go high as well, so good luck facing him and it’s going to be a fight.”

USM’s ‘Hall’ American not the only arm that’s gotten the Black and Gold back to this point with key outings down the stretch from the likes of Will Armistead, Niko Mazza, Billy Oldham, and in the biggest of moments, Justin Storm, who went five-and-two-third scoreless with eight strikeouts to close out the Sun Belt Tournament title game and another five-and-two-thirds scoreless with 10 Ks to send USM to the winner-take-all Auburn Regional title game.  Will Armistead said, “Every time our backs are against the wall, pitchers, as a staff, challenge each other, hey, this is on us to get it done, and I think I’m happy with how we responded.”

“It’s awesome. I mean he saved us against Penn. If he’s not on this team, there’s no chance we win that Penn game. He really came in and dominated, and it feels like once every week or two, we get kind of a Storm game where he just kind of wins the game for us. We just score a few runs and he does the rest.”

Offensively, Southern Miss averaging almost a run more per game than it did last year when USM failed to cross home plate in its final two games against Ole Miss.

Two of the hottest hitters being senior captain Danny Lynch with eight home runs in his last 19 games and Dustin Dickerson with seven in his last 11. “I’ve been working my whole life for these last few weeks for my whole life, so it feels good for it to finally pay off a little bit.”

“One, we’re more experienced, and two, last year we really just ran into two really good arms we faced and we’re going to face awesome arms this weekend – I could be wrong – but I think we’re going to be a little more ready for it. We’re a little more prepared.”

USM hit the adversity wall a bit earlier this season, following two blowout losses to eventual regular season Sun Belt champion Coastal Carolina. Following a reality check team meeting, the refocused Golden Eagles responded by winning 23 out of their last 26 games. Head Coach Scott Berry said, “Just getting gut punched two times at Coastal Carolina. That was a defining moment in our team and who we were and who we wanted to be and we had to stand up and be like men and recover from that. That was I think the biggest adversity we’ve had to date in that season, and our guys answered the call and have really never looked back since then.”

Perhaps the biggest change in USM’s demeanor can be seen after the team’s biggest wins, opting for just a half dog pile after the Sun Belt title game and no dog pile after beating Penn in the regional finale.

Juxtapose that with the emotional high of beating LSU in last year’s Hattiesburg Regional championship and it’s clear the Golden Eagles have been here before. 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.”

Moving on is what Southern Miss has been preparing to do for the last month, following the end-of-season retirement announcement of Head Coach Scott Berry.

As the all-time winningest coach in program history, his legacy is already set in stone, but cementing the national brand of Southern Miss baseball with a second run to Omaha would certainly be worth a trip to the Roost. “We want to send him out the right way.”

“When we started in February, we wanted to win the College World Series. That was our goal, and if you try to think about winning the College World Series on February 16th or 17th – whenever the first game was – then you’re kind of looking way too far ahead. You’ve just got to kind of take it one game at a time, and take the next step. Everything is about taking the next step towards winning the College World Series, and this weekend, we have a chance to take a big step towards it.”

“The one wall that we haven’t been able to break since 2009 is that Super Regional. Obviously, last year was the first time that we encountered that wall since 2009, so being able to knock it over would be great for us, but if that were to be something that we would attain, then I would think there would be a great deal of emotion on their part as a team coming together.”