Ole Miss, USM meet Tuesday at Trustmark Park

Published 7:55 am Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Two college baseball teams coming off vastly different weekends will collide Tuesday night.

Ole Miss (27-6) and Southern Miss (22-9) will meet for the second time this season in their annual matchup at Trustmark Park in Pearl. The game is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m.

Ole Miss won the first game, 7-6 on March 27 in Oxford, but is coming off a series loss — its first this season — to Mississippi State.

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Southern Miss, meanwhile, took two out of three games from Western Kentucky and is trying to continue its roll while picking up a valuable victory to bolster its RPI ranking for the NCAA Tournament.

Besides their recent weekends, the Rebels and Golden Eagles have also been trending in different directions over the past two weeks.

Southern Miss has scored 62 runs in its last eight games, while Ole Miss has allowed 31 runs in its last five. Ole Miss mixed in a shutout and a 6-1 win over Mississippi State in that stretch, but gave up seven runs or more three times.

The weekend series with Mississippi State was particularly distressing. The Rebels were blown out 13-3 in game one, rebounded to win the second half of a doubleheader on Saturday, and then lost 7-5 in extra innings on Sunday.

On Sunday, the Rebels had a season-high 16 hits but blew several leads and lost when Luke Alexander hit a two-run walk-off home run in the 11th inning.

“Just didn’t play well enough,” Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco told The Oxford Eagle after the game. “We certainly had opportunities. … We had opportunities with runners on that we just didn’t get the big hit to extend the lead, but we had the lead twice late in the game, and usually when we have a lead late in the game, we’re able to hold it. We blew two of them today.”

Although they romped to the series win over Western Kentucky, the news in Hattiesburg was not all good.

Ace pitcher Nick Sandlin was ruled out for the team’s Conference USA series opener at Florida International on Friday, because of a shoulder injury.

Southern Miss coach Scott Berry told The Hattiesburg American on Monday that the injury wasn’t season-ending, but would keep Sandlin from taking his usual spot in the rotation as the Friday night starter.

Sandlin is 4-0 this season with a 1.29 ERA and 75 strikeouts in 49 innings. He left his start against Western Kentucky after one inning due to shoulder stiffness.

“There is no damage at all to the arm,” Berry told The Hattiesburg American. “Everything checked out good there. But as far as he’s concerned, he’ll be iffy this weekend. For sure, he won’t be seeing the field on Friday, I can assure you of that.”

Berry said there were no plans to rush Sandlin back to the field.

“We’ve got to pace ourselves with him and make sure he’s 100 percent when he comes back,” Berry said. “We’re going to take it slow. He’s got to do a lot of stretching.”

The Oxford Eagle and Hattiesburg American contributed to this report.

About Ernest Bowker

Ernest Bowker is The Vicksburg Post's sports editor. He has been a member of The Vicksburg Post's sports staff since 1998, making him one of the longest-tenured reporters in the paper's 140-year history. The New Jersey native is a graduate of LSU. In his career, he has won more than 50 awards from the Mississippi Press Association and Associated Press for his coverage of local sports in Vicksburg.

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