By Robert Wilson
Matthew Russo has been here before. In fact, this is his fourth straight season.
The Southern Miss senior first baseman and his Golden Eagle teammates have to try to win a regional after losing in the first round again this season.
No. 4 regional seed Arkansas Little Rock scored four runs in the top of the ninth inning to upset No. 9 national seed and No. 1 regional seed Southern Miss 7-4 Friday afternoon to disappoint a crowd of 5,331 at Southern Miss’ Pete Taylor Park/Hill Denson Field in Hattiesburg.
Southern Miss, which dropped to 44-15, meets No. 2 regional seed Virginia, 36-22 and a 15-7 loser to No. 3 regional seed Jacksonville State Friday, in an elimination game Saturday at 1 p.m. Central. The start has been moved up two hours due to possible weather conditions. Virginia finished eighth in the Atlantic Coast Conference and lost No. 2 national seed Georgia Tech in the quarterfinals of the conference tournament.
In 2023, Southern Miss lost Samford 4-2 in 1-0 innings in the first round, but bounced back with four straight wins (Auburn 7-2, Samford 9-4, Penn 11-2 and Penn 11-7) to win the Auburn regional.
In 2024, Southern Miss lost to Indiana 10-4 in the first round, but bounced back with two straight wins (Northern Kentucky 6-0 and Indiana 15-3 before losing to Tennessee 12-3 in the Knoxville Regional.
And then last year, Southern Miss lost to Columbia 11-7 in the first round, but bounced back to win three straight games (Alabama 6-5, Columbia 8-1 and Miami 17-6) before losing to Miami in the championship game 5-4.
Russo wants to forget Friday and get ready for the next game on Saturday.
“I’m just trying to flush it as quick as possible.That’s the plan tomorrow. Get it out of our system and get ready to go tomorrow,” Russo said in an interview with Jason Baker of the Southern Miss radio network.. “It’s important to go back to those games. We can take a lot from it, how we played, we played loose, still had fun even though the season was on the line. We know what it is going to take and see what happens. The fans mean a lot to us. They are our 10th person out there on the field and we need them to show back up. We are going to do it.”
‘I’m disappointed in the loss, it’s not what we envisioned, it’s not what we set out to do,” Southern Miss coach Christian Ostrander, who has taken his team to a regional in each of his three seasons as a head coach. “We need to win every time you get a chance. The game was right there. They made a strike there in the ninth inning against our guy (closer Colby Allen). We were not able to separate enough and it was close game. They got some momentum in the ninth inning and got some runs across and had a big home run. Congratulate then and we have to move on. I’m not discouraged by the way the guys competed or their want or their desire. We just didn’t do enough, We are in a elimination game now and our season could be over so there should be some motivation there. We want to keep this group together. They have achieved a lot of great things. It doesn’t matter now. These guys are special. We want to keep playing. We’ve been here before. In 23, we lost the first game of the regional and were able to come back and win that. And last year, we lost the first game and made it back to the championship game. Everything is going to be focused now on playing for your brothers and competing. We will try to go 1-0 tomorrow. Our season is not over and we get to celebrate playing tomorrow. We get to play nine innings tomorrow and we need to make the best of it, we know we are capable of it, play good baseball and cash in when we get opportunities.”
Allen had an uncharacteristic ninth inning. He replaced starter Camden Clark in the sixth inning and had allowed only three hits and one run going into the ninth inning. Going into Friday, Allen was 7-1 and had two saves. In his last outing, Allen was outstanding, allowing only one earned run with six strikeouts in six innings in relief and picked up the win in a 6-2 victory over Troy in the Sun Belt Conference tournament semifinals.
“Colby is human. He’s not perfect,” Ostrander said. “Credit them with the swings. There is nobody hurting – I promise you – as much as Colby. He’s a magnificent young man who has done so much as Southern Miss and has given us so many things to celebrate. Today, they got him. He has high character and high integrity. He’s going to be great teammate tomorrow and encourage these guys and he’s going to hope for another chance to get on the mound this weekend. “
Said Southern Miss centerfielder Joey Urban: “We are only given one more game that we know of so we are going to come out with our hair on fire and play our game.”
All of Southern Miss runs came from home runs, second baseman Kyle Morrison (a solo shot, his 17th this season) in the third inning, center fielder Joey Urban in the fifth inning (a two-run shot, his 15th this season) and left fielder Davis Gillespie in the eight inning (a solo shot, his 14th this season).
Little Rock made school history Friday winning a first round game in a regional for the first time.
“Our team is very calm when the other team makes a push,” said Chris Curry, a former Meridian Community College and Mississippi State catcher who has been coaching at Little Rock for 12 seasons and also coached at Meridian CC in 2011 and 2012. “We told our team there are going to be two or three storms you are going to have to weather. They are going to have some big crowd moments. It was a very calm, low heart rate feel in our dugout and on the field. I”m very proud of that as a coach. We talk about that constantly. Some folks around the country, the big word that describes us in the regional was dangerous. I said, no, we’re not dangerous, we’re lethal. We just get after it. There is no stage too big.”
Little Rock junior pitcher and Lewisburg High and former Mississippi State alumnus Gage Hailey pitched two hitless innings (sixth and seventh), senior second baseman and Madison St. Joseph High and Meridian CC alumnus Cooper Chaplain had one hit and scored a run (the go-ahead run in the ninth inning) and junior centerfielder and Mississippi State alumnus Michael O’Brien came in and played centerfield in the bottom of the ninth inning.
