By Robert Wilson
Southern Miss comes into this week’s Sun Belt Conference baseball tournament as one of the hottest teams in the country.
The Golden Eagles won their last nine games in impressive fashion and are now 40-14 overall and 22-8 in the Sun Belt and won its first regular season conference championship since joining the league in 2023.
Southern Miss now has won at least 40 games in each of the last 10 seasons, the longest active streak among Division I teams in the country.
Southern Miss had three-game league sweeps of James Madison and Georgia Southern to end the regular season. The Golden Eagles won 14-3, 10-1 and 11-0 over Georgia Southern.
Southern Miss was impressive at the plate and on the mound in those three games. They hit eight home runs, two each by sophomore designated hitter Drey Barrett and junior shortstop Seth Smith.
Barrett had three hits and Smith, senior center fielder Joey Urban, senior second baseman Kyle Morrison and senior right fielder Ben Higdon had two hits each in the first game. Urban had three hits and junior left fielder Davis Gillespie, senior first baseman Matthew Russo and Higdon had two hits each in the second game. Morrison and Russo had three hits each in the third game.
Starting pitchers Grayden Harris, Camden Clark and Camden Sunstrom threw five innings each and allowed a combined one earned run and the relief pitchers allowed only two earned runs.
This is how accurate Southern Miss pitchers were this weekend: they had a combined 35 strikeouts and no walks. That’s right, no walks.
Harris allowed two hits and no runs with eight strikeouts, Clark allowed five hits and had nine strikeouts, and Sunstrom allowed three hits and had four strikeouts.
Now, Southern Miss sets its sights on winning the Sun Belt tournament in Montgomery, Ala., The Golden Eagles play Wednesday at 4 p.m. against No. 9 Georgia State, which defeated No. 8 seed Old Dominion 17-1 in seven innings Tuesday in the first round.
“We had really good focus, we swung the bats great, played really good defense and pitched it great,” Southern Miss head coach Christian Ostrander said. “I’m really proud of that. It is so awesome for our program, for our community and for the tradition of this program (to win 40 games 10 straight years) to have that consistency. There have been a lot of coaches and players before them who have done this also and it’s not easy. We don’t talk about it. I’m boring. We just try to win one game at a time. That’s a great mark to get and something we are proud of. We have guys who can throw strikes and there is competition within the team. One guy goes out there on a Friday night and the next guy wants to pitch better and the next day and the next day. It becomes contagious. We pride ourselves on and we try to be as consistent as we can by throwing strikes, having a good walk to strikeout ratio and pound the zone.”
Southern Miss picked up many honors when the All conference teams were announced Monday, led by Ostrander being named Coach of the Year and Harris being named Pitcher of the Year.
Ostrander is the first Southern Miss coach to earn the Ron Maestri Sun Belt Coach of the Year honor and the sixth time a Golden Eagle coach was honored since the 1996 season. He led Southern Miss to its first regular season conference crown in three seasons and the school’s first regular season title since 2022. He won his 100th career game earlier this season, becoming the quickest Southern Miss baseball coach to reach that plateau, doing it in 136 games.
Harris, a sophomore left-hander, is the second Golden Eagle to win Pitcher of the Year in the school’s four-year Sun Belt history – Tanner Hall won it in 2023 – and the eighth Southern Miss player to win the conference top pitcher award since 2010.
Harris has an 8-1 record with a 3.10 earned run average and leads the team with 93 strikeouts in 78 1/3 innings. He has thrown at least five innings in 12 starts and at elast six innings in seven starts. He was named Sun Belt, NCBWA and to the Baseball America Team of the Week once during the year.
Other recognition for the Golden Eagles were Harris, Clark, Russo, Morrison and Gillespie on the first team and senior relief pitcher Colby Allen on the second team.
Clark, who started the season as a closer and made the switch to the rotation over the second half of the season, had an 8-0 record with five saves and had 73 strikeouts and only seven walks in 46 innings. Clark was also named to the NCBWA Stopper of the Year midseason watch list.
Russo has a .313 batting average with 12 doubles, 10 home runs and a team-high 50 runs batted in. Morrison is hitting .322 with a team-high 15 home runs and 45 RBIs and leads the team with a .427 on base percentage and a .629 slugging percentage. Gillespie has a team-high .324 average with 12 doubles, a triple, 12 home runs and 43 RBIs. Allen has a 5-1 record with a 2.48 ERA and two saves and 77 strikeouts in 61 2/3 innings.
‘We have a really good vibe about us,” Ostrander said. “We are playing good baseball. You’ve got to hold onto it. We are going to challenge these guys and make sure we stay focused.”
Ostrander is going with his regular rotation with Harris scheduled to start Wednesday and if the Golden Eagles continue to win, Clark and Sunstrom starting the next two games.
Southern Miss has put itself into a very good position to be one of the 16 regional hosts next week. They rank No. 9 in RPI and have a shot of moving up to No. 8, which would give them a national seed and possibly host a super regional.
DI Baseball projects Southern Miss to be the No. 9 seed with Tennessee being the No. 2 seed in the Hattiesburg regional and TCU and Illinois -Chicago being Nos. 3 and 4 seeds going into this week. DI Baseball has Southern Miss matched up with the College Station regional for the super regional.
Baseball America has Southern Miss as the No. 11 seed with Arkansas, High Point and Campbell being the Nos. 2, 3 and 4 seeds in the Hattiesburg regional. They have Southern Miss matched up with the Auburn regional.
