With two weeks to go, Mississippi State is in contention for a SEC regular season baseball championship.
Mississippi State is pursuing four significant accomplishments. First and probably most important to Bulldog fans, is to host an NCAA regional. The Bulldogs appear to be well positioned to accomplish this and barring a poor finish, there almost certainly will be regional baseball played at Dudy Noble Field this year.
The second accomplishment would be to earn a national seed, which would allow MSU to host a Super Regional, provided they win their regional. Several outlets, including D1baseball.com , currently project the Bulldogs as a national seed, but it’s anything but certain at this point. The latest RPI has MSU at #12, and past NCAA selection committees have followed the RPI fairly closely when assigning national seeds. So to ensure that the coveted national seed does not slip through their fingers, the Bulldogs need to finish very strong. They cannot afford a slip up this Wednesday at Troy and probably need to win 5 or maybe all 6 of their remaining SEC games.
A third accomplishment would be to win the SEC West. Although this is probably not as high a priority with fans as landing a national seed, it would still be important nonetheless since Mississippi State hasn’t won a Western Division title since 1984. At 15-9 in the conference, the Bulldogs trail Texas A&M (16-8) by one game in the standings and have a one game lead over both Ole Miss and LSU, who are 14-10.
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The fourth accomplishment would be to win the overall SEC championship, something that has not happened at Mississippi State since 1989. To do this, the Bulldogs would not only need to overcome A&M, but also South Carolina and Florida, who are tied at the top of the SEC East and overall standings with 16-7 conference marks.
Since winning the overall SEC championship almost assuredly would mean the Bulldogs also accomplished the other three milestones, let’s look at what State needs for that happen. They must outperform Florida, South Carolina and Texas A&M by two games over the remaining six conference games. While that will not be easy, the schedule appears favorable to Mississippi State. MSU travels to Auburn this weekend. The Tigers are currently stand at 6th place in the West and 11th overall. Meanwhile, division leaders Texas A&M and South Carolina meet in Columbia, while Florida hosts Vanderbilt.
The Bulldogs likely need to sweep Auburn and hope that neither Texas A&M or South Carolina can sweep that series. State probably also needs Vanderbilt to win at least one game against Florida…which seems like a safe bet.
Then in the final weekend of the season, State hosts last place Arkansas, while South Carolina is at Alabama, Florida travels to LSU, and Texas A&M hosts Ole Miss. The exact help State needs in the final weekend depends on the results of this weekend’s games, but most likely the Bulldogs will need Alabama, LSU and Ole Miss to win at least one game in the final weekend.
If State goes 6-0, all other teams need to go 4-2 or worse. If State goes 5-1, all other teams need to go 3-3 or worse. Don’t worry about going 4-2 down the stretch because there’s no way they’ll all go 2-4 or worse.
Winning both of their final series plus the game at Troy is a must for MSU to nail down the hosting and national seed opportunities. It likely takes a minimum 5-1 finish in the conference to win the West and a 6-0 finish to win the overall SEC. But even if they win all six remaining games, the Bulldogs still must have help from other teams. All in all, it should make for a very exciting final two weeks of the regular season.