STARKVILLE — The Mississippi State softball team didn’t get much sleep after winning two straight elimination games Saturday in Tallahassee, Florida.
The Bulldogs’ second win, a 6-0 shutout of South Florida, ended at 12:03 a.m. local time Sunday. Their first game Sunday against host Florida State started at 2 p.m.
Not that the tight turnaround mattered. Coach Samantha Ricketts and MSU beat the Seminoles twice, following a 5-0 shutout with a 4-3 win to clinch the massive regional upset.
“Listen, we’re just going to stay up all night for every game, I guess,” Ricketts said.
It’s a strategy that might just work as Mississippi State hosts Arizona in this weekend’s NCAA Super Regional at Nusz Park in Starkville.
After all, there’s no precedent for this.
The Bulldogs’ victories over the Seminoles — coupled with the Wildcats’ upset of No. 15 Missouri on Sunday — assured MSU that the first Super Regional in program history would be at home. Game 1 of the best-of-three series is at 11 a.m. Friday, Game 2 will be at 3 p.m. Saturday, and no time has been set for a potential Game 3 on Sunday.
“It’s a great opportunity to really put the spotlight on our softball program and what they’ve been able to accomplish,” said Eric George, executive senior associate athletic director and CFO at Mississippi State.
MSU became the first team ever to eliminate a No. 2 national seed in regional play, dropping its first game in Tallahassee to USF before winning four straight.
The Bulldogs are one of five unseeded teams to make Super Regionals this season in a sport that on average sees 15 of 16 regional hosts advance to the next round.
Mississippi State will host this weekend’s series — the winner of which advances to the Women’s College World Series beginning June 2 in Oklahoma City — because Arizona beat a lower-seeded host team, George said.
MSU submitted a bid to the NCAA to host both regionals and Super Regionals. The Bulldogs have still never hosted an NCAA Regional, becoming the rare school to host a Super Regional first.
“We didn’t host the regional, but we found out we got to host Supers, so it’s a lot of scrambling to try to get all the plans in place,” George said.
The best-laid plans
Nusz Park, situated on Lakeview Drive on the MSU campus, comes with 1,000 maroon chairback seats.
More than three times that amount of fans could pack the park this weekend, George said.
“We’re going to try to get it to a point where there’s an opportunity for everyone to come who wants to come,” he said. “They won’t necessarily be in a chairback.
It may be standing room only; it may be in the outfield, kind of trying to peek over the wall.”
A schematic released Tuesday by Mississippi State turns the outfield parking lot into standing room only admission; the plaza between the field and the adjacent Rula Tennis Pavilion also offers standing room.
George said the school hopes to erect temporary grandstands in the outfield so fans can have a view of the field. MSU is also exploring renting video boards and setting up tents for those who won’t be able to see through the throngs.
Although the $25 tickets Mississippi State made available to Bulldog Club members sold out in a day before ever reaching the general public, George said the school won’t make any revenue by hosting the event. MSU must remit 85 percent of ticket sales to the NCAA and purchase free tickets for staff, players and family members; last year’s baseball regionals and Super Regionals only netted the school $88,000.
And with Nusz Park’s relative size and the equipment Mississippi State plans to rent, hosting a softball Super Regional will be about the financial equivalent of traveling to Tallahassee for last weekend’s event, George said.
“When you factor all that stuff in, we’re going to lose a little bit of money hosting this,” he said.
Something new for MSU
But it’s still something Mississippi State will gladly do.
The Bulldogs had never played a game in which they could clinch an NCAA Regional before Sunday, and their pair of upsets Sunday earned them plenty of new fans.
Starkville Mayor Lynn Spruill said she found out about MSU’s regional win on Twitter and was happy to see what she called a “unique” accomplishment.
“From the perspective of never having had that happen for us before, I’m really excited,” Spruill said. “That’s wonderful to be breaking ground. I think it’s particularly a pleasant circumstance for us as it relates to not being in the super regionals from the men’s perspective.”
The MSU baseball team followed up its 2021 Men’s College World Series title with a down season, going 9-21 in SEC play and missing the conference tournament to end the year.
To Spruill, that leaves plenty of Bulldogs fans ready and willing to turn their attention to softball instead.
“We have a large number of alumni who I think would have loved to have had more baseball, and so this is a wonderful opportunity for them to carry that athletic season a little further and enjoy the successes that the women’s softball team is currently having,” Spruill said.
Banners touting the Super Regional began going up Tuesday along Main and Russell streets in Starkville, Spruill said.
She said Starkville enjoys collaborating with MSU on athletic events like this weekend’s series.
“First and foremost, we really enjoy hosting events, and we design ourselves around that in some cases,” Spruill said. “We’re trying to make our downtown a place where people want to be and where they feel welcome and have things for people to do when they come into town so they’ll want to come back.”
This weekend’s Super Regional certainly qualifies. Spruill expressed her hope that the Bulldogs could follow up last season’s baseball title with a national championship in softball.
But regardless of what happens this weekend, Mississippi State has already put together the best season in program history.
Sunday’s historic victories made sure of that.
“They believed,” Ricketts said of her players. “They bought in. Everybody was pulling the same direction on the rope all day long.”
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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