STARKVILLE – Coming into the Starkville Regional, questions surrounding Mississippi State’s baseball team were abundant; was the squad truly capable of a deep postseason run?
Even though the 2026 Bulldogs hit the program’s most-ever home runs in a season this year, many times those swings dried up in the biggest moments of games and it showed in some losses of key weekend SEC series. Nonetheless, the team was good enough to earn the right to host a regional, and welcomed in Lipscomb, the Athletic Sun Conference champions; Cincinnati, a hard-hitting foe from the Big 12 Conference; and Louisiana, the runners-up of the Sun Belt Conference, as opponents over the weekend.
While many other baseball squads – including No. 1 national seed UCLA – found themselves on the wrong side of an upset, the Bulldogs dismantled all three Regional foes with at least 10 runs scored in all three games and captured its first regional victory since that fabled 2021 season with a 19-5 rout of the Ragin’ Cajuns on Sunday – the second-most runs scored in a regional in program history.
Now heading into a Super Regional battle at SEC champion Georgia, the Bulldogs loudly left no doubt they are a team to contend with.
“I’m just proud of this group,” head coach Brian O’Connor said. “We have more baseball. Our next opportunity is (this) weekend in Athens and we look forward to the opportunity of the next game we have in front of us.”
In all, it was a pretty great few days of baseball, freshman outfielder and the regional’s Most Outstanding Player Jacob Parker said.
“We have a lot of fun,” he said. “We truly are really, really close with each other and when each of us is having success, I think we all want to compete and win in our own right, but we really love playing the game and playing together. So, it’s such a special group and we really love this team.”
In a lot of ways, the regional served as a coming-out party for Parker, a freshman from Purvis who grew up a die-hard fan of MSU baseball. He worked his way into the starting lineup this year and has become a big bat the team has relied on down the stretch. Getting the opportunity to show out over the weekend and make the victory lap around Dudy Noble Field giving high-fives to the fans was a moment he said he’ll never forget.
“You grow up watching guys like Jake Mangum and Tanner Allen and it’s just so special that I can contribute that way,” he said. “Maybe a kid can look up to me and see that.”
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