Southern Miss Left Searching for Answers After Tough Loss to Ole Miss

There's no other way to put it: The Southern Miss baseball team is in a funk. That's no secret, as head coach Christian Ostrander would tell you the same exact thing right now. The big question is, how do they get out of it? In a game where hot and cold streaks can often be unexplainable, that might be a hard one for the Golden Eagles to figure out.

On Tuesday night at Trustmark Park in Pearl, Miss., No. 22 Southern Miss met up with No. 25 Ole Miss for the second time this season. The Golden Eagles won the first matchup at Pete Taylor Park in Hattiesburg earlier this year, but the Rebels got their revenge on Tuesday with a 10-3 win that was never close from the third inning forward. Southern Miss dropped its third game in four tries, falling to 25-12 on the year, while Ole Miss kept its win streak alive at six games, improving to 27-11.

Eags Unravel in Third Inning

The Golden Eagles had four runners on base through the first three innings but weren’t able to get any of them home. Freshman LHP Bruce Littleton made it through the first two innings of his first collegiate career start with three strikeouts and no runs given up, but the Ole Miss bats got going in the bottom of the third. A lead-off double followed by two straight singles led to the Rebels taking a 1-0 lead and ending Littleton's night.

Senior RHP JW Armistead came in for Littleton but wasn't able to stop the bleeding. Before the frame was over, Ole Miss had taken a commanding 5-0 lead over Southern Miss. Senior first baseman Matthew Russo got his sixth home run of the season in the top of the sixth inning to cut the Golden Eagles' deficit to 6-1 at the time, but the Rebels came back in the bottom of the sixth ans tacked on four more runs. The Golden Eagles ended up scoring three runs in total, which still wouldn't have been enough to win the game even if they had kept Ole Miss scoreless after that five-run third inning.

“That’s a really good lineup and we didn’t make enough plays,” Coach Oz told the media following the loss. “Those two crooked innings against a really good team were costly.”

Eags Have a Confidence Issue, Not a Talent Issue

At this point, there’s not much else that can be said about the Golden Eagles’ struggles. We saw in the first third of this season how this team can be a true Omaha contender. Now we’ve seen how vulnerable the roster can be in the second third of the season. Coach Oz said it on Monday before this week of play started, but his guys will have to decide which team they’re going to be for the final third of the season.

“It’s pretty obvious we haven’t been playing our best baseball in the past couple of weeks, and ultimately, right now, (our focus is) going out there and getting our next win,” Coach Oz said. “We got to do everything we got to do on Friday night to win and get the confidence back. We believe, and they got to go perform.”

Coach Oz has good reason to still have the ultimate belief in his ballclub, as the team still has the makeup of what a championship roster looks like.

Over the past decade, the team that has won the national championship has had 1) a top-20 pitching staff, 2) an above-average offense, 3) a top-25 strength of schedule, and 4) an above-.500 road record. The six teams that meet that criteria so far this season are UCLA, Texas, Florida, Florida State, Arkansas… and yes, Southern Miss (H/T Matt Grissom).

The talent is there for the Golden Eagles. A team doesn’t just fluke its way into a 15-2 start with the toughest schedule in the nation. But as Coach Oz likes to say, “complementary baseball” is needed to get back to that point. If Southern Miss can just clean up all the self-inflicted mistakes, it’ll be fine in the final stretch of this season heading into the conference tournament. Catching Coastal Carolina for the top seed in the tournament is probably unlikely at this point, but the second seed is still well within reach.

Massive Weekend Awaits

Southern Miss will now return to Hattiesburg for its first weekend series at The Pete in three weeks. The Golden Eagles will take on the Texas State Bobcats as they jockey for second place in the Sun Belt standings.

The Golden Eagles can’t afford to have anemic offensive or shaky pitching performances this weekend, as the Bobcats lead the Sun Belt in home runs by a wide margin. Texas State has 73 home runs this season, and the second-best mark in the league goes to Arkansas State with 58. Stay tuned to Southern Miss Golden Eagles On SI for more baseball coverage heading into the weekend.

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