SEC Baseball roundup: The Bayou Bengals are messing with Texas

It was another busy weekend for the Southeastern Conference as we inch closer to March and warmer weather. The Rebs took care of business once again, sweeping the Tulane Green Wave in impressive fashion. So let’s take a look at the rest of the conference to see how things are going on the diamond for everyone else.

As of this writing, the D1Baseball top 25 has eight teams in it, including your good, good boys from Oxford sitting at No. 9 (despite sweeping again).

The Good

The West Division, woo wee, is cooking with gas now. Auburn, Texas A&M, Alabama, and Ole Miss are all still undefeated. The favorite to win the division, Arkansas, split four games on a West Coast road trip, but the rest took care of business in impressive fashion. The No. 10 Aggies outscored Cornell 51-5. The Auburn Tigers outscored Bryant 31-12. And the Tide outscored Washington State 29-9. It’s early but these hot starts can’t go unnoticed. The division is always stacked but this year could be real fun.

Especially if A&M has dudes hitting for the cycle all season long. Zach DeLoach was the first SEC player to hit for the cycle since 2016 last week. And now Chris Andritsos has done it, too.

Good indeed.

The Bad (the good kind)

LSU took two of three from the visiting Texas Longhorns, but not without some drama. The Tigers’ outfielder Beau Jordan laced a base hit off the Longhorns’ pitcher, who had apparently been running his mouth all night, and on his way down the baseline to first, he had a message for the pitcher that was expressed using sign language.

This is fun. College baseball is usually so daggum infuriating with its sacrifice bunts with someone already in scoring position and no outs and its matchup pinch-hitting and pitching changes that this was a breath of fresh air actually. I, for one, am a fan of letting your swagger flow and wearing your emotions on the sleeve and what not, and even though this was those pesky Bayou Bengals, I still giggled after seeing this.

C’mon, bro, you’re in the middle of a game in which you just blew a five-run lead and ended up losing the game and the series, yet you’re talking shit to the LSU batters who are ripping your shit left and right.

Do less, Texas.

And it’s always nice to see a program of esteemed royalty get boat raced in baseball. But, even if you asked the Texas fans they didn’t see the games and didn’t care because they were too busy keeping it weird with Tom Herman’s fake ass grill or some shit.

The Ugly

The East has the defending champs and Kentucky who are going to be tough to deal with this season. And Vanderbilt is never going to be a pushover, no matter how much they have to “rebuild”. But boy oh boy, the bottom of the division is not great. Missouri and Tennessee both enjoyed some less than stellar weeks between the chalk.

Two days after defeating then-No. 24 Miami (Fla.), the Missouri Tigers dropped two to Northeastern. The Tigers are now 5-3 and despite outscoring the Huskies 25-3 in the two wins over the weekend, they were outscored themselves 14-10 in the two losses. And despite winning the series over UNC-Greensboro, the Tennessee Volunteers are still 3-4 overall after getting whipped by Maryland last week.

And over in the West, Mississippi State is still under .500 after dropping an ugly one to Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. They’re certainly dealing with a lot off the field (or in the dugout) and should be able to bounce back, but once conference play starts, the Bulldogs could be in trouble if they’re not clicking on all cylinders.