Mississippi State and Ole Miss are set for crucial SEC series in Starkville

The last two seasons of college baseball has been one hell of a ride in the state of Mississippi.

Ole Miss won the College World Series in 2022 after being named the last team into the NCAA tournament. Mississippi State won the College World Series in 2021 after a great season when it earned a top eight national seed.

In a selling your soul to the devil in the Delta at the crossroads twist of fate, both baseball programs are now scrapping to put together a winning season and at the bottom of the SEC.

It is “Super Bulldog” weekend in Starkville, so there will certainly be a crowd of people at Dudy-Noble with all its artificial noise. If there was ever a weekend for MSU to be primed for a turnaround, you’d think this would be it. Big crowd, hated rival, all the trimmings for a great weekend.

But if you’re on the Ole Miss baseball team, this is the weekend to drop a couple turds in the punch bowl so to speak. The Rebels have not won a series against MSU since 2015, so baseball being the dumbest sport ever in terms of predictive value - it’ll probably be this weekend it comes to pass for Ole Miss to finally win a couple.

Projected Starters

Friday, April 14, 6 p.m. CT

Ole Miss: RHP Jack Dougherty - 2-3, 6.57 ERA

Mississippi State: RHP Cade Smith - 1-1, 7.50 ERA

Saturday, April 15, 3 p.m. CT

Ole Miss: LHP Xavier Rivas - 5-2, 5.22 ERA

Mississippi State: RHP Landon Gartman - 2-2, 7.09 ERA

Sunday, April 16, 1 p.m. CT

Ole Miss: RHP JT Quinn - 3-0, 5.18 ERA

Mississippi State: BHP Jurrangelo Cijntje - 3-2, 5.76 ERA

With MSU sitting at 3-9 in the SEC and Ole Miss at 2-10, it will not be a fantastic series win for either school other than just bragging rights. However, this series marks the halfway point of conference play so getting out of the basement could happen pretty quickly with a sweep. Auburn and Alabama (who both have 4-8 conference records) face each other this weekend, so a lot of shuffling could occur in the bottom half of the Western Division.

Friday night’s game and Sunday afternoon’s game will be streamed on SEC Network+. Saturday will be broadcast live on the SEC Network.