Mississippi State 2025 SEC Baseball Tournament Exit Interview

(Clarion Ledger photo)

By Doug Kyle

SEC Tournament Results: L, 9-0 vs. Texas A&M

Record: 34-21

Well, it had to end sometime, sooner or later. The SEC has been like that all year. No team, from regular season champion Texas on down, has been able to sustain success for a long period of time. Teams get hot as a firecracker, then cool off like a fire bucket was poured on them. There have been teams that swept one weekend, only to be swept the next weekend.

So, the law of averages paid a call to Hoover, AL, to collect from Mississippi State for the 8-1 conference finish that took a 1-9 team to 15-15 and a lock for the NCAA Tournament, announced Memorial Day.

The Bulldogs won't host, they'll be either a 2 or a 3 seed. With the SEC expected to land 12-13 of its 16 in the 64-team field and conference members not permitted to play in the same regional, it doesn't leave much room to fit them all into 16 sites around the country.

The game at Hoover could have been a more competitive, and but for a few key plays, it likely would have. Reed Stallman and Gehrig Frei, both playing corner outfield positions they weren't recruited to play, inserted for offense, had situations where a fly ball hit both glove and grass. That and a few other situations go differently, and it's likely not a shellacking on the order it was.

But, with the Aggies making what appeared to be a last minute, or last night, depending on whom you believe, decision to start Ryan Prager, it ultimately came down to whether Mississippi State could score enough off him to make even a lower scoring game competitive. Like the old saying goes, if you can't score, you can't win. Asked postgame about it, Noah Sullivan gave credit to the A&M pitcher getting an early lead, settling in, getting comfortable, and hitting his spots.

You never want to lose any game, but if there was a time with the least effect for it, that was the SEC Tournament, much more than a regional next week. It's debatable if a single loss affected whether State will be a 2 or 3. And speaking of that, if a team wins as many conference games as a team spoken of as a potential host team, wins series over two others in the conversation, and run rules another in that same paragraph, how do they, from the perennial best conference in college baseball, wind up with a "3" penciled in by their name? If RPI is the be all, end all, what better RPI is there than one's own conference?

What’s next

The NCAA Tournament Selection Show on Memorial Day is what's next. What remains to be seen is the seeding and the site. There will be all kinds of prognostications from now to then, including some of my College Baseball Central brethren. I tend to be old school and results-oriented, wait for the results and don't be swayed by the intrigue or speculation.

One thing I do know is that unless Mississippi State is assigned to the Nome, Alaska Regional, there will be Bulldog fans there. And, if Interim Head Coach Justin Parker's response on how he plans to start another hot streak is any example, the bump in the road at Hoover will be just that, a bump in the road. And, if the Bulldogs don't have to sit around and wait for hours or days to play, like has happened several times this year, they could be a team some comfortable hosts do not want to see coming to town.

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