Mississippi State won the SEC baseball regular-season title one year after finishing in the league basement.
Now the Bulldogs want to carry the momentum of that dramatic rise into the postseason.
Mississippi State (40-14-1, 21-9 SEC) enters this week's SEC Tournament as the No. 1 seed after winning its first regular-season league title since 1989. The Bulldogs were 24-30 overall and 8-22 in conference play in 2015 to finish last in the Western Division and post the SEC's worst overall league record.
Bulldogs Coach John Cohen, who played for Mississippi State's last SEC regular-season champions, said there isn't much of a gap separating the top of the conference from the bottom.
"If you're an inch off in the Southeastern Conference, you're going to get punched in the mouth a lot," Cohen said.
SEC Tournament play begins today in Hoover, Ala., with four single-elimination games. Today's winners advance to double-elimination play beginning Wednesday along with Mississippi State, No. 2 seed South Carolina (42-13, 20-9), No. 3 seed Texas A&M (41-13, 20-10) and No. 4 seed Florida (44-11, 19-10). The tournament returns to a single-elimination format Saturday and has a championship game Sunday.
Mississippi State made its dramatic rise up the standings by getting improvement from its new players and receiving a huge impact from its newcomers. Mississippi State's three top batting averages are owned by freshman Jake Mangum (.427) and junior-college transfers Nathaniel Lowe (.359) and Jack Kruger (.358). Kruger has a team-high .570 slugging percentage, Mangum leads the Bulldogs in on-base percentage (.479) and Lowe has a team-leading 47 RBI.
"Those are all three new guys who have just had great first years," Cohen said. "That's not common in the Southeastern Conference."
Cohen also led Kentucky to a regular-season title in 2006 and is the second coach to win an SEC regular-season championship at two schools. Ron Polk led Mississippi State to four SEC regular-season championships before winning one at Georgia in 2001.
Alabama Coach Mitch Gaspard and Kentucky's Gary Henderson, whose teams play today, acknowledge their teams are on the NCAA Tournament bubble after going .500 in conference play during the regular season.
"You've got to win this game, you've got to get to the double-elimination part, you've probably got to beat [Mississippi State] on Wednesday and build those RPI points," Henderson said.
Gaspard said that "the winner of that game is going to have a whole lot more comfort after it and the loser is going to be sitting home on pins and needles for a week."
Auburn (23-33, 8-22) and Arkansas (26-29, 7-23) had the SEC's two worst conference records and consequently didn't make the 12-team tournament field. Arkansas will miss the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2001.
Sports on 05/24/2016