Mississippi State’s postseason coordinates are now set.
Sunday brought the news that the Diamond Dawgs would be going on the road for postseason and Monday brought the locations and opponents. State is headed to the Charlottesville Regional to face off against the No. 12 overall seed Virginia as well as No. 3 seed St. John’s and No. 4 Pennsylvania.
After two seasons spent at home for postseason play, the Bulldogs (38-21) return for the 40 Regional appearance in school history. State has a record of 125-90 in the NCAA Tournament dating back to 1949.
State has won 17 Regionals over the course of its history and advanced to the Super Regional round 10 times since the format was introduced in 2001. Since 2016, the Bulldogs have advanced to the Super Regional in five-straight opportunities. The Bulldogs have also been to the College World Series the last three times that they’ve participated in postseason play from 2018-21.
For two of the postseasons during that timeframe, the Bulldogs had to go on the road to advance to a Super Regional. In both instances, State came out of the loser’s bracket in the Regionals to make a run. In 2017, the Bulldogs traveled to Hattiesburg and lost to South Alabama in the first game before winning four games in two days to advance to the Baton Rouge Super.
The Bulldogs followed that up in 2018 by losing to Oklahoma in the Tallahassee Regional and then winning four games in a row to advance to Nashville. MSU beat Vanderbilt two out of three times and made it to the College World Series semifinal that season.
This year will be another difficult road for the Bulldogs. State will have to get through a program with rich tradition in Virginia. The Cavaliers were 41-15 this year and finished fourth in the ACC. They have been an NCAA Tournament regular under Brian O’Conner with six trips to the College World Series and a National Championship in 2015.
A win in that Regional and State is paired with No. 5 overall seed and SEC rival Arkansas. Those two teams had a three-game battle in Fayetteville just a few weeks ago where the Bulldogs took one game and were within striking distance in the other three.
MSU just missed out on a hosting spot in 2024 as Pac-12 Champion Arizona and American Athletic Champion East Carolina were the two teams picked ahead of the Bulldogs. State had a No. 25 RPI with 16 Quad I wins but an 11-5 record against Quad 4 teams proved to be too big of an issue for the committee.
The Bulldogs have lost 12 of 21 games this season by one run and 17 by three runs or less. They head to Charlottesville with a chip on their shoulder looking to prove that Starkville should have been a host site.
Game times are still to be determined by the NCAA with the Regional beginning on Friday.
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