Southern Miss baseball is hosting Virginia, Jacksonville State and Little Rock for the second consecutive Hattiesburg Regional at Pete Taylor Park. The six confirmed games are May 29-31, with a possible Game 7 on June 1.
Regionals are the first round of the NCAA Division I baseball tournament and are hosted by the top 16 seeds in the 64-team tournament. Each regional consists of four teams competing in a double-elimination bracket until a winner is decided.
Winners of the regionals are then paired into a 16-team bracket, with the higher-seeded team in each pair hosting a super regional. Super regionals are best-of-three series, with the eight winners advancing to the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska.
This weekend will be the fifth time in program history that USM has hosted a regional, and the fourth since 2017. USM will need to win its regional and have Florida lose its Gainesville Regional for USM to host a super regional, something USM has done only twice in program history.
Last year, when Southern Miss hosted a regional, it brought $4 million in direct spending over the weekend and ended up having a $6 million to $7 million economic impact, according to the Hattiesburg American.
In 2023, USM hosted a super regional, which had an economic impact of more than $5 million, according to Paige Robertson, director of communications for Visit Hattiesburg , in a 2023 article from WHLT.
StubHub currently has five listings for tickets from $60 to $156 for USM’s first game of the regional against Little Rock at 1 p.m. May 29.
Contributor: Jaydon Koss
