2021 NCAA Baseball Tournament Monday Regionals Schedule, Scores Analysis, TV & More

We’ve arrived at the all-important final day of regionals.

Looking to get caught up before today’s action? Here’s a helpful primer. Schedule + results and analysis once games finish is below. 

TIME (ET)	MATCHUP	WINNER	Regional	TV
12 p.m.	(1) Mississippi State vs. (3) Campbell	MSU, 6-5	Starkville	ESPNU
12 p.m.	(3) South Alabama vs. (4) South Florida	USA, 4-0	Gainesville	ESPN3
2 p.m.	(1) Ole Miss vs. (2) Southern Miss.	MISS, 12-9	Oxford	ESPN2
2 p.m.	(3) South Alabama vs. (4) South Florida	USF, 6-4	Gainesville	ESPN3
4 p.m.	(2) Oregon State vs. (3) Dallas Baptist	DBU, 8-5	Fort Worth	ESPNU
7 p.m.	(1) Arkansas vs. (2) Nebraska	ARK, 6-2	Fayetteville	ESPN2
7 p.m.	(1) Old Dominion vs. (3) Virginia	PPD	Columbia	ESPNU
10 p.m.	(1) Oregon vs. (3) LSU	LSU, 9-8	Eugene	ESPN2
10 p.m.	(1) Stanford vs. (2) UC Irvine	STAN, 11-8	Stanford	ESPNU

 

ANALYSIS

– Monday’s Starkville Regional final looked like a mismatch on paper. On one side, you had host Mississippi State, which got Sunday off because of rain in the forecast and was only playing in its third game of the regional. On the other, you had Campbell, which had played four games and played in a four-and-a-half hour game against Virginia Commonwealth on Sunday. But sometimes regional play defies logic, and on Monday afternoon, the Bulldogs narrowly escaped with a 6-5 win to advance to a home super regional. Righthander Landon Sims was a star for MSU, as he ended up throwing three scoreless innings to close out the game, but Campbell still nearly got to him. Lawson Harrill led off the ninth with a double and ended up on third with two outs when Zach Neto, who is hitting above .400 this season, grounded out to shortstop to end the game. This weekend, MSU will welcome Notre Dame to Dudy Noble. 

– In an incredibly well-played seventh game, South Florida its first appearance in a super regional with a 6-4 win over South Alabama after the Jags won the resumption of the first regional final game earlier in the day. After falling behind 2-0 early, USF went to work on offense. Two runs came home in the fourth on a two-run double off the bat of left fielder Jarrett Eaton. The Bulls took the lead in the sixth on an Eaton RBI single, and once they had the lead, they played add-on. One more run scored in the eighth on a Jake Sullivan sacrifice fly, and two scored in the ninth. When the Jags scored single runs of their own in the eighth and ninth, those add-on runs looked even bigger. Relief ace Orion Kerkering was the hero on the mound, throwing 4.1 innings, giving up two hits and one run on 74 pitches, which settled things down at a time when that’s precisely what USF needed. The Bulls have a tough task ahead with a super regional against Texas in Austin, but they will come into the weekend flying high. 

– Things got a little bit hairy in the end, but Mississippi was able to hang on for a 12-9 win over Southern Mississippi to secure a spot in the super regionals. Early, it looked like the Rebels would be able to waltz to the finish line, as they jumped out to a 9-0 lead after two innings, including four runs in the second inning on a grand slam for Tim Elko, his seventh homer on a torn ACL. But the Golden Eagles refused to go quietly, scoring two in the third on a Reed Trimble two-run homer and five in the fifth on three home runs, including another one for Trimble. USM also added two runs in the seventh on, you guessed, a pair of solo homers, this time off of Doug Nikhazy. But the music stopped for USM in the eighth when Taylor Broadway entered the game. He threw two scoreless innings on one hit to close out the win. The Rebels will hit the road this weekend to take on Arizona in the Tucson Super Regional in what should be a very fun and very offensive series. 

– Dallas Baptist made a habit of engineering impressive comebacks in big spots in Fort Worth and it did it again on Monday in an 8-5 win over Oregon State. DBU found itself down 5-0 to OSU in the third. At that point, the Patriots had already used three pitchers on a day when it was going to have to cobble things together on the mound. But two things were game-changers for DBU from there. First, the move to Zane Russell, the third pitcher of the game, was the right move. He uncorked a wild pitch that brought in the fifth OSU run, but he got the last out of that inning to get out of a jam, and then threw four more scoreless innings after that. The other things that changed was that DBU got the home run ball working, which has been its bread and butter offensively this season. In the sixth, a two-run homer for Ryan Wrobleski made it 5-2. Then, in the seventh, Andrew Benefield hit a grand slam to put the Patriots on top 6-5. For good measure, in the eighth, River Town added a two-run shot to make it 8-5, with Peyton Sherlin and Dominic Hamel combining to throw a scoreless ninth. DBU moves on to its first super regional since 2011 to take on either Old Dominion or Virginia at a site to be determined. 

– The game seven between Old Dominion and Virginia has been postponed to Tuesday at 9:06 a.m. ET due to continued inclement weather in Columbia. Tuesday’s weather is a bit more promising than what the teams were facing on Monday, but scheduling the game for so early in the day is clearly a move to make sure there is as wide a window as possible to get nine innings in, even if it takes waiting out rain all day. 

– Arkansas got pushed as hard as it has been pushed this season by Nebraska on back-to-back days, but after a loss to the Cornhuskers on Sunday, the Razorbacks won in dramatic fashion on Monday 6-2. Things got real for Arkansas very quickly in this one. Nebraska took a 2-0 lead with singles tallies in the second and third innings on a Luke Roskam solo homer and a Jaxon Hallmark RBI groundout, respectively. Huskers starting pitcher Cade Povich was also on his game to begin, throwing four zeroes. But the tide turned in the middle innings. Arkansas got on the board in the fifth on a Casey Opitz solo homer and added another in the sixth on a Robert Moore home run. Arkansas was clearly starting to feast on the Nebraska bullpen, but Nebraska had another problem: Kevin Kopps was at his best. He came on in the third and dominated the rest of the way, throwing seven shutout innings, giving up three hits and no walks with eight strikeouts on 90 pitches. It was a signature performance for college baseball’s best pitcher this season. Still, that effort would have been for naught had the offense not picked him up, but they did in the eighth inning. With the bases loaded and Nebraska scrambling through relievers to find the right arm, the Razorbacks scored the go-ahead run on a wild pitch. One pitcher later, pinch-hitter extraordinaire Charlie Welch crushed a three-run homer to make it a 6-2 ballgame and put things out of reach. Arkansas will host North Carolina State in the super regional next weekend. 

– Louisiana State is going to take its Mainieri magic to Knoxville for super regionals after a 9-8 win over Oregon Monday to win the Eugene Regional. The teams played home run derby for most of the game, with LSU’s Gavin Dugas homering in the first and fourth innings, and Drew Bianco doing so in the sixth. Oregon got homers from Aaron Zavala in the third and Kenyon Yovan in the seventh, the last of which gave the Ducks a 7-6 lead that relief ace Kolby Somers was tasked with holding. After a scoreless seventh, things came unraveled for the lefthander in the eighth. With runners on second and third and one out, Cade Beloso hit a chopper to first. Gabe Matthews came home with it but the combination of him having to double-clutch for just a split second and Dugas running hard on contact made the throw a touch late and the game was tied. Somers then balked in a run and Jordan Thompson added an RBI single to make it a 9-7 game. After starting the regional opener, Landon Marceaux came out of the bullpen and threw the final 2.1 innings, stranding the tying run on third base in the ninth. To this point, LSU’s run feels an awful lot like Florida State’s back in 2019 in the final year of coach Mike Martin’s career. FSU’s path to Omaha went through a super regional in Baton Rouge. Now, the Tigers will look to do the same in Knoxville. 

– Stanford moved on to a super regional for the second straight season with an 11-8 win over UC Irvine late Monday night. The Anteaters showed a ton of resolve in making it a relatively close game in the end, but a 7-0 first-inning lead for the Cardinal, with a few add-on runs sprinkled in throughout, was too much to overcome. The first two batters in the Stanford lineup, Eddie Park and Tim Tawa, each had three hits and drove in three runs. It wasn’t a well-pitched game for either side, but that’s to be expected in regional game sevens, and now Stanford will move to the super regionals, where its pitching is much better suited to have success, given the best-of-three format. It’s headed to Lubbock, which is always a tough place to play in the postseason.