Three Strikes: Southern Miss Sizzles, Big East and SoCon Begin League Play, Dylan Phillips

Image credit: USM RHP Hurston Waldrep (Photo courtesy of Southern Miss)

Southern Miss Hops to the Top of Conference USA

Southern Mississippi last weekend won its home series against Louisiana Tech, a team it has played 14 times over the last two seasons, in front of a total of 16,313 fans, a record for a three-game series at Pete Taylor Park. 

That record-setting mark is no small feat when you consider that it’s not a new phenomenon that Southern Miss brings massive crowds out to the ballpark. 

“We’ve had tremendous crowds all year, in all honesty,” said Southern Miss coach Scott Berry. “I just feel like we’re in an area in the state that just absolutely loves baseball.

“It’s always been a big thing at Southern Miss, but it seems like it has just really taken off.”

The 16,000-plus who turned up in Hattiesburg were treated to excellent pitching from the home team all weekend, as Golden Eagles pitchers held the Bulldogs to six runs over three games. 

In wins on Friday and Sunday, righthanded starters Tanner Hall and Hurston Waldrep, respectively, gave up a combined seven hits and two runs (both unearned on Friday) with three walks and 21 strikeouts in 15 innings. 

Hall has made a leap this season. He has a 2.32 ERA and a 59-to-4 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 42.2 innings, along the way earning himself a promotion from midweek starter, a role in which he led the team to victories over Mississippi State and Tulane, to Friday guy. 

Compare that to last season, when he had a 5.02 ERA in 28.2 innings, although he did give USM a glimpse of what was possible by finishing the season with five shutout innings of relief against Mississippi in the final game of the Oxford Regional. 

For Waldrep, this was the second consecutive outing in which he’s thrown seven shutout innings and it’s the fourth time in seven starts that he’s had a double-digit strikeout total (he had 10). Using a fastball that averages just under 95 mph and touches 98 with a slider that has a nearly 60% whiff rate, Waldrep has a 2.00 ERA, a 56-to-11 strikeout-to-walk ratio and a .189 opponent batting average in 36 innings. 

Like Hall, that’s a big jump, both in results and in the scope of his role, for a pitcher who was a back-end reliever last season and threw just 16 innings. 

“When he got here, his velocity started to jump, but more importantly, his ability to command the zone developed,” Berry said of the strides he’s taken since USM recruited him as a low-90s thrower in high school. “I think that’s a unique blend, and in talking to people out there, there’s a lot of good arms around the country. I mean, everybody throws hard now, but it’s the ability to take that velocity and command that velocity and to be able to use both sides of the plate and keep those counts in your favor and not be in those three-ball counts just because you throw hard.”

USM’s pitching staff development more broadly is impressive. The Golden Eagles lost three weekend starters from last season in Walker Powell, Hunter Stanley and Drew Boyd—recall that C-USA played four-game series last season, so teams technically had four weekend starters—plus its top relief arm in Ryan Och. 

And all this group has done in the face of that turnover is put together a 3.11 ERA at the midway point of the 2022 season, more than half of a run lower than the team ERA in 2021. 

“I think, number one, you have to give the nod to coach Christian Ostrander, our pitching coach. He does a tremendous job with these guys,” Berry said. “Certainly, recruiting is the key. I mean, you have to go out and you have to find guys that give you a chance to win and a lot of times, people get caught up in arm strength and they don’t look at the other analytics of the kids and how it’s going to play out and possibly how it’s going to develop out (and) if you have a chance of getting your return quicker than later. 

“I think there’s certainly a mutual respect between (Ostrander and the pitchers). What he says to them and how they take his advice, his criticism, his challenges, there’s a respect there.”

In addition to steady shortstop Dustin Dickerson, who leads the team in hitting at .364, the offense has been led by outfielders Slade Wilks and Reece Ewing, both of whom have made big jumps forward this season. 

After hitting .250/.383/.403 with six home runs in 2021, his first season at USM after transferring from the junior college ranks, Ewing is hitting .320/.458/.583 with seven home runs this season coming off of an offseason when he was extremely dedicated to working on his body and being more athletic in general. 

Wilks, a blue chip recruit in the 2020 prep class, really struggled to adjust to the college game last season and as a result hit just .158/.250/.351 in 57 at-bats. It’s been a different story altogether this year, though, as he’s hitting .340/.450/.640 with 13 doubles and five home runs. His walk rate is also way up over last season, and although he still has some swing and miss in his game, his strikeout rate has improved as well. 

With raw power never having been in question for Wilks, the key for him has been tweaking his swing to allow him to make hard contact more consistently. 

“The swing is starting to get a little bit flatter and stay in the zone a little bit longer, (so) it has a chance to meet the ball there at that intersection point more often than that touch and go, uppercut swing that just gets in and out of the contact point very quick with very, very little room for error,” Berry said. “We’ve been working real hard to try to get that swing a little bit flatter, and it certainly has shown that has happened. He’s getting more consistent at the plate, (and) I still think there’s work to go to get even flatter, but he’s been a pleasant surprise for us this year.”

With the series win over Louisiana Tech, the Golden Eagles, who are 20-8 overall, moved to 7-2 in Conference USA, which puts them at the top of the standings in what feels like a much more competitive league from top to bottom than it did in 2021. 

Last season there were four very good teams in the conference—USM, La Tech, Charlotte and Old Dominion—that beat up on everyone else and rode that dominance to postseason bids. 

This season is going to be a bit different if the early results are to be believed. USM has made a move to the top, but six other teams are at least 5-4 in league play so far, including upstarts like Alabama-Birmingham, which already has as many overall wins this season as it had all of last season, Texas-San Antonio, which is coming off of a sweep of Charlotte, and Middle Tennessee State, which earlier this season took a series from Auburn. 

While that kind of parity might not be great for the league’s postseason prospects—just two teams currently reside inside the top 50 in RPI—it should make for a fun final season in this iteration of C-USA before realignment gives the league a new look (again) in 2023. 

In spite of that parity, the Golden Eagles have already done the work, including a neutral site win against Ole Miss Tuesday, to put themselves in position to be a postseason team, but with their potential, they almost certainly have their eyes on much bigger goals than just simply arriving in the postseason, all of which are within reach. 

Big East and SoCon (Finally) Get into Conference Play

A vast majority of conferences are now in the league play portion of their schedules, with many conferences having been in league play for several weeks at this point. 

But there are a couple of holdouts that are only just now beginning respective conference title races in the Big East and Southern Conference, although the Big East did have one conference series last weekend, with Georgetown taking two of three from Villanova. 

On one hand, very little has been decided in these two leagues because we have no data points from conference play, but on the other hand, we have much more information about these two leagues than we do most other leagues at the time conference play begins because we’ve seen all of these teams play seven weekends already. 

In the Big East, Connecticut should be considered the favorite. The Huskies are 20-7, have been in consideration for the Top 25 for the better part of a month and with a 3.08 team ERA, have one of the best pitching staffs in the country. Righthander Austin Peterson has been particularly good on Fridays, with a 2.78 ERA and 70 strikeouts compared to six walks in 45.1 innings. 

Not long ago, it looked like the Big East might be UConn and everyone else, and perhaps that still ends up being the case, but Creighton also seems to be peaking at a good time. After beginning the season 0-4, the Bluejays are 15-8, with first baseman Alan Roden and righthander Dylan TeBrake looking the part of contenders for conference player and pitcher of the year honors, respectively. 

With an 18-10 record, albeit with no wins against projected regional teams, Georgetown is clearly improved and has to be taken more seriously. Xavier began the season 0-9 against an extremely tough schedule, but has rebounded to a 15-15 record, including winning a midweek game with Michigan and sweeping four games with crosstown rival Cincinnati. 

One perennial Big East contender that will have to play much better baseball moving forward to be a factor is St. John’s. The Johnnies are 11-17, at one point dropped 11 games in a row and have lost series to Manhattan and Rider. 

The SoCon features two clear favorites in Mercer and Wofford, both of which could end up with at-large-quality resumes if they continue to play as well as they have so far. Mercer has put together a gaudy non-conference record of 24-5, while Wofford is 21-9 and coming off of a series win against Dallas Baptist on the road. 

Beyond those two teams, East Tennessee State appears dangerous, led by ace Hunter Loyd and his 1.34 ERA, and The Citadel with a 17-10 record has already won more games this season than it has in each of the last three seasons. And with three more wins, it will have more victories than it has had in each of the last six seasons. Given their respective histories, you have to factor in Samford and Western Carolina in the SoCon as well, even if neither has put up an overly inspiring record in non-conference play. 

With these two leagues getting conference action underway, we have officially moved into a different stage of the college baseball season. The business end of the campaign has arrived and conference titles are being decided all over the country. 

Dylan Phillips Sets Kansas State Home Run Record

Kansas State fourth-year junior outfielder Dylan Phillips over the last four seasons has been one of the most productive players you might not have heard of. 

A four-year starter, Phillips is a .301/.381/.566 career hitter over more than 650 plate appearances with 40 career homers, the 38th of which made him the newly-minted Kansas State career home run leader. The previous record holder was Scott Poepard, who played at K-State from 1994-97.

Looking ahead, there’s a real chance for Phillips to run away with this record and reset it in a place where it will stand for a very long time. He has nine homers this season, and last year in a career year, he had 16. If we just assume he equals that total, he would have 47. 

But on top of that, Phillips also has the option to come back for a fifth year, and if he chooses to do so and comes anywhere close to matching what has become his typical level of production, it’s not a stretch to imagine him slugging 60 or more career home runs. That would put him within striking distance of the Big 12 career home run record, which is 64 by Nebraska’s Matt Hopper from 2000-03. 

And if Phillips ends up challenging those kinds of records when it’s all said and done, much fewer people will be able to describe him as the most productive player they’ve never heard of.