HATTIESBURG — Colby Allen grew up 30 minutes from Starkville in Louisville. He played high school baseball at Starkville Academy, a couple miles from Dudy Noble Field. He was a strong-armed catcher, a good one — but not good enough to be recruited by Mississippi State.
Allen attended a talent showcase three hours south at Southern Miss and impressed the coaches there with that strong right arm. “Hmmmm,” Chris Ostrander, then the USM pitching coach, surmised, “I believe I can work with this.”
Three years later, that decision to recruit and sign Allen seems one of the best of many, many wise ones now-head coach Ostrander has made. On Tuesday night, Allen threw the first four hitless innings of the Golden Eagles’ 3-0 victory over nationally ranked Mississippi State.
Allen, who begins his junior season as USM’s bullpen closer but could just as easily be the Friday night starter, was in postseason form, spotting his 91 mph fastball and using an evil slider to get most of his five strikeouts.
This was nothing new. Last season when Southern Miss won 43 games and its conference championship, Allen won 10, lost two and also contributed seven saves. He struck out 82 and walked only 18 in 65 innings. In an elimination game against Indiana in an NCAA Regional at eventual national champion Tennessee, he shut the Hoosiers down, allowing only four hits and one run and striking out eight over seven innings in a 15-3 Eagle victory.
That’s why Allen begins this season as a preseason All American. He doesn’t blow you away. He’s usually 91-92 mph on the radar gun, but he mixes pitches well, hits a lot of corners and rarely gives away bases with walks. He earned a save in USM’s season-opening victory over Lafayette and earned the victory Tuesday night. The season is not yet a week old, and he already has saved one victory and won another. That’s what Ostrander had in mind when he decided Allen would begin the season in the bullpen. That way, Ostrander believes, Allen can affect two, maybe even three victories, instead of just one per week.
We’ll see how it plays out. Allen, for one, doesn’t care.
“I don’t put a lot of stock in starting or relieving,” he said. “I just want to help my team win. I know I am going to get my innings. I don’t care what role I am in. We’re a band of brothers here. We’re just trying to come out No. 1.”
The Golden Eagles, 5-0, are off to a splendid start, although you wouldn’t know it from most of the various college baseball polls. They begin the season unranked, as usual. You would think that a program that has averaged 44 victories a season over the last eight full seasons and won two NCAA Regionals during that period would merit more respect. No, in Hattiesburg — Baseburg, they call it here — they have to earn it. History tells us they probably will.
History tells us also that some of the best college baseball in the country will be played in Mississippi this spring. Ole Miss won a national championship in 2022, State in 2021. Southern Miss has hosted Super Regionals two of the past three years.
All are off to good starts. Ole Miss won two of three games, all against nationally ranked teams, in the Shriners Children’s Showdown over the weekend and defeated Arkansas State Tuesday night. The return of left-handed pitching ace Hunter Elliot has Ole Miss fans excited and should. State, now 3-1, appears to have a better lineup, top to bottom, than last year’s team that won 40 games and made a regional final at Charlottesville.
A crowd of 5,741 packed Pete Taylor Park on a pleasantly cool Tuesday night to watch two in-state rivals go at it. State and USM have decided to play a home-and-home series this season instead of playing a single game at Trustmark Park in Pearl. The Eagles will return the favor March 4 at the Dude.
You’ll rarely see better mid-week pitching in college baseball than what transpired Tuesday night. Both teams managed a not-so-grand total of four hits each. State opened with highly touted freshman left-hander Charlie Foster, who will win a slew of games in Starkville before he’s done. Foster had some command issues and little help from the guys behind him, allowing all three USM runs — just one earned — over the first two innings. State’s bullpen was excellent, as was the Golden Eagles’ pitching throughout.
The game’s hitting star was Southern Miss centerfielder Joey Urban, a junior transfer, who was was All-Big East at Butler and slammed a home run, a double and a single in three plate appearances. Second baseman Nick Monistere provided the fielding heroics with a couple of diving stops, one to his right and another to his left, that would have made any Major Leaguer proud.
It is a measure of USM’s depth that Urban didn’t start the team’s first three games, sitting behind former Madison Central star Jake Cook.
Said Ostrander, “We’ve got three or four guys who would start for a lot of teams that aren’t starting for us. It’s a good problem to have, and it’s a long season. We’ll need them all to contribute.”
Again, history tells us, they most likely will.
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