Mississippi Today
Rebuilding Mississippi teams get no respect from national baseball polls
Not a single Mississippi team is ranked in the Division I college baseball preseason polls, which is unusual. Not one.
Not Mississippi State, the 2021 national champion and a program that has been to the College World Series 12 times and qualified for 39 NCAA Tournaments.
Not Ole Miss, the 2022 national champion, which has won eight NCAA Regional championships since 2005.
Not Southern Miss, which has won three NCAA Regionals since 2009, has hosted back-to-back Super Regionals and averaged 44 victories a season over the last seven full seasons.
There are significant reasons why the national pollsters give the Mississippi schools so little respect:
- State won only nine of 30 SEC games last season mostly because pitches didn’t go where the Bulldogs aimed. Last season, the Bulldogs walked a whopping 321 batters in 453 innings. That right there will get you beat. Little wonder the Bulldogs’ earned run average was 7.01. No matter how well you can hit โ and State can swing it โ you will not succeed giving up seven earned runs a game.
- Ole Miss followed its storybook national championship season of 2022 by winning only six SEC games last year and suffering a losing record (25-29) overall. It was almost as if the Rebels had made a deal with the devil during that storybook championship run, because just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong in ’23.
- Southern Miss won 46 games last year and came up one victory short of the CWS, but must replace six position starters, one of the best starting pitchers in its history Tanner Hall and an All America closer in Justin Storm. And, oh yeah, Christian Ostrander replaces the venerable Scott Berry as the Golden Eagles’ head coach.
Clearly, all three Mississippi schools enter the 2024 season, which begins Friday, with much to prove. Nevertheless, history tells us one or more will surprise the national pundits and be in the championship hunt at season’s end.
All three open Friday:
- Ole Miss plays four-game seres at Honolulu beginning Friday night against a good Hawaii team that finished 18-12 in the baseball-strong Big West Conference in 2023. This is no cupcake opener. Hawaii swept Tulane and won two of three games against Big Ten teams at Minneapolis last spring. Hawaii also won 19 of 26 home games, including its last nine.
- Mississippi State will play host to Air Force, another quality mid-level program that is picked to finish third in the Big West Conference. Air Force won the Big West two years ago and was the runner-up last year.
- Southern Miss will open against Marist (NY) College of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC). The Marist Red Foxes have made seven NCAA Tournament appearances, none since 2017. Marist was 16-36 a year ago.
To solve last season’s pitching problems, Mississippi State head coach Chris Lemonis brought in Justin Parker, who has been successful handling pitchers at both Indiana and South Carolina. The educated guess here is that Parker’s mantra has been simple and to the point: Throw strikes. Lemonis believes the talent is there. If the Bulldogs can successfully mix and match pitchers and not give so many free passes, this is a lineup that can swing it. Outfielder Dakota Jordan is rated the No. 27 prospect in this summer’s Major League Draft by mlb.com.
At Ole Miss, Mike Bianco has taken a page from Lane Kiffin’s football book and added significantly to his roster from the transfer portal. The Rebels’ 2024 success โ or lack of same โ will depend greatly on the contributions of these transfers: first baseman Jackson Ross (Florida Atlantic), shortstop Luke Hill (Arizona State), third baseman Andrew Fisher (Duke), outfielder Treyson Hughes (Mercer) and pitchers Kyler Carmack (Arkansas State) and Liam Doyle (Coastal Carolina). That’s a lot of new faces โ and there are more โ but when you were 6-24 and dead last in your conference, new faces are a good thing.
Yes, Southern Miss lost two All Americans on the mound, but Ostrander believes his 2024 pitching staff will be deeper and possibly even more talented. The starting lineup likely will include only two players (right fielder Carson Paetow and designated hitter Slade Wilkes) at their 2023 positions, but speedy and athletic Nick Monstere moves from second base to centerfield. Ostrander, too, added several notable portal transfers, including shortstop Ozzie Pratt (BYU), second baseman Nolan Tucker (Valparaiso) and outfielder Billy Butler (Rhode Island). Look out for talented freshman shortstop Seth Smith, son of former Major Leaguer Jason Smith, to make an impact somewhere before his rookie season is over.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1875
Nov. 2, 1875
The first Mississippi Plan, which included violence against Black Americans to keep them from voting, resulted in huge victories for white Democrats across the state.
A year earlier, the Republican Party had carried a majority of the votes, and many Black Mississippians had been elected to office. In the wake of those victories, white leagues arose to challenge Republican rule and began to use widespread violence and fraud to recapture control of the state.
Over several days in September 1875, about 50 Black Mississippians were killed along with white supporters, including a school teacher who worked with the Black community in Clinton.
The governor asked President Ulysses Grant to intervene, but he decided against intervening, and the violence and fraud continued. Other Southern states soon copied the Mississippi plan.
John R. Lynch, the last Black congressman for Mississippi until the 1986 election of Mike Espy, wrote: โIt was a well-known fact that in 1875 nearly every Democratic club in the State was converted into an armed military company.โ
A federal grand jury concluded: โFraud, intimidation, and violence perpetrated at the last election is without a parallel in the annals of history.โ
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Mississippi Todayโs NewsMatch Campaign is Here: Support Journalism that Strengthens Mississippi
High-quality journalism like ours depends on reader support; without it, we simply couldn’t exist. That’s why we’re proud to join the NewsMatch movement, a national initiative aimed at raising $50 million for nonprofit newsrooms that serve communities like ours here in Mississippi, where access to reliable information has often been limited.
In a time when trusted journalists and media sources are disappearing, we believe the stakes couldn’t be higher. Without on-the-ground, trustworthy reporting, civic engagement suffers, accountability falters and corruption often goes unaddressed. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Here at Mississippi Today we act as watchdogs, holding those in power accountable, and as storytellers, giving a platform to voices that have been ignored for too long. And we’re committed to keeping our stories free for everyone because information should be accessible when it’s needed most.
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This year’s NewsMatch campaign runs from November 1 through December 31, giving us a special opportunity to make each dollar you give go even further. Through matching funds provided by local foundations like the Maddox Foundation, and national funders like the MacArthur Foundation, the Rural Partner Fund and the Hewlett Foundation, your gift will be matched dollar for dollar up to $1,000. Plus, if 100 new donors join us, we’ll unlock an additional $2,000 in funding, bringing us even closer to our goal. Boiled down: your donation goes four times as far.
Every dollar raised strengthens our ability to serve you with fact-based journalism on issues that impact your everyday lifeโwhether it’s covering local election issues or reporting on decisions affecting schools, safety and economic growth in Mississippi. Your support makes it possible for us to stay rooted in the community, offering nuanced perspectives that help Mississippians understand and engage with what’s happening around them.
Special Event: โFreedom of the Press: Southern Challenges, National Impactโ
As part of the campaign, we’re excited to host a special virtual event, โFreedom of the Press: Southern Challenges, National Impact.โ Join Deep South Today newsrooms Mississippi Today and Verite News, along with national experts on press freedom, for an in-depth discussion on the unique challenges facing journalists in the Deep South. This one-hour session will explore the critical role local newsrooms play in holding power accountable, highlighting recent restrictions on press freedom such as Louisiana’s โ25-foot law,โ which affects journalists’ ability to report vital news.
We’ll examine what’s at stake if local newsrooms lose press freedoms and will discuss how you, as members of the public, can help protect it. This event is open to Mississippi Today and Verite News members as a special thank-you for supporting local journalism and standing with us in this mission. Donate today to RSVP!
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This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Hinds County loses fight over control of jail
The Hinds County sheriff and Board of Supervisors have lost an appeal to prevent control of its jail by a court-appointed receiver and an injunction that orders the county to address unconstitutional conditions in the facility.
Two members from a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with decisions by U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves to appoint a receiver to oversee day-to-day jail operations and keep parts of a previous consent decree in place to fix constitutional violations, including a failure to protect detainees from harm.
However, the appeals court called the new injunction โoverly broadโ in one area and is asking Reeves to reevaluate the scope of the receivership.
The injunction retained provisions relating to sexual assault, but the appeals court found the provisions were tied to general risk of violence at the jail, rather than specific concerns about the Prison Rape Elimination Act. The court reversed those points of the injunction and remanded them to the district court so the provisions can be removed.
The court also found that the receiver should not have authority over budgeting and staff salaries for the Raymond Detention Center, which could be seen as โfederal intrusion into RDC’s budgetโ โ especially if the receivership has no end date.
Hinds County Board of Supervisors President Robert Graham was not immediately available for comment Friday. Sheriff Tyree Jones declined to comment because he has not yet read the entire court opinion.ย
In 2016, the Department of Justice sued Hinds County alleging a pattern or practice of unconstitutional conditions in four of its detention facilities. The county and DOJ entered a consent decree with stipulated changes to make for the jail system, which holds people facing trial.
โBut the decree did not resolve the dispute; to the contrary, a yearslong battle ensued in the district court as to whether and to what extent the County was complying with the consent decree,โ the appeals court wrote.
This prompted Reeves to hold the county in contempt of court twice in 2022.
The county argued it was doing its best to comply with the consent decree and spending millions to fix the jail. One of the solutions they offered was building a new jail, which is now under construction in Jackson.
The county had a chance to further prove itself during three weeks of hearings held in February 2022. Focuses included the death of seven detainees in 2021 from assaults and suicide and issues with staffing, contraband, old infrastructure and use of force.
Seeing partial compliance by the county, in April 2022 Reeves dismissed the consent decree and issued a new, shorter injunction focused on the jail and removed some provisions from the decree.
But Reeves didn’t see improvement from there. In July 2022, he ordered receivership and wrote that it was needed because of an ongoing risk of unconstitutional harm to jail detainees and staff.
The county pushed back against federal oversight and filed an appeal, arguing that there isn’t sufficient evidence to show that there are current and ongoing constitutional violations at the jail and that the county has acted with deliberate indifference.
Days before the appointed receiver was set to take control of the jail at the beginning of 2023, the 5th Circuit Court ordered a stay to halt that receiver’s work. The new injunction ordered by Reeves was also stayed, and a three-person jail monitoring team that had been in place for years also was ordered to stop work.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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