Unpacking Southern Miss baseball's pitching situation vs. Penn in NCAA regional final
AUBURN, Ala. — Southern Miss baseball and Penn have reached the juncture in the college baseball postseason where fresh arms serve as the most valuable currency.
The No. 2 Golden Eagles turned a razor-thin 3-2 advantage over the No. 4 Quakers into an 11-2 win with a ninth-inning outburst Sunday night at Plainsman Park, earning the right to play a winner-take-all contest to decide the Auburn Regional's winner on Monday (2 p.m.).
That game, traditionally, is baseball's foremost test of pitching depth ‒ especially for the teams that take Southern Miss' path through the losers bracket, which forces USM (44-18) to play four games to three for Penn (34-15).
"Just gonna have to really go back to the roster and see exactly where we are and what we have," Southern Miss coach Scott Berry said postgame Sunday. "It'll be everybody that's available that hasn't thrown, certainly, we'll have to use."
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Southern Miss has used eight pitchers to arrive at this point, asking two arms to pitch twice: Niko Mazza and Justin Storm.
Nobody who has thrown more than 30 innings for the Golden Eagles this season has gone unused.
"I think right now we have momentum going into it," Berry said. "I always felt like a star is born every day. We'll need that tomorrow, I'm sure. We'll be looking for somebody to shine for us."
The Golden Eagles have developed a remarkable knack for getting brilliant postseason outings from relatively unheralded arms. Last season, Storm broke out by dealing five scoreless innings in the regional final against LSU. The year before that, a freshman version of Tanner Hall allowed one hit in five scoreless innings against Ole Miss in a regional final.
The picture painted by Southern Miss' usage numbers in this regional indicates another one of those out-of-nowhere outings might be necessary.
Of the arms who have already pitched, it will be interesting to see if the Golden Eagles feel comfortable using the red-hot Will Armistead, who will have had two days of rest after tossing 69 pitches in a win over Auburn. He's allowed just one run in 10⅓ innings of postseason action.
Penn, by comparison, has used 11 pitchers, but five of them have thrown fewer than 40 pitches. Only reliable reliever Eli Trop has been used twice.
"I've felt better, but I think we got enough guys out there," Penn coach John Yurkow said postgame. "I feel confident that the guys we have will be able to come in and give us a better effort than what took place tonight."
The Quakers have not yet used John Cerwinski, who has started eight games this season with a 4.44 ERA. But it's unclear if he's available. He hasn't pitched since May 10. None of the other pitchers to start a game for Penn this season owns an ERA under 8.00.
"I hope that we feel that sense of urgency of the opportunity that we've created for ourselves," Berry said, "and the road and the path that we've had to get there, to get to where we are tomorrow. The momentum that we're taking today, we'll take it right into tomorrow and be ready to play."
David Eckert covers sports for the Clarion Ledger. Email him at deckert@gannett.com or reach him on Twitter @davideckert98.
This article originally appeared on Hattiesburg American: How Southern Miss baseball's thin pitching impacts NCAA regional final
