JUCO Post-Season Baseball is Here

(#125)

After 40 plus regular season games, including a 28 conference schedule against every JUCO baseball team in Mississippi, the playoffs are finally here. It’s the best time of a baseball season, an opportunity to compete for a regional championship and play in the World Series.

Pearl River, coached by Forest Hill alum Michael Avalon, the son of the great Billy Avalon, was crowned the 2022 Mississippi State Champion, posting a 22-6 league record (34-10 overall), one game better than Meridian, 2 games better than East Mississippi, and 3 games better than Hinds.

Beginning today, eight teams will battle in a best-of-three series with the winners joining Pearl River and LSU-Eunice in the Region 23 Tournament which is being played in Poplarville week after next. The winner of the 6-team regional advanced to the NJCAA Division II World Series in Enid, Oklahoma to compete for a national championship.

LSUE is the defending Region 23 and National Champion, their sixth national championship in 10 tries.

Meridian (#2 seed) hosts (#8) Northwest Mississippi. East Mississippi (#3) hosts (#7) East Central. Hinds (#4) hosts (#6) Mississippi Gulf Coast, and Northeast Mississippi (#4) hosts (#5) Jones.

Each series will be single 9-inning games on Thursday and Friday and a third game on Saturday, if necessary.

Of the 9 Mississippi teams in the field, 5 have “World Series experience,”but no Mississippi team had any World Series experience until Hinds first did it in 1989. Pearl River has played in the Division II World Series, once in Millington and once in Enid. Meridian has played in 7 JUCO World Series in Grand Junction, Colorado. Hinds has played in 6 World Series, once in Grand Junction, Millington (3 times), and Enid (twice). Gulf Coast played once in Grand Junction, and Jones, has played twice in Enid, one as national runner-up and one as national champion, Mississippi’s lone national baseball national champion. Northwest has played in two D-2 World Series in Millington.

Every Mississippi JUCO that earns a berth to play in the World Series each year should know that the 1989 Hinds Eagles paved the road for them with an extraordinary performance that no Mississippi had ever accomplished before; division, state, regional and district championships and the JUCO World Series in Grand Junction, Colorado.

The other six Mississippi teams missed the cut this season.

It’s the postseason and “you can’t win it if you ain’t in it.” But if you ARE in it……