Lipscomb baseball will play Mississippi State in NCAA Tournament
Lipscomb baseball will play No. 17-ranked Mississippi State in the NCAA Tournament in the Starkville Regional.
The No. 4 seed Bisons (29-24) and No. 1 seed Mississippi State (40-17) will play at 1 p.m. CT (ESPN+) on May 29. That game will be followed by No. 3 seed Louisiana (39-23) vs. No. 2 seed Cincinnati (37-2) at 6 p.m. CT (ESPN+).
Mississippi State is the No. 14 national seed and is hosting a regional for the first time since 2021.
Lipscomb and Mississippi State played in the regular season at Dudly Noble Field in March. The Bulldogs swept Lipscomb, winning the last game 26-0.
Lipscomb earned its second NCAA Tournament berth in four years and fourth in school history by sweeping the Atlantic Sun Conference Tournament. It did not come easy.
After defeating North Alabama 4-3 in 14 innings on May 22, the Bisons beat the Lions again 5-4 in 10 innings on May 23. The May 22 game was the longest game in terms of time in ASUN Tournament history, lasting 5 hours, 20 minutes.
Lipscomb made the transition from NAIA to NCAA Division I in 1999. The Bisons also reached the NCAA Tournament in 2008, 2015, and 2023. Jeff Forehand became Lipscomb's coach in 2007 and has led the Bisons to all of their NCAA Tournament berths.
Lipscomb's only NCAA Tournament win came in 2008 when the Bisons beat Georgia 10-7 in the first game of the Georgia Regional.
Mississippi State is making its 42nd NCAA Tournament appearance. The Bulldogs have made 10 super regionals and 12 College World Series.
The Bisons had to recover from a late-season slump to earn their 2026 berth. They lost five straight games and 11 of 16 during a stretch from April 3-May 2. Lipscomb struggled at the plate, scoring two runs or fewer in four games over that stretch.
The Bisons found some offense late in the regular season. They won six of their last seven games, averaging almost seven runs a game with seven total home runs.
Lipscomb, the top fielding team in the ASUN, did not have a player make the all-conference first team. Pitcher Kaleb Kantola made the second team along with second baseman Brady Miller, third baseman Cam Pruitt, and outfielders Hutson Miles and Jordan Thomas.
Kantola, a 6-foot-7 graduate student, is listed on the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association's Stopper of the Year Midseason Watchlist. Pruitt was second in the ASUN in hitting (.373) with 46 RBI, and Miles, a junior from Goodpasture who began his career at Columbia State Community College, was sixth (.356) with 20 RBI.
Reach Mike Organ at 615-259-8021 or on X @MikeOrganWriter. Contributing: Sam Sklar, The Clarion Ledger.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Lipscomb baseball to play Mississippi State in NCAA Tournament
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