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UCLA escapes, Auburn stumbles, Southern Miss ousted in wild Regional Saturday

May 31, 2026 | 10:52 AM

@UCLABaseball on X

By Chris Marler

I started writing this piece four times, but had to stop for a rain delay. That’s a joke, but it’s also a pretty good representation about what’s happening around the Southeast during regionals after the first 48 hours of the NCAA Tournament. Here’s the latest in our day two recap. 

Saturday’s Best: The Dude and Sweet Revenge 

Let’s start with two of the best things we saw on Saturday: The Dude and Florida’s Blake Cyr hitting a mammoth home run against his former team–and letting everyone hear about it.

The scenes from these two SEC regionals looked absolutely electric. 

UCLA hangs on for dear life 

Hand up, I’m underwhelmed by UCLA. I have been for most of the year because of how they’ve played. Saturday was no different.

The Bruins became the first ever No. 1 overall seed to lose their first game of regionals. They faced an elimination game against lowly Virginia Tech and needed a dramatic three run ninth inning to come from behind and win. 

Give credit where it’s deserved. It was the nation’s leading 29th come from behind win for UCLA and the fourth time in their last five games that they’ve scored in the ninth inning to either win or force extras (and go on to win). It’s especially impressive considering that Virginia Tech was 26-0 this season when leading after eight innings. 

What happened to Auburn? 

Auburn came into the postseason with the best pitching staff in the country. That really wasn’t even up for debate. They carried a staff ERA under 3.40 and were the most dominant group on the mound for the last three months of the regular season. They even had four different pitchers ranked in the top seven in the SEC in ERA. 

That has gone out the window in regionals. Through two games they’ve allowed 26 runs and find themselves behind the eight ball to get out of their own regional. They allowed 13 or more runs just twice in 57 games before regional play. They’ve done it in each of their first two games against Milwaukee and NC State. 

Still, they were able to escape Saturday with a much needed win over the Wolfpack with a football score on the baseball diamond, 17-13.

Milwaukee is in the driver’s seat of their regional after a 2-0 start. LSU fans may remember Milwaukee as they opened the season against them at the Box in February. They were run ruled 21-7 then. That was during a 5-22 start where they were one of the worst teams in the country with nine of those 22 losses coming by way of the run rule. 

Now, they await the winner of Auburn-UCF on Sunday night with a chance to go to the Super Regionals. Teams that lost their first game of the regional, like Auburn, have only advanced to Supers seven percent of the time since 1999. 

Southern Miss becomes the first national seed to go home 

Southern Miss and Virginia played in one of the wildest college baseball games ever on Saturday afternoon. Both teams were in the loser bracket in Hattiesburg. Southern Miss was the No. 9 Seed in the tournament. They had multiple wins over SEC teams, nine Quad 1 wins, and an RPI of 15 coming into the postseason. There were many that thought they deserved a top eight seed or could even be a dark horse for Omaha. 

They were shocked in the opener by No. 4 Seed Little Rock, setting them up for their game with Virginia. The Hoos ended up winning 15-11 in a roller coaster ride that went extra innings. At one point in the eighth inning, Southern Miss’ pitching staff had struck out 16 batters while allowing 11 runs. That’s almost impossible. We later saw an ejection for taunting by Viriginia and a three run ninth inning sent it to extras before Viriginia put the final nail in the coffin. 

Conference bragging rights 

The SEC had another good day. After going 9-3 Friday, they went 9-3 Saturday with Ole Miss taking a 6-3 lead over Nebraska into the ninth inning before it was suspended. There are only 12 teams in the field from the SEC, but because of the heavy rains that impeded action on day one and two teams like Georgia and Oklahoma had to play multiple games. 

Here’s how each conference performed:

SEC: 9-3 

Big 12: 4-3

Big Ten: 3-0 

ACC: 5-4

Chris Marler

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