SEC Baseball Tournament: Connie Mack Edition

Baseball Hall of Famer Connie Mack would have approved of Saturday in Hoover at the SEC Beball Tournament. Mack famously claimed that pitching was 75% of baseball.

If anything, Ole Miss and Vanderbilt might have suggested that 75% was a low estimate. In laying waste to Tennessee (by blowout) and LSU (by nail-biter), the Rebel and Commodore pitching staffs pretty much took care of business.

Score a run for them and stay out of their way was a formula that worked as well in Hoover in 2025 as it may have for Mack’s ace, Rube Waddell, more than a century ago.

What Did We Learn

Again, even in a sport where almost every advantage goes to the hitter, when pitchers are on, nothing else matters.

Vanderbilt’s pitchers had a fairly easy Saturday. Even if they had been ho-hum, the 10 runs (on 13 singles and 0 extra-base hits) that Vanderbilt manufactured in 6 times at bat pretty much set the tone for the day. That said, Cody Bowker and Conner Ferrell didn’t mess around. Bowker whiffed 9 Tennessee hitters in his 4-inning start, allowing 3 hits. Ferrell fanned 2 more batters while allowing just 1 more hit in his 3 innings.

In the fourth inning, Dean Curley was thrown out trying to score on a double by Reese Chapman. That and a pair of walks issued in the first inning were the only moments of peril for Vandy’s pitchers. A team that batted .307 and hit 122 homers went silently into the Hoover night. Vandy is the only team to shut out Tennessee in 2025, and was the last team to shut Tennessee out back in 2024.

Just in case Vandy’s single-heavy offensive outburst diluted the message, Ole Miss’s pitchers repeated the message in the second semifinal.

LSU managed back-to-back singles in the third inning, but a strikeout and a routine fly ball ended the inning without incident. That was the sum total of LSU’s offense on the day.

Ole Miss had only 3 hits itself, but Will Furniss’s first inning home run proved to be all the help the Rebel hurlers needed. Ole Miss tacked on another run in the fourth, but as that was after the final LSU hit of the day, it was essentially academic.

In the final 6 2/3 innings of Saturday’s game, Ole Miss starter Cade Townsend and relievers Gunnar Dennis, Will McCausland and Connor Spencer gave up 0 hits, 4 walks, and no real threats.

And an LSU team that batted .301 and hit 90 homers on the season spent Saturday afternoon hitting into a bunch of routine outs.

What to Watch for Tomorrow

In a normal world, a Sunday game, particularly with one team having to win a fourth game, would be a battle of pitching attrition. Somebody would score 12 runs and somebody else would put up 11 and it would be a back-and-forth smash-fest. After Saturday, the first thing to look for will be a run. Yes, these teams will be going deep into the bullpens. But Vandy has surrendered 1 run in 2 games. Ole Miss has allowed 3 runs in 3 games.

Can anybody score? Or might we have an epic extra-inning battle with each team struggling to push a single run across the plate? Back in 2014, LSU beat Florida 2-0 for the title. That feels in line with this tournament.

What Does It All Mean?

Tennessee is probably right on the fence for regional hosting after not just a semifinal loss, but a brutal one. Ole Miss is likely a regional host now. There’s been a little talk about a super-regional hosting gig with a win over Vandy. It feels unlikely that even the SEC would get 7 super regional hosts out of 8, so somebody else would have to fall. Auburn perhaps?

There’s no real in-or-out movement from Saturday’s games, which isn’t surprising. The teams left in Hoover to play in the semifinals will all be solid suspects for a deep NCAA run, and perhaps even an Omaha meeting.

A sixth Ole Miss SEC Tournament title would tie the Rebels with Mississippi State for the all-time lead in that category. Vandy has only won 2 titles, but both have come since Ole Miss’s last championship win in 2018.

Joe Cox is a columnist for Saturday Down South. He has also written or assisted in writing five books, and his most recent, Almost Perfect (a study of baseball pitchers’ near-miss attempts at perfect games), is available on Amazon or at many local bookstores.