What we learned from Southern Miss baseball’s Sun Belt series sweep vs Coastal Carolina

HATTIESBURG — Southern Miss baseball has won all but three series this season, yet has failed to sweep on a handful of occasions. The Golden Eagles got it done this weekend, winning all three games against Coastal Carolina at Pete Taylor Park.

They took Friday’s game 7-2; Saturday’s game 7-3; and Sunday’s game 6-5.

“Everybody knows, including us, that we’ve had the monkey on the back,” designated hitter Slade Wilks said. “We’ve been 2-0 in a lot of weekends. Today we competed at a really high level, and we deserved to sweep that series today.”

Here are three things we learned from Southern Miss' sweep of Coastal Carolina.

Davis Gillespie is becoming a star

Davis Gillespie redshirted last season and it’s proving to have been worthwhile.

The Birmingham, Alabama native is turning into one of Southern Miss’ best bats — and a clutch one, too.

On Tuesday against New Orleans, Gillespie roped a two-run double in the seventh inning to tie the game at 4-4 before Gabe Broadus’ go-ahead hit in the eighth. On Friday, he batted 3-for-5 with a pair of RBI doubles coming with two outs. Gillespie didn’t have a hit on Saturday, but drew two walks — one of them intentional — and a hit-by-pitch with a run. He capped it Sunday with a 2-for-3 performance with two RBIs.

Gillespie is now second on Southern Miss (31-17, 15-9 Sun Belt Conference) in both batting average (.320) and slugging percentage (.510).

“He can leave the yard at any spot and that’s great," Southern Miss coach Christian Ostrander said. "You don’t want to be a one-dimensional, one-side-of-the-field hitter because then you’ll get exploited a lot.”

Defense has been a work in progress.

He began the season at first base but now starts at left field. In Tuesday’s first inning, there was a fly ball to left and he badly misread it and ran to the warning track. The ball landed well in front of him and resulted in an RBI double instead of what should’ve been the final out of the inning.

He redeemed himself defensively on Sunday with a phenomenal catch while crashing into and leaning over the bullpen wall.

“Think about two years from now and what he’s going to look like,” Ostrander said. “He’s grown so much just from the beginning of this year to now.”

Sunday's game ends in odd fashion

The Sunday finale ended after 6½ innings. That’s because Coastal Carolina (27-20, 11-13) had a flight to catch and needed to complete the game by 2:30 p.m.

The Chanticleers didn't get help in their race against the clock, with the first pitch at 11:04 a.m. Lightning in the area led to a 42-minute rain delay in the third inning; Nick Monistere collided with a Coastal Carolina baserunner that led to a lengthy injury stoppage; the home plate umpire got hit in the face mask with a pitch and needed to be checked out; and there were two replay challenges and eight pitching changes.

Trailing by one, Coastal Carolina had the tying run on second base with two outs. Colby Allen, pitching for the second straight day, struck out Zack Beach at 2:28 p.m. to end the game.

Allen said afterward that assistant coach Keller Bradford told him during the rain delay about the 2:30 p.m. cutoff, so he treated the seventh inning like it was the ninth.

“I knew once it got to 2:25, I looked up there as I was throwing, and was like, ‘Well, this is it. I got to get him out,’ ” Allen said.

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Ozzie Pratt is having a sneaky good season

Among Southern Miss’ lineup is Ozzie Pratt, the shortstop who perhaps has been one of the steadiest players on the team.

The BYU transfer’s stats don’t jump off the page — .289 batting average, .761 OPS — but he has been one of the Golden Eagles' most reliable batters.

And in conference play, he has been even better with a .367 average and a .919 OPS.

He recently changed his walk-up song to “Rattlin’ Bog” and the fan base has embraced it, clapping along to the beat before his every at-bat.

Sam Sklar is the Southern Miss beat reporter for the Hattiesburg American. Email him at ssklar@hattiesb.gannett.com and follow him on X @sklarsam_.

This article originally appeared on Hattiesburg American: Takeaways from Southern Miss baseball’s sweep vs Coastal Carolina