No shortage of subplots in Oxford this weekend

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Posted 5:45AM on Friday, June 3, 2005

Mississippi is looking for redemption after flopping the first time it hosted an NCAA baseball regional. Southern Mississippi wants another crack at its cross-state rival. Maine wants to match its football program's shocking success in the Magnolia State. Oklahoma interim coach Sunny Galloway just wants to keep his job. There's no shortage of subplots at the four-team Oxford Regional which begins Friday, and perhaps the most noteworthy involves Galloway. He took over the tradition-rich Sooners a month ago after the resignation of veteran coach Larry Cochell, who quit May 1 after using a racial slur while praising a black player. Galloway led them to 10 wins in their final 12 regular-season games, but school officials have said they will wait until after the season to name Cochell's full-time replacement. ``A lot of people have asked me how you operate under that kind of pressure,'' Galloway said. ``It's simple. What I focus on are the things I can control. If I remain focused on what's important, which is our student-athletes, then the rest will take care of itself.'' The Sooners (33-24), who under Cottrell won the 1994 College World Series and are in the NCAA tournament for the 29th time in school history, are the No. 3 seed in Oxford facing second-seeded Southern Miss (41-19) in the opener. After that, No. 4 seeded and America East champion Maine (34-17) meets top-seed Ole Miss (44-18), which is looking to erase the sting of being swept out of its own regional in 2004. Ole Miss this year set the school's single-season record for victories, won a share of its first Southeastern Conference West Division crown since 1982 and earned its first-ever national seed in the NCAA tournament in its seventh overall and third straight regional appearance. ``At that time, we had a great season ... (but) just weren't playing our best baseball,'' Rebels coach Mike Bianco said. ``This year has been the reverse of that. We weren't playing our best baseball early. We've just played well the last couple of weeks.'' If the seeds hold up, the Rebels would face a familiar foe in Southern Miss, which is making its third straight and sixth overall regional appearance. Ole Miss took two of three midweek games from the Golden Eagles this season, but coach Corky Palmer said neither team has much of an advantage in familiarity. ``They know what we do, and we kind of know what they do,'' Palmer said. ``They've got by far the best Ole Miss team we've played against since I've been coaching here (and) they're one of the better teams in the country, but in a four-team regional, it's who's playing best for three days.'' Coach Paul Kostacopoulos hopes Maine's baseball team has as much success in the state of Mississippi as the football team did when the Black Bears shocked the nation by upsetting Mississippi State in Starkville last September. Maine, making its 14th NCAA appearance but first since 2002, enters having won six of its last seven and is the only conference tournament champion coming to Oxford. That, despite having a top-heavy pitching rotation in which three players recorded 25 of the Black Bears' 34 victories, a power-depleted lineup in which nobody reached double figures in homers and a noticeable lack of speed outfielder Joe Hough has nearly half (26) of the team's total 46 steals. ``We're a meat-and-potatoes kind of team,'' Kostacopoulos said. The winner of the Oxford Regional meets the Austin Regional champion in the super regionals June 10-13. (Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)