In a tournament so greatly affected by the weather, the Sun Belt Baseball Tournament would need to play two games on Sunday to decide the conference tournament champion. Starting with an elimination  semifinal game on Sunday morning at nine between Southern Miss and Troy for the third time in nearly 36 hours of the conference tournament, followed by the Sun Belt Tournament Championship between the winner of the first game against the Ragin Cajuns of Louisiana Lafayette to decide the winner of the 2026 Sun Belt Tournament Championship. 

Game three between Southern Miss and Troy had all the potential to be an instant classic of a game as the first two were, but Troy simply ran out of pitching, and Southern Miss took full advantage of the pitching blunders by the Trojans, combined with a heroic pitching performance from Colby Allen, who delivered six complete innings in relief pitching against the Trojans. Before we talk about the bats in the first game, giving credit to Colby Allen is where everything starts for the Golden Eagles, as he delivered six complete innings, giving up seven hits, two runs while striking out six Troy batters. The way Colby Allen would battle back after giving a pitch or two to the batters, or getting the punch outs when needed, will go down in the folklore of Southern Miss postseason baseball. With the bats in the first game came the usual approach from Southern Miss with a deadly combination of small balls with bunts and extra base hits, to the long ball approach from Joey Urban and Drey Barrett for the two home runs in the 6-2 victory over Troy to advance to play Louisiana-Lafayette just about an hour later in the 2026 Sun Belt Conference Tournament Championship game. 

Southern Miss would open the 2026 Sun Belt Tournament Championship game with Louisiana- Lafayette with vengeance as the Golden Eagles would open the game with a solo shot from Seth Smith as he set the tone early for the Golden Eagles. From there, Matthew Russo would slam a two-run shot to right center to extend the lead after the first inning to 3-0 in favor of Southern Miss. Southern Miss would add three more runs to the scoreboard in the bottom half of the second inning, extending the lead to 6-0 over Louisiana-Lafayette. Lafayette would run to the scoreboard in the top half of the third thanks to a solo shot from Donovan LaSalle to cut the lead to 6-1. Southern Miss would add a combined four runs to the scoreboard in the bottom half of the third and fourth, extending the lead to 10-1 heading into the back half of the game. Southern Miss would add another run in the bottom of the 5th inning to deliver an 11th run to extend the lead to 11-1 over ULL. ULL would add a run in the top of the 7th before adding six more in the 9th to make things interesting, but in the end, Sunday was all about the Golden Eagles as they won two games to win the 2026 Sun Belt Conference Tournament. 

Southern Miss did what they had to do on Sunday, and once again the Golden Eagles are Sun Belt Champions and now carry a lot of mometum into Regional play next week back home in Hattiesburg. 

Southern Miss came into the Sun Belt Conference Tournament looking to make a statement and to continue the mometum from the regular season, and the Golden Eagles did just that, cruising to an easy Sun Belt Tournament Championship win for the third time in four seasons. Southern Miss will now await the home regional draw as the Golden Eagles have done everything and then some to lock down a top-16 seed, and by most of the metrics have done everything they could to be a top-eight national seed.

Photo Credits- Southern Miss Baseball on X