We should have seen this after the Bulldogs ran through their conference tournament at the end of the year. They were going to come into the Tallahassee Regional on a tear and might just get rid of a higher-seeded team along the way.
No, not Mississippi State. Samford, the Southern Conference team that eliminated the SEC West's Bulldogs from the NCAA baseball tournament Sunday, 3-2, in a game where Mississippi State was in it until the very end. When Brent Brownlee flew out to end the game, there were runners standing on second and third.
That ended Mississippi State's red-hot run through the end of the season, which included a sweep of Kentucky on the final weekend and winning the SEC tournament in Hoover. For Mississippi State to have come as far as it did after the way its season began was an accomplishment no matter what happened in Tallahassee this weekend.
SEC teams are now 14-3 in the SEC tournament, with one other team facing elimination today -- Kentucky plays Purdue at 4 p.m. ET in the Gary Regional. For a conference that sent eight teams to the tournament, the SEC's contenders have done an exceptional job of staying alive.
Even if Mississippi State didn't go as far as it wanted to in the NCAAs, it can take some comfort in the fact that it won that league's tournament. They just ran into another set of Bulldogs who were on a hot streak of their own.