Scarbinsky: Here’s a hot college baseball story that isn’t a scandal

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Scarbinsky: Here’s a hot college baseball story that isn’t a scandal

Published: May. 14, 2023, 5:45 a.m.

2–3 minutes

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By

• Kevin Scarbinsky | Special to AL.com

This is an opinion column.

Now that college baseball has our attention in Alabama for all the wrong reasons, thanks to recently dismissed Crimson Tide head coach Brad Bohannon, perhaps we should focus on the field for a moment on the other side of the state. While the Alabama players keep battling despite the suspicious wager tied to Bohannon that got him fired, the Auburn program keeps winning. And winning. And winning. And winning some more.

Is it hot in here or is it the Tigers? Yes. Both. Ask reigning national champion Ole Miss. This Rebel team is not that team, but it might not matter if it were. Auburn, which lost to Ole Miss in their College World Series opener last season, got a little payback with a sweep in Oxford, punctuated by a 13-5 beatdown Saturday.

If you’re keeping score at home, that’s four straight weekend series victories for the Tigers in the most dog-eat-dog conference in the country. No one else in the league is on that kind of heater as we approach the final week of the regular season.

How good is SEC baseball top to bottom? Better than SEC football or SEC basketball on the regular. SEC football has become Georgia and Alabama and everyone else. Auburn basketball coach Bruce Pearl likes to say every conference game in his sport is a rock fight. More like rock, paper, scissors compared to SEC hardball, even though Auburn and Alabama roundball have reached No. 1 in the polls during the last two seasons.

Put this in your advanced metrics and smoke it like brisket. Starting in 2008, every College World Series but one has had at least one SEC team - in the finals. The outlier was 2016. The league has won eight of the last 13 titles with two separate three-peats: LSU, South Carolina and the Gamecocks again from 2009-11, Vanderbilt in 2019, Mississippi State in 2021 and Ole Miss in 2022. Only COVID stopped the SEC in 2020 when it shut down the season.

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