INDIANAPOLIS — The NCAA Division I Baseball Championship Subcommittee made it official on Sunday evening: Mississippi will host two regional sites when the road to Omaha opens next weekend. Ole Miss will not be one of them.
Mississippi State was selected to host the Starkville Regional at Dudy Noble Field. Southern Miss was selected to host the Hattiesburg Regional at Pete Taylor Park/Hill Denson Field. That is the full list of Mississippi host cities: Starkville and Hattiesburg. Oxford is not hosting in 2026.
The committee released the 16 regional sites on Sunday. It will not release the full 64-team bracket, national seeds, or regional pairings until Monday at noon ET (11 a.m. CT) on ESPN2. Until that hour-long selection show, three questions remain for every program outside the host circle: Are we in? Where are we going? And who is coming with us?
For north Mississippi, the headline is Starkville.
This is the 16th time Dudy Noble has been awarded a regional, and the first time Mississippi State has hosted at home since 2021, the year the Bulldogs won the program's first national championship. Brian O'Connor's club enters the postseason at 40-17 with the No. 12 RPI in the country. State is making its 42nd NCAA Tournament appearance, its third straight regional trip, and its 36th regional selection overall. The Diamond Dawgs are 91-47 all-time in regional play with 16 regional titles to their credit. Last season they reached the finals of the Tallahassee Regional.
USA Today recently named Dudy Noble the No. 1 college baseball stadium in the country. The committee agreed with the crowd noise. The Starkville Regional is scheduled for Friday, May 29 through Monday, June 1, if necessary. Standard double-elimination format, four teams, one super-regional ticket on the line.
Down in Hattiesburg, Southern Miss (43-15) earns a host bid for the fifth time in program history and the second year in a row. The Golden Eagles closed the regular season on a run that included a Sun Belt tournament title and a spot in the national seeding conversation. Pete Taylor Park has hosted postseason baseball before. It will again, with the same May 29–June 1 window as every other regional site in the country.
Ole Miss fans had been watching the hosting bubble for weeks. The Rebels spent the back half of the SEC schedule flirting with the top-16 line that separates home regionals from road trips. Sunday's announcement settled the host question: Oxford is out. Ole Miss was not among the 16 institutions awarded sites. The Rebels can still make the 64-team field as an at-large (bracket projections throughout May consistently had them in, often as a No. 2 seed at someone else's regional), but they will not sleep in their own beds during the opening weekend of the tournament unless Monday's show delivers a surprise the committee did not telegraph on Sunday.
That is a different kind of postseason pressure than Starkville and Hattiesburg, where the reward for a regular season's work is already on the scoreboard.
The other 14 regional hosts announced Sunday, with records attached by the NCAA:
Athens, Georgia: Georgia (46-12). Atlanta: Georgia Tech (48-9). Auburn, Alabama: Auburn (38-19). Austin, Texas: Texas (40-13). Chapel Hill, North Carolina: North Carolina (45-11-1). College Station, Texas: Texas A&M (39-14). Eugene, Oregon: Oregon (40-16). Gainesville, Florida: Florida (39-19). Lawrence, Kansas: Kansas (42-16). Lincoln, Nebraska: Nebraska (42-15). Los Angeles: UCLA (51-6). Morgantown, West Virginia: West Virginia (39-14). Tallahassee, Florida: Florida State (38-17). Tuscaloosa, Alabama: Alabama (37-19).
Read that list and the SEC footprint jumps off the page. Seven of the 16 hosts are SEC programs: Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi State, Texas, and Texas A&M. The ACC placed three (Florida State, Georgia Tech, North Carolina). The Big Ten placed three (Nebraska, Oregon, UCLA). The Big 12 placed two (Kansas, West Virginia). Southern Miss is the lone Sun Belt host.
By earning a regional, all 16 host schools are automatically in the 64-team field. Twenty-nine conference automatic qualifiers and 35 at-large selections fill out the rest of the bracket on Monday. Super regional hosts will be announced Tuesday, June 2. The Men's College World Series opens Friday, June 12 at Charles Schwab Field in Omaha.
For high school baseball fans across north Mississippi who just watched state championships at Trustmark Park and the USM Softball Complex, this is the next rung. Same sport, bigger stakes, national TV windows, and a destination every kid in a summer league can recite. Mississippi is not watching from the outside this year. The state is hosting twice.
Selection Monday sets the pairings and tells Ole Miss where the bus is headed. This weekend, the road to Omaha runs through Starkville and Hattiesburg.
Official release: ncaa.com: 16 regional sites for the 2026 DI baseball championship. Mississippi State release: hailstate.com.
Photo: Dudy Noble Field at Mississippi State University / SEC Sports.
