Mississippi Today’s Bobby Harrison and Geoff Pender talk with Rep. Zakiya Summers, D-Jackson, about how legislative leaders are trying to address issues dealing with crime and water in Jackson without getting input from lawmakers who represent the capital city. She laments how legislation is taking power from Jackson residents and their elected representatives and is causing more harm than good.
Described by Klassik Begeisert as a “master of intense sound waves with a pioneering spirit” Mississippi’s own William Garfield Walker is an emerging young conductor quickly establishing himself on the international stage. Chief Conductor and founder of the Nova Orchester Wien(NOW!), Walker is a 2022 recipient of the Sir Georg Solti Foundation US Career Assistance Award and the 2022 Third Prize winner of the Only Stage International Conducting Competition. Editor-at-Large Marshall Ramsey catches up with William and finds out what he has been up to and what the future holds for this rising global conducting star.
Elaine Defendants, Helena, Phillips County, Ark., ca. 1910 Credit: Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Bobby L. Roberts Library of Arkansas History and Art, Central Arkansas Library System
In Moore v. Dempsey, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-2 that mob-dominated trials violated the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.
On Sept. 30, 1919, Black sharecroppers had gathered in a church at Elaine, Arkansas, to discuss fairer prices for their products. White men fired into the church, leading to three days of fighting and the reported killing of five white men and more than 100 Black men, women and children. It was part of the wave of violence against African Americans during “Red Summer,” and one that crusading journalist Ida B. Wells wrote about.
Two days after the attack, U.S. Army troops arrived, and several hundred Black Americans were placed in stockades and reportedly tortured. A grand jury eventually charged 122 black men, but none of the white men responsible for the violence. The first dozen were sent to death row. The next 65 pleaded guilty.
On appeal, attorney Scipio Africanus Jones, the NAACP and others represented the “Elaine Twelve” on appeal, winning when the Supreme Court concluded that the trial had been prejudiced by a white mob outside yelling that if the Black men weren’t sentenced to death, the mob would lynch them. A memorial now honors the victims of the Elaine Massacre.
Two guys on a hike see an angry bear and turn tail to run in the opposite direction. One guy proclaims helplessly, “We can’t outrun a bear,” to which the other replies, “I don’t have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you.”
Republican incumbent Gov. Tate Reeves hopes to make the 2023 general election, where he is likely to face Democrat Brandon Presley, like that hike in the woods.
Reeves hopes to make the race one where he does not have to convince the electorate to like him — he just has to convince voters to dislike him less than they dislike Presley.
No matter how often Reeves and his supporters want to shout “fake news” or “rigged polling,” the evidence is clear that the incumbent governor is not well-liked by Mississippi voters.
A recent Tulchin Research poll revealed that 54% of respondents had an unfavorable view of Reeves compared to 42% who viewed the incumbent governor favorably.
His favorability was even lower when respondents were quizzed about Reeves’ role in the ongoing scandal where at least $77 million in welfare funds were misspent, resulting in criminal convictions for some state officials, including people close to Reeves.
Perhaps more telling is a Siena College poll commissioned last month by Mississippi Today that found that 56% of poll participants would support “someone else” for governor this year, while 31% would support Reeves.
Recurring polls conducted by Morning Consult find that Reeves, since he’s been elected, is among the nation’s most disliked governors.
In the Tulchin poll, Presley surprisingly led Reeves 47% to 43%, while the incumbent led 43% to 38% in the Siena poll. At the very least, it appears right now the election will be close — surprisingly close for a Republican incumbent in Republican ruby red Mississippi.
These pollsters are not out to get Reeves. They are all legitimate national pollsters. Siena has been viewed as one of the most respected pollsters in the nation and was deemed as the most accurate in the 2022 midterm elections by the FiveThirtyEight blog, which compiles and analyzes polling data.
In the 2019 election, Reeves even seemed to acknowledge that a lot of folks did not like him, conceding that his willingness to say no to requests for state funding have made many people mad, especially as lieutenant governor where he presided over the Senate. Others say the fact that he is always in attack mode — often taking shots at political opponents when cooperation and humility could be a more appropriate response — turns off some voters.
The same Tulchin Research poll found that 39% had a favorable view of Presley while 18% viewed him unfavorable. The key is that most Mississippians do not know Presley, who has served as Northern District Public Service Commissioner since 2008. Reeves, on the other hand, is about as known a commodity as there is in Mississippi. He has run and won five statewide elections and is completing his 20th year in statewide elected office.
Reeves will strive to ensure that by the time he completes his sixth statewide campaign that Mississippi voters view Presley more negatively than they view him.
Reeves certainly has the money to create any negative narrative he wants. According to the January filings with the Secretary of State’s office, Reeves has about $8 million cash on hand. He raised $3.5 million during 2022.
That is a lot of money to create a narrative about an opponent.
Presley has just $723,800 cash on hand, including $365,000 raised during 2022.
Reeves’ huge cash advantage is one of the primary reasons he is viewed as the heavy favorite despite what polls might say right now. And the last quarter of a century, Mississippians’ default vote seems to always be Republican.
Presley will work to introduce himself to the state’s electorate as a conservative Democrat who is focused on improving health care, the economy and other state issues. Reeves will focus a lot more on social issues like abortion and immigration. He will publicly question whether Presley is more focused on LBGTQ issues, on open borders, on tearing down white Mississippians while trying to uplift African Americans, and on trying to close all police departments across the state.
But the real question of the 2023 campaign is whether the unfavorability bear will catch Presley or Reeves first.
What to do when you’re a 4-year-old and your artistic muse is whispering in your ear, stirring your heart with a passion you never knew existed?
For Rah Lowry, he listened.
The Brooklyn, N.Y., transplant, now living in Columbus, not only followed his passion, but was also encouraged to do so by his grandmother.
“Think about how wonderful. Me with a fist full of crayons. I’m 4 years old, and my grandma allowed me to draw on the walls,” said Lowry, smiling at the memory. “That’s a special kind of freedom to learn, explore, experiment and dream.
“She still has the first thing I drew back then. For the longest time, it occupied a place of honor, magnetized to the fridge. It gave her such genuine pleasure. I remember how that made me feel. I knew I was on to something. Growing up in New York, I was exposed to, well, everything. It being a mecca for everything, everyone and art of all kind everywhere. For me, it wasn’t sensory overload. I was like a sponge, still am.
“By the time I was 16, I was creating tattoos and graffiti art. Can you imagine? I certainly did. I even attended the Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale, but with only siz months left before I graduated, the classes closed. Life is like that with the unexpected. I got into graphic art and animation while there. But I want it known — I’m a self-taught artist.”
Lowry met his wife, Brie, in Atlanta. They have two children: Rah, 2, and Xen, 8 months. The couple moved to Columbus in 2021.
“When I was around 21, I got into perfecting my coloring. I’ve always wanted to take a color and blend it into something else, play around and see what I got,” said Lowry as he intensely studied the sculpture he’d been working on.
He pauses, staring out a window at his backyard and sighs. The family’s enormous, gentle giant of a dog Oz saunters over and inspects Lowry’s animation work on a laptop, while leaning his entire 120 pounds against him. It draws Lowry back from wherever his memories had taken him.
“And that’s why I didn’t want to paint,” said Lowry, picking up a Copic Marker and blending a particular green on a screen bearing one of his colorful illustrations. “Say you make paint and you mess it up, you’re left at zero. If I blend a marker, I can just keep going. It makes life a little easier.”
Lowry’s artistic groove reflects his journey from that young boy to the father of two he is today. He is a sculptor, an animator and graphic artist who also has the ability to create his artistic visions on a computer.
“My family and my art give me peace. It’s a sense of soul and a sense of atmosphere that I thrive in, and that radiates to those who experience my work. I need to feel that coming back to me everyday because that gets me going in the morning.”
John Lewis, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Dr. Martin Luther King, and the Rev. Andrew Young marched in the funeral of Jimmie Lee Jackson, whose shooting death inspired the first of the Selma marches in Alabama in 1965. Credit: Associated Press
A nighttime protest in Marion, Alabama, led to law enforcement officers attacking the 500 or so protesters who were marching from Zion United Methodist Church to the Perry County jail, where a civil rights activist was being held. Police also beat two photographers and NBC News correspondent Richard Valeriani, who had to be hospitalized.
Jimmie Lee Jackson, his mother Viola Jackson, and his 82-year-old grandfather Cager Lee, ran into Mack’s Café behind the church. After police clubbed Lee to the floor, Jackson attempted to intervene. She, too, was beaten. When Jackson tried to protect his mother, one trooper threw him against a cigarette machine. A second trooper, James Bonard Fowler, shot Jackson, who was beaten again by police after staggering from the café.
Jackson’s death eight days later inspired civil rights activists to march from Selma to Montgomery. In 2007, his killer, Fowler, was indicted for murder, eventually pleading guilty to manslaughter, but he served only five months in jail.
Jackson’s death was portrayed in the 2014 movie Selma, and he is memorialized on the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery.
Now that Mississippi’s welfare department isn’t hemorrhaging federal grant funds as a result of widespread mismanagement and political corruption, it has over $100 million to spare.
But the agency, Mississippi Department of Human Services, won’t say what it’s going to do with the money, whether it’s going to try to reach more needy families or how it’s going to finally start tracking outcomes of the program.
In the three years following arrests in the largest public fraud scandal in state history, the agency led by Gov. Tate Reeves has never released a full accounting of its current welfare expenditures. There isn’t even a list of organizations receiving the funding on the agency’s website, nor are its subgrant agreements available online.
And lawmakers, in their seventh week of the Legislative session, haven’t taken one action to address the logjam. Instead, they’ve killed at least 11 bills aimed at improving the administration of the agency and its funds, as well as at least five amendments offered to do the same on the floors of both chambers.
All the bills filed to address these problems were killed by Republican committee chairs without debate, and all the amendments were introduced by Democrats and voted down by Republicans, primarily along party lines.
“(Mississippi Department of Human Services) has certainly not held up to its mission or its responsibility to those who need it the most,” said Rep. Omeria Scott, D-Jones, who offered an amendment to the MDHS appropriations bill on Wednesday to make increases to the agency’s budget, which Republicans reduced. “I do hate that through the general bills process that there was no legislation for a board, or no legislation for any of these audits that are in this appropriations bill, that we got any reports or any demands or anything like that. That has not been before us, and I imagine won’t be before us, but let me say to you that there are areas over there in Human Services that need some escalation.”
While Republican leadership says it has cleaned up fraud within the agency, that doesn’t mean the welfare program, called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, is reaching the needy or helping people enter the workforce. In fact, during the height of the scandal, the state was using more of its TANF funds to help more poor Mississippians than it is today.
In 2022, a monthly average of 246 adults and 2,265 children benefited from the welfare check — no more than $260 for a family of three (a rate that was raised in 2021 for the first time since 1999). Mississippi is consistently among the most impoverished states in the nation with 1-in-5 of its residents living below the poverty line. The assistance is reaching about 4% of the more than half-a-million Mississippians living in poverty.
Meanwhile, the state continues to rack up tens of millions in welfare funds. By October of 2021, more than a year ago, Mississippi’s TANF program had amassed $97.9 million in unobligated funds. While the agency hasn’t released data showing how they spent the money within the last year, all indications are that the number of unspent TANF funds has only grown, especially since the state didn’t issue a single new TANF subgrant in 2022.
In October, MDHS Director Bob Anderson hesitated to say how his agency might spend the money, or whether it would use the funds to, for example, increase the number of child care vouchers it is able to provide to low-income families.
“Understand, people have a lot of other plans for that money as well,” Anderson said.
MDHS has refused to answer Mississippi Today’s questions about which people and what plans.
The sections of the TANF program that have received most public attention are:
Cash assistance — the money that goes out directly to families who qualify for the welfare check
Subgrants — the money that goes to organizations to provide TANF-related services, such as after school programs, parenting classes and workforce training
But these currently account for less than half of the state’s annual federal TANF grant.
And according to the state’s checkbook, the state spends millions of TANF funds each year on items outside of cash assistance or TANF subgrants — such as IT contracts, a contract with the company who conducts drug testing of welfare applicants, interagency transfers to the state auditor’s office or payments to the attorneys crafting the civil case against NFL legend Brett Favre and others. There has not been a public accounting of these purchases, nor have they been discussed in audits, legislative hearings or among lawmakers publicly.
Each year, the state also transfers a large chunk of TANF funds, the amount unknown to the public, to Mississippi Child Protection Services, the embattled state agency responsible for investigating child abuse and neglect and overseeing foster care across the state. The financial maneuver is preventing the state from taking advantage of unprecedented federal matching funds offered under the 2018 Family First Prevention Services Act to help families stay intact.
Aside from the scandalous stories about politicians and famous athletes funneling TANF money to their pet projects during former Gov. Phil Bryant’s administration, the welfare program itself is as forgotten and ignored as it was before the arrests.
Lawmakers passed a bill in 2021 to place law enforcement officers within MDHS’s Fraud Investigation Unit and a bill in 2022 to require that employees of the unit report civil or criminal violations to the state auditor’s office.
Neither of these changed how the agency runs its TANF grant or introduced any accountability for the agency to spend the money effectively.
In 2021, the first full year after the scandal was revealed, Mississippi spent just $35.6 million of the $86.5 million it receives in federal funds each year, according to federal reports released in December. The reports are typically outdated by about a year.
To put that into perspective: In 2018, Mississippi spent about $113 million in federal TANF funds (including some unspent funds from years before). If $50 million of that went to fraudulent or unallowed purchases, that leaves $63 million that Mississippi spent legally that year, including to organizations similar to those providing services today.
In 2018, at the height of the fraud scandal, the state pumped $7.3 million directly to families, whereas it only gave $3.5 million in cash assistance in 2021. Either way you slice it, Mississippi’s welfare department was using more TANF money to help more poor Mississippians during the years of Bryant’s appointed former MDHS Director John Davis, who is likely going to prison, than the agency is today under Reeves and Anderson.
Mississippi Department of Human Services previously told the public that it is allocating about $69 million of its TANF funds each year — $4.1 million on cash assistance, $34.5 million on subgrants to organizations and $30 million to plug budget holes at the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services.
But it has not made documentation of these expenditures available to the public. Also, these figures are not clearly reflected in federal reports. In 2021, for example, the state only reported spending $15 million in TANF funds on “child welfare” – the only spending category that would appear to correspond with the CPS transfers.
The agency would not explain the reason for the discrepancies in the federal reporting, other than to say that it’s possible not all of the money that the state obligated was actually used. The department has also repeatedly failed to explain which purchases fall under which categories in the federal reports.
The state is allowed to use grant funds from one year to another for a period of three years. So funds being spent today could technically be coming from the state’s 2021 TANF grant. That, and the fact that some subgrants span more than one year, during which the subgrantee can draw the funds at their leisure, have perpetually created a foggy picture of the program.
The only documentation of TANF expenditures that MDHS appears to have made public, at the request of Mississippi Today, is a list of subgrantees to whom the state awards a fraction of the funds. This information does not appear on the agency’s website, nor in its annual report.
In mid-2020, the department provided to Mississippi Today a spreadsheet of TANF purchases that included, in addition to payments to subgrantees, expenditures for things like tech support or hotels for employee training. In October, Mississippi Today extracted and analyzed all purchases labeled under the TANF program from the state’s accounting database from 2015 to 2022, all of which Mississippi Today made publicly available, but the expenditures didn’t add up to nearly the amount the state reported spending to the federal government. Transfers from MDHS to CPS also do not appear on the state’s accounting database.
The department began the most recent Request for Proposals — a competitive bid process — for TANF subgrants in June of 2022. But due to staff changes within MDHS’s Division of Workforce Development and Partnership Management, a spokesperson said, the agency has not made an award.
“Once we have a finalized plan we will make a public announcement,” MDHS Chief Communication Officer Mark Jones offered in response to questions about the agency’s plan for the TANF program moving forward.
Even with the grants most recently awarded in 2021, it’s unclear what all of the organizations are accomplishing or how the programs align with a vision to reduce poverty. The current grants cover parenting initiatives ($8.1 million), after school programs ($13.7 million), and workforce development ($14.9 million). The subgrant agreements aren’t even available on Mississippi’s transparency website.
The largest award was a $6.9 million parenting initiative grant to Mississippi Children’s Home Society, or Canopy Solutions, a children’s behavioral health services provider, including a residential psychiatric facility. Canopy has been a TANF subgrantee for years and works within the foster care system to prevent family separations. Canopy also recently launched a specialized nonprofit school for students with learning differences in Ridgeland, essentially replacing the recently shuttered New Summit School by hiring its employees and recruiting its students.
New Summit closed after its founder Nancy New was charged within the welfare scandal. New was funneling TANF money to New Summit, a for-profit school, and also running a separate scam to defraud the Mississippi Department of Education, she admitted in her 2022 guilty pleas.
Other current TANF subgrantees include the Mississippi Alliance of Boys and Girls Clubs ($5.3 million), Save the Children Federation ($2.4 million), YMCA Metro Jackson ($1 million), and Juanita Sims Doty Foundation ($1 million) for afterschool programs; and Institutions of Higher Learning ($2.4 million), Mississippi Department of Employment Security ($1.5 million), South Delta Planning and Development District ($2.1 million), Southern MS Planning and Development District Gulfport ($3.6 million), Three Rivers Planning & Development District ($4.7 million) for workforce training.
Since welfare reform in the late 1990s, state leaders, workforce specialists, industry experts and advocates have met, studied, and discussed ad nauseam the barriers they’ve identified for families escaping poverty – chief among them child care, transportation and workforce training that aligns with market needs. The concept of TANF when Congress created it was to move people into the workforce, hopefully ending the reliance on government assistance.
Mississippi could be transferring up to 30% of its TANF funding to supplement the Child Care Development Block Grant, which provides child care vouchers to low-income working parents. The program has always served just a small fraction of low-income children needing child care across the state.
While legislation is not required for MDHS to make this transfer – since it has done so in the past, according to federal reports – the current Legislature has killed bills and amendments to compel MDHS to use TANF funds this way. And the agency refuses to answer questions about whether it will or, if not, why it won’t. The agency has, however, complained that without a budget supplement, 12,000 kids may be kicked off the voucher.
“From the beginning of the (TANF) program, there have been thoughts like, ‘We need to figure out a way to provide daycare. We need to figure out a way to provide transportation and that will help get a large number of people back into the workforce,’ which is said to be the aim of all these reforms,” Senate Public Health Committee Chair Hob Bryan, D-Amory, said during a floor debate on several TANF-related amendments last week. “And it is extremely frustrating that we have money that could be used for additional vouchers for childcare, so that there would be someone to care for children when their parent is at work and we’re not taking advantage of that. And yet we complain about people not working.”
Northern District Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley woke up Friday morning as the Democratic nominee for governor in this November’s general election.
The executive committee of the Mississippi Democratic Party on Thursday night ruled that both of Presley’s opponents in the August party primary — Gregory Wash and Bob Hickingbottom — had not met the eligibility requirements to run for governor.
Neither, the party found, had followed state law. Under state law, the candidates are required to file statements of economic interest with the Mississippi Ethics Commission. Neither Wash nor Hickingbottom had.
Presley will likely face incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves in the general election. Reeves will face two little-known candidates in the party primary: John Witcher and David Grady Hardigree.
Independent Gwendolyn Gray also is slated to be on the November ballot.
Mandy Gunasekara of Oxford, who is vying to replace Presley as Northern District Public Service Commissioner, was qualified Thursday by the Mississippi Republican Party. Gunasekara was challenged on the grounds she did not meet eligibility requirements because she previously lived in Washington, D.C., where she worked in the administration of former President Donald Trump.
The rulings of the Republican and Democratic executive committees can be appealed in the state judiciary.
On social media, Gunasekara thanked the Republican Party Executive Committee for its action.
“I have been a citizen of Mississippi my entire life,” she said. “I appreciate their willingness to look at the facts and come to a fair decision. When briefing President Trump in the Oval Office, I always carried my Mississippi-grown principles and values into the room.”
Ole Miss players hold up the national championship trophy after a win over Oklahoma in Game 2 of the NCAA College World Series baseball finals, Sunday, June 26, 2022, in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/John Peterson)
In 2021, Mississippi State baseball won its own regional, then its own super regional and then its first-ever national championship, painting Omaha maroon and white in the process.
In 2022, Ole Miss sneaked into the NCAA Tournament as the last at-large team chosen, won the Coral Gables regional, white-washed Southern Miss in the Hattiesburg Super regional, before a full-scale Rebel invasion of Omaha. Mike Bianco’s Rebels won the national championship, sweeping Oklahoma in the championship series.
Rick Cleveland
And so, you ask, what can Mississippi’s Boys of Spring do for a 2023 encore? Let’s put it this way: Expectations are sky-high.
Can Ole Miss, despite losing the legend named Tim Elko, repeat? Can Mississippi State bounce back from last year’s aberrational 26-30 finish, which included an unsightly 9-21 record in the Southeastern Conference? Can Southern Miss, which won 47 games and its own regional last year, take its turn in college baseball’s Omaha spotlight?
As we saw last season when Ole Miss vaulted from a 22-17 record (7-14 in the SEC) on May 1 to the national championship on June 26, just about anything is possible in college baseball. The team that lost to Southeast Missouri 13-3 on April 19 for its seventh defeat in nine games somehow won a national championship.
That’s why hope really does spring eternal in college baseball — especially in Mississippi. All three of Mississippi’s Division I baseball powers open at home this weekend. Ole Miss takes on Delaware for a three-game set that will feature three days of celebrating last year’s championship. Southern Miss plays host to a strong Liberty team, which has advanced to the NCAA Tournament three consecutive years. And Mississippi State hosts VMI (16-40 a year ago) from the Southern Conference.
Let’s take a brief look at all three.
Ole Miss
If you are looking for reasons why Ole Miss won’t repeat, look no further than these: Elko, Kevin Graham and Justin Bench. All three were uber-productive last season. All three were leaders. All three are gone. Elko led the national champs in home runs (24), runs batted in (75 in 65 games) and slugging (.642). Graham hit .335 with 11 home runs and 51 RBI. Bench was Mr. Dependable, hitting .312 with 17 doubles and 42 RBI, while playing excellent defense wherever Mike Bianco needed him. That’s an awful lot to replace. The Rebels also lost their No. 1 starter Dylan DeLucia and closer Brandon Johnson.
Mike Bianco
But if you are looking for reason not to write these Rebels off, there are plenty, starting with All-American shortstop Jacob Gonzalez and left-handed ace pitcher Hunter Elliot, who will lead what could be a deeper pitching staff than the one that won the national title.
Replacing Elko’s power largely will fall on Kemp Alderman’s broad shoulders. He hit 11 dingers last year and just might double that this year. Gonzalez also will look to increase his total of 18 homers a year ago.
Newcomers to watch: Tulane transfer outfielder Ethan Groff, who hit .404 last season, can steal a base and will likely hit at the top of the Rebel lineup; Northwestern first baseman Anthony Calarco (.325, 13 HRs 54 RBI); and Delgado Community College outfielder Ethan Lege (.399, 36 RBI). Pitching-wise, look out for freshman Grayson Saunier, who could well be this year’s Rebel version of Hunter Elliot.
Southern Miss
Enthusiasm for Southern Miss baseball is at an all-time high. The home season is sold out before the season even begins. Southern Miss starts the season ranked in all the college baseball polls, unusual for program that normally has to play its way into the Top 20. That’s what happens when you win 47 games, your own regional over LSU, and return nearly all of your everyday lineup. No telling where the Golden Eagles would be ranked if likely MLB first round pick Hurston Waldrep hadn’t transferred to Florida.
Pitching depth is a huge concern since the Eagles also lost senior starter Hunter Riggins, plus a school record five pitchers in the MLB draft, including much of a dependable bullpen. Pitching coach Christian Ostrander is often referred to as the Wizard of Oz and he will need to live up to that nickname with so much mound production gone from a year ago.
USM Head Baseball Coach Scott Berry Credit: USM Athletics Dept.
But head coach Scott Berry has plenty back, including All American right-handed starter Tanner Hall and the everyday players who hit 65 of the team’s 82 home runs a year ago. Hitting-wise, this will be a veteran team that already has experienced much success at the college level.
Pitching-wise, some young arms, including freshmen, must come through, including Mississippi’s Gatorade Player of the Year Nick Monistere of Northwest Rankin and Benton Academy’s JB Middleton, both hard throwers.
Newcomers to watch: Centerfielder Matthew Etzel, a highly touted transfer from Panola, a speedster who tore up the MLB Draft League last summer; left fielder/DH Tate Parker, who led Pearl River to the national junior college championship last spring; and second baseman Gabe Lacy, who hit .329 with 12 home runs and 63 RBI for Tennessee Tech last season.
Mississippi State
As if last year’s losing record wasn’t bad enough, Chris Lemonis’ Bulldogs are picked to finish last in the SEC West in the preseason SEC coaches poll. Color this observer shocked if they do. There’s just too much talent and too much tradition in Starkville for that to happen. But here’s the thing about the SEC West: Every team in the division feels that way.
Chris Lemonis
First things first: State does have some key players still around from the 2021 National Champions. Catcher Luke Hancock, outfielder Kellum Clark and shortstop Lane Forsythe have been there. That’s a start. They know what it takes. The rest of the everyday lineup looks good as well, especially with first baseman Hunter Hines and his 16 home runs in the middle of the batting order.
Pitching is the big question mark. Some guys who didn’t get it done last season will have to improve drastically. Last season, the Bulldogs finished last in the SEC with an earned run average of 6.07, a full two runs per game higher than the national championship season. Moving out of the SEC West cellar begins with improving that stat. Memphis transfer Landon Gartman, 7-1 and All American Athletic Conference last season, surely will help in that regard.
Newcomers to watch: Gartman, Texas, transfer pitcher Aaron Nixon; incoming freshman centerfielder Dakota Jordan; New Orleans transfer second baseman Amani Larry; and Samford transfer left fielder Colton Ledbetter.
