Had to split the article into 2 parts as it was so long. It is posted in this same thread as separate post.
Fitt: Middleton, Allen showcase USM's pitching-development prowess • D1Baseball
JB Middleton and Colby Allen have matured dramatically since pitching sparingly as freshmen for Southern Miss, and they demonstrated serious toughness and pitchability in a big win at Troy.
d1baseball.com
Fitt: Middleton, Allen showcase USM's pitching-development prowess • D1Baseball
JB Middleton and Colby Allen have matured dramatically since pitching sparingly as freshmen for Southern Miss, and they demonstrated serious toughness and pitchability in a big win at Troy.
d1baseball.com
Fitt: Middleton, Allen showcase USM’s pitching-development prowess
Southern Miss stopper Colby Allen celebrates Friday’s win against Troy (Aaron Fitt)
by: Aaron FittMay 16, 2025
TROY, Ala. — Thursday night felt like an excellent illustration of what has made Southern Miss one of college baseball’s most consistent winning programs over the last two decades: grit, toughness, and pitching development.
Facing a very good Troy lineup that was stacked with eight players batting from the left side (counting one switch-hitter), USM righthanders JB Middleton and Colby Allen had to walk the tightrope repeatedly, but they never backed down, and they showed the ability to make adjustments on the fly — a product of their maturation over the last three years under the tutelage of Golden Eagles head coach Christian Ostrander. When Troy tied the game in the seventh, Southern Miss responded immediately with a leadoff homer from Joey Urban in the eighth, and Allen made sure his team’s 4-3 lead held up, escaping a daunting jam in the bottom of the ninth to secure the victory. It was a striking display of resilience and poise from a USM team that has now won 13 games in a row to surge into the regional hosting hunt.
“It was an as-advertised ballgame, I guess you could say,” Ostrander said. “Just proud of our guys staying in it. [Troy is] good, and we did what we had to do, so I’m very proud of them.”
The most electrifying high-wire act was delivered by Allen in the ninth, after back-to-back singles gave the Trojans two men aboard with nobody out, putting USM’s one-run lead in jeopardy. The Golden Eagles caught a break when Peyton Watts popped up a bunt to Allen, and then Allen buckled down. He got Steven Meier to ground out to second, putting the tying run at third and the winning run at second with two outs. Then Allen got Houston Markham to hit a rollover groundout to end the game.
“Colby’s been our guy, he’s got ice in his veins,” Ostrander said. “He’s not gonna implode, and he’s gonna keep on competing. And he did a great job there, covering the three [innings] after JB went six.”
Allen earned the victory with three innings of one-run relief, after allowing a game-tying RBI double to Meier in the seventh on a 92 mph sinker that was supposed to be in but caught too much of the plate. And here’s a great example of Allen’s maturation and ability to make adjustments: listen to the way he described his mentality after that Meier double and Mikey Bello’s pinch-hit laser single off the wall to lead off the ninth.
“Just get the heaters in, you know? They ambushed two fastballs and hit them off the wall, so I was like, ‘I’m never gonna throw another sinker to a lefty.’ Their swings, they’re fit to hit sinkers,” Allen said. “The one guy got it in the seventh, and then I had a feeling if I didn’t get the other one in he was gonna hit it off the wall, and he did. And I was like, ‘All right, I’m never throwing an 0-0 sinker again.’ Then I started throwing the sliders and going back to the heaters in, and it panned out for me.”
Allen’s slider is his biggest weapon, and his mastery of the pitch is the driving force behind his success over the last two years. He went 10-2, 3.58 with seven saves in 65.1 innings as USM’s breakout bullpen stopper a year ago, and he’s now 6-4, 3.79 with 10 saves and a 68-14 K-BB mark in 57 innings as a junior. Entering this weekend, opponents were hitting just .122 against his slider, which has generated a 48% whiff rate (94th percentile in Division I). His 92-94 mph sinker is also an effective weapon, generating a 64% groundball rate, but the mid-80s slider is his signature, and he used it as the putaway pitch on both of his strikeouts in a 1-2-3 eighth against the heart of the USM order.
But that sinker-slider attack is a product of Ostrander’s pitcher-development machine, which has churned out winning arms for nine years now, the first seven as the pitching coach under Scott Berry and the last two as head coach. Allen was a completely different — and very raw — pitcher when he first arrived on campus as a freshman, and he logged just 14 innings that year, posting an 11.57 ERA.
“When he got here, he was more four-seam and curveball. Really found out that four-seam’s not gonna play enough, so two-seam started getting a little action and then the slider picked up some more rotation, a little harder,” Ostrander said. “So he’s kind of evolved, he’s worked his tail off to be what he is. He was very unassuming when he got here, but his work ethic and mentality are top-notch.”
Allen said he only threw about 15 innings during his high school career, despite throwing for the high school team as an eighth grader. Then he hurt his elbow and spent the bulk of his prep career at Starkville Academy playing catcher and infield.
“For me personally, I was a catcher coming out of high school, going to juco. So that self belief was a big thing when I entered these ropes at Southern Miss,” Allen said. “I mean, me and JB both came from a small private academy school in Mississippi, so we didn’t face the best competition sometimes. Gotta kind of unlock that confidence and believe in ourselves.”
Middleton, on the other hand, dominated as a prep pitcher at Benton Academy, but the step up in competition when he arrived at Southern Miss hit him in the face. He flashed tantalizing potential in the fall of his freshman year — I saw him pump 94-96 heat with the makings of a putaway slider that fall — but his command wasn’t ready for high-level Division I baseball, and he logged just 9.1 innings as a freshman.
“Me and JB both came in here with a good mindset, but our freshman year, us mentally, we could have pitched our freshman year but mentally we just weren’t there,” Allen said. “Coach Oz developed us, and it’s nuts when he can get his hands on you, and work with him.”
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