Southern Miss surges toward hosting position — again • D1Baseball
As usual, Southern Miss is peaking down the stretch, riding a 14-game winning streak into host contention. USM's position-player group has become very formidable.
d1baseball.com
by: Aaron FittMay 17, 2025
TROY, Ala. — Maybe you’ve heard of the swallows returning to Capistrano, or the annual Canadian geese migration. But here’s another rite of spring: every year, when the calendar flips to May, the Southern Miss Golden Eagles take flight.
Carson Paetow has been down this road before. Now a senior right fielder, Paetow was a freshman when the Eagles went 5-1 in their final two conference series en route to earning a regional hosting spot and a trip to supers. In his 2023 sophomore year, Southern Miss reeled off a 15-game winning streak down the stretch and won its final four series along with the Sun Belt tournament title en route to another home regional, and another super. In his 2024 junior campaign, the Eagles won 13 of their final 14 games heading into Selection Monday, including another Sun Belt tourney title.
So USM’s current run is just business as usual for veterans like Paetow. Friday’s series-clinching 12-1 win at Troy — a team that had not lost a weekend series all year — extended the Eagles’ winning streak to 14 games, and continued their fierce late-season run at hosting a regional for the third time in Paetow’s four-year collegiate career.
“Everyone wants to host. It’d mean the world, and I’d be lying if I told you we weren’t thinking about it or we don’t want to, because everybody in the world knows we are,” said Paetow, who had a double, a triple and two RBIs in the Friday win, which was shortened to eight innings by the mercy rule. “And we really are. But we can’t do that if we don’t take it one game at a time. If we don’t win tomorrow, our chances go down, or even out the window. So we’ve got to win tomorrow, that’s the most important thing. Our abilities to host are pretty much determined tomorrow. And then after tomorrow, if we win, it’s determined on the next game, and so forth.”
Indeed, completing the road series sweep at 22nd-ranked Troy would be a major boost to USM’s hosting chances, which have already risen along with its RPI, now up to No. 22 after starting the week at No. 30. But these Eagles are good at treating every game like it’s a must-win. They have fully bought into the boring old “one day at a time” mentality that coaches so often preach.
“There’s a lot of meat left on that bone [to host], we know,” USM coach Christian Ostrander said. “We’ve just got to go out and play the next game, that’s been our mantra all year. I know that’s cliché, but it really has been. And this group buys into it, they enjoy playing together, and the electricity they have in the dugout’s fun to be around.”
That electricity is palpable. This is a fun group of players — a joy to watch play the game, and a pleasure to chat with in postgame. It’s easy to see why this team has been so successful this year, and why this program has racked up 40-win seasons nine years in a row, the longest active streak in college baseball. After Thursday’s win, I wrote about USM’s pitcher-development prowess, which is a big part of the program’s success. But another very big piece is the culture of the program. Again — that sounds cliché, and every coach in America talks about culture. But these guys truly walk the walk. When asked about his own development as a player over the course of his 46-homer collegiate career (including 15 this year), Paetow was quick to credit the wisdom he gained from the older players who took him under their wings when he was a younger player at Southern Miss.
“I’ve got to give credit to my coaches, but also the players that were here before me,” he said. “Our culture is very rich. We have this thing we call ‘tradition of excellence’ — that’s not just numbers we put up on our board, that’s also culture that we create and we maintain. That’s us, that’s just players, the chemistry and relationships that we build. Trust what the other guys are telling you and take it to heart, and help you develop not only as a player but as a person, helps us play good on the field.”
Junior second baseman Nick Monistere is another Golden Eagle who has been a key contributor since his freshman year, and he’s now enjoying a career season, hitting .330/.420/.646 with a team-best 18 homers and 64 RBIs. At 6-foot, 192 pounds, Monistere isn’t built like a Lochness monster — if you’ll pardon the pun — like Paetow and slugging first baseman Matthew Russo, who has 17 homers. As a freshman, Monistere slugged .523 with five homers, and he seemed like a dynamic player because of his athleticism and his barrel skills, but not because of his power. He hit 11 homers as a sophomore, but he’s taken a big leap as a junior, and he showed off his strength with a two-run opposite-field homer in the first inning Friday to give Southern Miss an early lead it would not relinquish. He added a laser RBI double to left in the sixth, showing off his ability to drive the ball with authority to all fields.
“He got stronger,” Ostrander said of Monistere’s 2025 power surge. “Our strength coach, Todd Makovicka, is one of the best in the country, there’s no doubt about it. Nicky got stronger. The bat speed’s always been there, and he made a really good adjustment from last year to this year, really staying in those legs better. So the bat speed, with staying in those legs, staying back better, you kinda get what you’ve got. Our hitting coach, Coach [Travis] Creel, has done a fabulous job with him. He’s strong, and he’s twitchy. And like I said, he can really get that bat through the zone good. And him staying back more has really let him see that spin better.”
Monistere said he has gained about 25 pounds since he arrived at Southern Miss as a freshman thanks to his work with Makovicka, and his strength gains have unlocked his power. He’s also continued to improve as a defensive second baseman, despite playing some outfield as a sophomore last year. He was a part of two key double plays Friday, induced by tough-as-nails veteran lefty Kros Sivley (4.2 IP, 1 H, 0 R) when the game was still somewhat in question, first making a pretty underhanded feed to shortstop Ozzie Pratt to start an inning-ending 4-6-3 DP with the bases loaded in the fourth, then making a nice turn to complete a 5-4-3 DP in the sixth.
“I played shortstop in high school and played second my freshman year, so I’ve always felt comfortable on the dirt,” Monistere said. “Last year bouncing around [between outfield and infield], I take pride in my defense, and I feel like I can play every position on the field at a high level. Being able to settle in for 55 games [this year], all on the dirt, has been incredible for me, just to take that next step in my defense playing second base.”
Part 2 - https://southernmiss.forums.rivals....hosting-position-—-again-by-aaron-fitt.53251/
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