I’m going to choose to blame Corky Palmer for this. There is no other viable explanation.

Southern Miss’ baseball season was dead in the water a couple of weeks before the Conference USA Tournament.

Making a regional was certainly out of the question. Heck, the Golden Eagles would be luck to just make the conference tourney.

But then Palmer announced his retirement effective at the end of the season, and USM hasn’t looked back since.

Southern Miss rallied around their soon-to-be-former coach and went on a winning streak that put them in the conference tournament.

They then ran through that tournament to reach the championship game, where they lost a close game to top-10 ranked Rice.

That was enough to barely squeak into a Regional as a No. 3 seed, and wouldn’t you know, they won it.

Southern Miss didn’t stop there, as they traveled to Gainsville, Fla., to take on the No. 8 seed Florida Gators in the Super Regional, and swept that it two games to reach the College World Series for the first time in the program’s history.

In doing so, USM has become the darlings of the tournament and the Cinderella story the sports public loves so much.

It sounds like a wonderful story, and it is. So why do I have such a problem with it?

It came one year too late.

Just about every year since 2000, there has been a Miss-Lou connection to the Southern Miss baseball team.

First it was Vidalia native Josh Hoffpauir who was on the Golden Eagle team in 2000 and later served as an assistant coach.

Then, Josh’s brother Jarrett donned the black and gold and became an All-American.

After Jarrett was drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals, it was Vidalia native Barry Bowden’s turn to head down to Hattiesburg and play for Southern Miss.

Bowden became Southern Miss’ pitching ace, and was also named to the All-American team his senior season.

But Bowden graduated last year and is now playing in the Kansas City Royals farm system.

None of those fine players got to have the Omaha experience, and all because Corky Palmer just had to announce his retirement the year after all the Miss-Lou players had left the program.

If he had announced his retirement last year, perhaps Bowden would have pitched in Omaha.

But last year’s team had nothing to rally around and it, like the five others before it, lost in the regional round.

Obviously Palmer had no idea that announcing his retirement would have this affect on the team, or he might have done it years ago.

But it’s unfortunate that Southern Miss’ run to Omaha came the year after there were no more Miss-Lou players there to enjoy the experience.

Bowden admitted to me earlier this week that he was happy for the team, but also quite jealous of their accomplishments.

I know where he’s coming from. I’m also quite jealous of the Southern Miss reporters that are sitting in Omaha right now waiting for the game to start.

If Bowden were still on the team, I’d be sitting up there too.

But it wasn’t to be, and now the Hoffpauirs, Bowden and myself can only watch on television and cheer from afar.

Jeff Edwards is the sports editor for The Democrat. He can be reached at sports@natchezdemocrat.com.