Report: Missouri to retain baseball coach Kerrick Jackson for 2026 season

Missouri will retain baseball coach Kerrick Jackson for a third season in 2026, according to the Columbia Tribune’s Calum McAndrew. The Tigers finished the 2025 season with a 3-27 record against SEC competition and a 16-39 record overall.

The Tigers baseball program is reportedly looking to bolster Jackson’s resources before making a decision on his future. How that plays out next season remains to be seen. This season, the Tigers lost 24 straight in conference play, tying a record set by Kentucky in the 1950s.

In two seasons overall, Jackson has led Missouri baseball to a 39-71 record, including a 12-48 record against the SEC. In 2024, Missouri finished 23-32 overall and Jackson won Trailblazer of the Year by Baseball America.

The three wins Missouri earned in SEC play in 2025 is the most lopsided final record a team has had since the conference moved to a 30-game conference slate in 1996. No team has ever won less than five games before Missouri did this spring, according to Yahoo Sports. Vanderbilt (5-24, 2000), Georgia (5-23, 2010) and Alabama (5-24-1, 2017) are the next lowest on the list.

The only other team that can lay claim to a 3-win SEC baseball final record are the 1974 Georgia Bulldogs. That season, they went 3-13 — playing 14 less conference games than the Tigers over 50 years later.

Missouri would eventually snap its 24-game conference losing streak against Texas A&M in College Station on May 9. By then, however, the Tigers were already on the wrong side of history. However, it’s clear the Missouri athletics department has faith in Jackson, and is letting it play out for at least one more season.

Jackson arrived in Columbia after spending one season with the Memphis Tigers. He led them to a 29-28 record in 2023 — the program’s first winning season since 2017. It was Jackson’s first season back in the coaching industry after taking a three-year hiatus to be the president of the MLB Draft League.

He entered the coaching industry in 2018, where he was the head coach at Southern. There, he’d find the most success of his coaching career to this point. After going 9-33 during his first season with the program, Jackson turned his program around in 2019. They finished with a 32-24 record, and Jackson won SWAC coach of the year honors.

His team swept the regular season title and conference tournament title before ending their season at the NCAA Starkville Regional. Overall, Jackson has a 99-127 coaching record.