(Photo from Ole Miss Athletics)
- Ole Miss will play in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since its championship season in 2022, when it was the last team extended an at-large bid.
As a beat writer and columnist, I thought I would outlast Mike Bianco at Ole Miss because I outlasted so many other coaches.
When you spend 22 years around one program you see a lot of change.
With 1,043 wins, 943 of them and a national championship at Ole Miss, Bianco has been a winner and a survivor.
You don’t stay 25 years in one place without fan base detractors as well as supporters. There have been uncomfortable conversations with the administration too.
How long the Rebels survive after this week’s SEC Tournament in Hoover, Alabama, remains to be seen.
I mentioned a while back that Ole Miss baseball isn’t back, but it’s “back-ish.” It’s on the mend, a work in progress.
There was a time that making an NCAA regional was celebrated in Oxford. Now the season isn’t really celebrated unless the regional is in Oxford.
This is the program, these are the expectations, that Bianco has created.
Ole Miss will play in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since its championship season in 2022, when it was the last team extended an at-large bid.
In their semi-revival the Rebels got close enough to sniff regional host status, but they’re a long shot to be extended one when sites are revealed on Sunday.
Maybe holding an 8-3 sixth-inning lead against Auburn in Game 3 Saturday would have gotten them over the hump, maybe not.
The real significance of the weekend is that Ole Miss won Games 1 and 2 and took the series from an Auburn team that D1Baseball.com projects as a national seed.
That allowed the Rebels to finish the SEC regular season at 16-14, the first time in four years they’ve finished plus-.500 in the conference.
Ole Miss has twice hosted after 16-14 SEC finishes, but every year is different. Last year Mississippi State was in the conversation after finishing 17-13 but did not host.
The Rebels had plenty of chances – Game 3 against Florida, Games 1-2 at South Carolina, Game 2 at Mississippi State and others – to take care of the hosting business.
Fact of the matter is, if you had said to most Ole Miss fans in February that they’d go 16-14 in the league they’d have taken it.
The Rebels were 11-19 in conference play a year ago, sadly a five-game improvement from 2023 – the year after the national championship – when they went 6-24, the worst Ole Miss SEC season of The Bianco Era.
Blessed but not extended
“We are blessed to have Mike Bianco as our head coach, and we intend for him to lead our baseball team for many, many years to come,” Athletics Director Keith Carter said in announcing a new $1.6 million contract for Bianco following the championship, the deal to run through 2026, the maximum length allowed for state contracts.
“With his remarkable track record, no one was more deserving of that national title run than Mike. We have accomplished so much in every facet of our program, and under Mike’s leadership, we look forward to continuing that level of success and experiencing more championship moments.”
The next year, after six SEC wins, Bianco’s contract was not extended back to four years, a common occurrence in Mississippi when an administration has faith in its coach.
SEC baseball has been elite for many years and has only gotten stronger with the additions of Texas and Oklahoma.
The Rebels left wins on the table. They could have been several games better than 16-14, better than their No. 7 slot in the SEC standings.
But inconsistency should be expected among rebuilding teams. As the name implies they are unfinished works, better but incomplete, programs on the path, they hope, to higher ground.
Inconsistency is what SEC coaches expected of Ole Miss this season, still wounded and wobbly from the post-championship talent drain, placing the Rebels No. 15 in their preseason poll, ahead of only Missouri, which orbited dangerously close to 0-30 in the league before sweeping Texas A&M in College Station May 9-11. The Tigers finished 3-27 in SEC play.
The real beauty of college baseball is the postseason with Hoover as an appetizer to wonderful scenes on campuses across the league.
Don’t expect an Omaha repeat of 2022. That Ole Miss team had two legit starters, not just one.
This Ole Miss team, however, will be remembered more for what happens in the weeks ahead than the 30 conference games behind.
But those games need not be forgotten.
The difference in the regular season and postseason
They’re the grind. Every weekend is the same, every Friday night starter having rested for seven days without the quirky matchup questions that find some coaches holding aces in first-round regional games.
These are the games SEC coaches point to as evidence that their team is well-prepared for postseason success.
Sixteen SEC wins, 16 Quad 1 wins – the second-most in the conference – plus series wins against Vanderbilt and Auburn, a near-series win against Arkansas … they matter.
And they suggest that Bianco has the Rebels trending up again.
The question is, can the momentum continue into next season?
Parrish Alford
