(Photo from Ole Miss Baseball on X)
- For Bianco, portal help was a must to get this team, after two dismal seasons, where it is right now. Fortunately, the guys he landed have been good fits.
There were notable departures from the Ole Miss baseball program after the 2024 season.
But there were notable returners. Newcomers, too.
The Rebels, an experienced and veteran club celebrated a return to postseason Monday. But more than that, they celebrated a return to postseason at Swayze Field.
Ole Miss and Southern Mississippi were both announced by the NCAA as regional host sites Sunday night. Monday, they discovered who’ll be coming to the party.
The Rebels last hosted in 2021, the Golden Eagles in 2022.
Mississippi State is in the party too, a 3 seed at Florida State. Tallahassee has been a launching spot for two previous College World Series trips for the Bulldogs.
State won a regional there in 2007, a super regional in 2018. This will be State’s fifth time to play postseason baseball in Tallahassee.
The Bulldogs will be trying to reach Omaha with an interim coach for the second time in six years after Gary Henderson took them there in 2018.
State will take on Northeastern Friday; Florida State will face Bethune-Cookman.
Southern Miss, Sun Belt Conference runners-up in both the regular season and tournament, will take on Columbia, while the SEC’s Alabama and the ACC’s Miami make up the rest of the Hattiesburg field.
Ole Miss will face Murray State, with Western Kentucky and Georgia Tech making up the rest of the field.
This will be Western Kentucky’s third Oxford Regional. The Hilltoppers haven’t won a title, but they’ve made the Rebels grind and sweat.
Western dropped Ole Miss into the loser’s bracket in 2004, the Rebels’ first time to host, when Grady Hinchman, a soft-tossing senior, pitched the Toppers to a 1-0 win.
It was a much different, hard-hitting team that pushed the Rebels to the limit in 2009, rallying from a 9-3 deficit in the eighth to force a decisive single game for the championship. That’s when Ole Miss pitcher Drew Pomeranz delivered one of the program’s most memorable performances. Pomeranz carried a no-hitter for 7 1-3 innings before finishing with 16 strikeouts in a 4-1 complete game victory.
By the end of his sophomore year, Pomeranz had been around the block, a dominant left-hander who would become the fifth player taken in the draft in 2010.
Let’s hear it for old folks
Ole Miss pitcher Riley Maddox put it in context for this year’s team.
“Older players win,” he said.
That’s how Maddox sums up this Rebels’ team with himself, Hunter Elliott and Mason Nichols, the three weekend starters, all part of the championship team in 2022.
There are other experienced players, though guys like outfielders Luke Hill, Mitchell Sanford, Isaac Humphrey and Ryan Moerman and shortstop Luke Cheng, to name a few, cut their teeth in other places.
That’s what Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco wanted.
Hill is completing his second season at Ole Miss, but the others helped fill the gaps left when slugging first baseman Andrew Fischer and pitcher Liam Doyle left after last season.
“We knew it was a big coup when we knew we were going to get Elliott, Maddux and Nichols back and Conner Spencer, but when we went into the portal, we did go old. We wanted to get some older guys from Power Five schools that have had success at this level,” Bianco said.
The transfer portal brings with it the expectation of instant success without the hard part, without the years of shared struggle, the highs and lows of growth as boys become young men all the while in search of something big at the game’s highest level.
The hard part builds a culture that Ole Miss – and Mississippi State and Southern Miss – have built and maintained, with occasional hiccups, for many years.
The Portal and the culture … sometimes an odd mix
For Bianco, portal help was a must to get this team, after two dismal seasons, where it is right now. Fortunately, the guys he landed have been good fits.
“You never know until you put them all in one locker room, but culture usually hasn’t been our problem, and the guys have really bought into it and have played really well,” he said.
Hill, whose career began at Arizona State, could have taken the path of some many college athletes in the Portal Era. He could have transferred again after last year’s team went 11-19 in conference play then one-and-done in the SEC Tournament.
He watched some 2024 teammates do that but chose to stay and help recruit the portal pick-ups to come and be a part.
Why choose the harder path?
“It’s everything that’s going on right now. The expectation here is to host regionals. When you’re doing that, and you’re winning, it’s so much fun. The fans are involved. The whole town is rallying around you. It’s like you’re fighting for a town and state at the same time. What more could you ask for as a college kid. That’s everything you dream of when you go to sleep at night as a middle-schooler,” Hill said.
Parrish Alford
