Report: Ole Miss baseball adds Division II All-American left-hander Xavier Rivas
Following their College World Series win, the Ole Miss Rebels have dipped into the Division-II ranks and pulled out All-American left-handed pitcher Xavier Rivas from the transfer portal, according to Chase Parham. Rivas pitched the last two seasons at the University of Indianapolis after graduating from Portage High School in Indiana in 2020.
In 2022, the lefty had one of the best seasons for a pitcher in Indy baseball history, throwing 80-1/3 innings with a strikeout total of 128. His 128 strikeouts are the second all-time on the program’s single-season leaderboard.
Rivas ended the year with a 14.34 strikeouts per nine innings average which ranked towards the top of the NCAA Division II. His ERA was 2.24 which was the lowest on the team of pitchers who threw 10 or more innings.
His 2022 performance came after a lot of growth over his freshman season. In 2021, he pitched 25-1/3 innings with a final WHIP of 1.54. He recorded 29 strikeouts, which was tied for the fourth-best mark on the team.
The 6-foot-4, 215-pound pitcher will be able to take the mound next season for Ole Miss as this is his first transfer.
Mike Bianco shares heartfelt message on what made 2022 Ole Miss team special
The Rebels had a season that had every bit of drama, heartbreak, adulation and success that would sell out theaters around the country – and head coach Mike Bianco wouldn’t have had it any other way.
“What a neat job I have to be around these guys. I mean it,” Bianco said following the national title victory. “Just great kids, great representatives of our university. They play this game at a very, very high level. They’re just good guys.
“We’ve had great leadership, as I mentioned earlier, and just to watch them do this – I shared with them, and I said it several times now, life is tough, and there are bad things that happen to everybody. Good people, bad things happen. These guys have worked really hard, and I think they’ve shown a lot of people that you can fall down, you can stumble and you can fail, but that doesn’t mean you’re a failure. If you continue to work hard, you continue to push and you continue to believe, as Tim [Elko] said, you can accomplish anything.”
Bianco’s squad took the mid-season criticisms on the chin where they continued to push and eventually it paid off.
“I think that’s why you had 20,000-plus fans show up here, because this is a special group. They knew it was a special group. It wasn’t just a national championship. I honestly believe that. During the trophy presentation, when you look in the stands, the stadium holds 25,000, and it looked almost still packed,” Bianco said. “That’s how many fans we had here.”
On3’s Barkley Truax contributed to this report.