A spiraling No. 11 Ole Miss drops second straight SEC series in loss to South Carolina
The last five days have shown an Ole Miss baseball team that is different from the previous two months of the season.
Friday’s 7-2 loss to South Carolina secured the Gamecocks first Southeastern Conference series win of the season and the second straight series loss for the No. 11 Rebels. A game where the offense showed signs of life with the first at-bat of the game and then vanished just as quickly.
Hayden Federico hit a leadoff home run off the fifth pitch of the game and it looked like Ole Miss (27-12, 9-8 SEC) had shaken off its woes at the plate. Unfortunately it was the first of only four hits the rest of the way for the slumping Rebels.
The other three hits were a pair of singles in the third and eighth inning by Luke Cheng and Judd Utermark, respectively, and a double by Mitchell Sanford in the seventh. Ole Miss saw 10 or fewer pitches in five of the nine innings on Friday against one of the worst collective pitching staffs in the league. A day after South Carolina starter Brandon Stone pitched a complete game.
“Truth of the matter is when these things kind of spiral out and you slump, whatever you want to call it, we got to get back to just winning pitches,” Ole Miss head coach Mike Bianco said. “We got to get back to having better at-bats. Last night, unfortunately, we got no walks and no errors (from South Carolina). Today, we got a couple walks but we could have gotten a couple more and then grind out at-bats. Tougher at-bats. Then when you get your pitch you got to be on time and swing and we didn’t do enough of that.”
Utermark’s single in the eighth scored the second run for the Rebels.
On the mound the day was not much better for starter Riley Maddox. The right-hander did not make it out of the third inning, giving up four runs – three earned – off four hits and three walks in 2.1 innings of work. Maddox did get three strikeouts.
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The three runs the Gamecocks (23-27, 4-13) scored in the first was off a single, a wild pitch by Maddox and then when first baseman Collin Reuter was ruled to not have stepped on the bag for what would have been the third out. A replay review upheld the umpires initial call of safe.
From there six different relievers came out of the bullpen for Ole Miss. If there was any positive it was Brayden Jones’ outing where he worked 2.1 innings and shutout baseball off one hit and got a strikeout.
Walker Hooks and Ryne Rodriguez gave up a combine three runs.
“Enough blame to go around,” Bianco said. “Not just the hitters. We got to pitch better, we got to field better, we got to play better.”
Ole Miss will try to avoid its first sweep in SEC play this season in Saturday’s finale. First pitch schedule for 1 p.m. CT and will air on SEC Network+
