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'HunterDay': Hunter Elliott turns in masterful performance reminiscent of former Ole Miss greats

11by:Jake Thompson•06/12/22•

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Hunter Elliott (Photo by Bruce Newman)

HATTIESBURG, Miss. — When the roster numbers came out ahead of this season and Hunter Elliott’s name was next to No. 26 there was always going to be the comparison to the last guy to wear that number. On Sunday, Elliott helped make that number even more legendary in the Ole Miss baseball pantheon.

Dough Nikhazy made the number pretty special already whenever he took the mound for the unofficial ‘DougDay’ outings. It was kind of a shock to some when a freshman from Tupelo who had not taken that same mound yet or thrown one pitch in an Ole Miss jersey was bold enough to claim it for himself.

After Elliott’s 7.1 inning performance, giving up only three hits and no runs in the biggest game of his young career to help send Ole Miss back to Omaha and the College World Series for the first time since 2014 there are no more questions to be asked.

Elliott etched his name as one of the best Ole Miss pitchers there has been, and his freshman season is still going on.

“When you watch him he’s not one of those guys where he’s not going to light up the radar gun,” said Ole Miss head coach Mike Bianco. “There’s not 95 (miles per hour pitches). There’s 85 miles per hour slider. But when you watch and you watch the confidence, you watch the toughness, much like (Dylan) DeLucia from the other side where they just make pitches and get off the field.”

Moments have not been an issues with Elliott, who seems to thrive off playing in the daunting stadiums and daunting, career-defining moments.

Sunday was no difference as Elliott was tasked with putting the team on his back and doing his best to put them in the position to close out the Super Regional.

After Southern Mississippi got a hit in the first inning, Elliott retired the next 16 batters before he allowed another hit.

“Early, obviously, there was a lot of excitement. The crowd was really into it, trying to get after you a little bit,” Elliott said. “But I think one of the biggest things for me is throwing up a zero in the first (inning) and trying to act like it’s just another game. Obviously it’s not but just trying to act like it’s just another game and go pitch by pitch. I think I did a good job of that today.”

Southern Mississippi head coach Scott Berry would agree with Elliott’s thoughts of his outing. Berry sat in the opposing dugout on Sunday and watched in amazement and admiration of what Elliott was doing to his players at the plate.

Berry also joked that when Elliott came near their dugout to back up a play he made the observation that Elliott, “hasn’t even opened a razor yet.”

“Way ahead of his time,” Berry said of Elliott. “He had mental presence of a senior. He was in total control. I was really, really impressed. What he did is he really mixed his pitches. He was plus or minus the velocity and had a great changeup. Made the fastball really sneaky. Just kind of hit both sides of the plate Never really gave us a chance to get any timing on him.”

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