Will Furniss enrolls in ‘Judd U’ looking to bring the boom for Ole Miss baseball
Ole Miss baseball slugger Judd Utermark welcomes you inside ‘Judd U,’ an Ole Miss Spirit (OMSpirit.com) podcast powered by RiverLand Roofing.
Utermark is joined by his Ole Miss baseball teammate, Will Furniss, a slugging first baseman/designated hitter entering his junior season with the Rebels. Furniss’ first hit as a Rebel was a home run — the first in program history.
Furniss details his journey to Ole Miss, his first love of soccer, bringing the winning ways back to Swayze and much, much more.
“Win more baseball games,” Furniss said of his approach last season. “I didn’t really care as much about results. Obviously I wanted to hit home runs and produce runs for my team. But last year I thought we were going to be a really good team. We started off that way.
“That’s where this older team is going to come in this year and help us. Last year we were real young. I don’t want to say immature. Rough ending. But I’m excited about the guys coming back this year and the guys we got from the portal. We have a really old team this year. Old team typically do well. Look at the regional teams last year.”
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Furniss hit .236 last season with nine home runs and 31 RBI.
He also came up clutch time and again for the Rebels. Memorable was his walk-off home run against Mississippi State in the first series win over the in-state-rival Bulldogs since 2015.
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Furniss has flashed his potential as one of the SEC’s very best power hitters. But all he’s concerned about is winning another national title as a Rebel — and by any means necessary.
“I think we have a lot of leaders on this team,” Furniss said. “I think we’re going to win a lot this season. The most important thing to a really good team is a good pitching staff. Joel (Mangrum, first-year Ole Miss pitching coach) has done a really good job. He’s helped our pitching staff tremendously.
“Everybody could see it this fall. I think that’s the least amount of runs we’ve ever scored as an offense in intrasquads, and it’s not because our offense is bad. Our pitching has gotten that much better. We had way too many errors in the field. This year, we’ve looked really, really good in the field. We have a lot of run-producers on our team, and we steal a lot of bases for an Ole Miss team.”
‘Judd U’ is powered by RiverLand Roofing. Text or call them today (662-644-4297) for all your roofing needs. Few are doing more in the Ole Miss NIL space than Riverland. Visit them online at RiverLandRoofing.com.
