Everything Mike Bianco said ahead of Ole Miss’ opening trip to Arlington

Ole Miss baseball opens the 2025 season Friday in Arlington. 

The Rebels are playing in the Shriner’s Children’s College Showdown for the second time. They made their first appearance in 2021 and returned home as the nation’s top-ranked team. Ole Miss defeated No. 10 TCU, No. 3 Texas Tech and No. 9 Texas. 

The Rebels draw Arizona, Texas and Clemson this time around. First pitch against the Wildcats on Valentine’s Day is 3 p.m. CT on FloSports. 

Here’s everything head coach Mike Bianco, who’s in his 25th season, had to say about the upcoming trip. The Rebels are coming off back-to-back losing seasons after winning their first-ever national title in the summer of 2022. 

ON PLAYING IN THE TOURNAMENT AGAIN

Bianco: We played back in ’21 coming out of COVID and amazingly won three games there against three really good teams. When the people at Globe Life and Shriner’s asked us to be back in it, it sounded like a great idea until you look at the schedule and you’re going to play three Top 25 teams. 

I think probably as coaches we all have a little bit of angst opening up with this type of caliber weekend on the road. We would all love to probably do it two or three weeks into the season. But the truth of the matter is everybody’s in the same boat. 

I know our guys are super excited. The tournament’s run so well. I don’t know if there’s a better one in the country. To be inside and play in this beautiful ballpark and it’s received so well by the fans … I know our fans love to come to Arlington and into that stadium. It’s just a great venue for college baseball fans. All three games are packed.

I know our guys are super excited just to play in a big-league ballpark on opening weekend.

ON THE SEC DOING AWAY WITH DIVISIONS

Bianco: Optically, from the standpoint of fans and 16 teams in our league, you can have are really good year and be sixth or seventh in our league. Just be kind of clustered in the middle. I think it’s great to be able to always strive to win a trophy. To win the SEC is terrific, but to win the West or the East I think is really cool. I think they went more for the reasoning in football and some of the other sports with the format of two common opponents. You’ll be able to get to everybody’s facility or campus within a four-year span. I thought that was important for fans and the student-athletes. 

I don’t think it’s awful, but I like the West and thought it was a chance to open up the map a little bit better. Sometimes we don’t have that say. The addition of the two teams, Oklahoma and Texas, made us a lot better. 

ON COACHES WANTING DIVISIONS

Bianco: ADs and presidents (wanted the new structure). Like everything that happens in the conference the coaches don’t have the final say. The coaches bring up things in particular sports, be it football, baseball or basketball, and vote on it, then it goes to the athletic directors and the presidents after that. Every decision that’s made the final decision is the ADs and the chancellor and the presidents. 

RELATED: Ole Miss has ‘probably 4-5’ position battles still ongoing with Opening Day fast-approaching

ON OLE MISS NOT HAVING A TEAM CAPTAIN

Bianco: As long as I’ve been here we’ve let the players choose a captain at the end of the fall. I felt like this year with the makeup of our roster and so many older guys, guys that have been here, one of the negatives of selecting a captain or captains, co-captains, is it somethings keeps other guys that could be leaders in certain moments from showing that leadership. Didn’t want to do that. I wanted to make sure it was kind of organic. 

We talk about leaders all the time. We’ve talked about it a lot over the last 12 months. We want to give as many guys the opportunity to be leaders of this team as possible. We wanted as many leaders as possible. 

ON GOING OPENING ON THE ROAD

Bianco: We’ve got a lot of new faces. Even though it may be somebody that traveled from another school, the way we travel, to us, it’s really to go through the get on a plane, get on a bus, be in a hotel, do the Thursday night practice and all the meetings that go along with the weekend. It’s the first dry run to do that (and) doesn’t matter if you’re an experienced guy and did it at another program. 

The other thing that’s probably been as much of an education is (first-year pitching coach Joel Mangrum) and trying to figure out when he’s going to have his meetings and things he feels are important in that weekend and getting it done in the itinerary. That’s been a learning experience as well.